[Editor's update - the Kindle price has now dropped even more, to below $150 if you don't care about the 3G wireless access.]

When Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader first came out, I was baffled that anyone was buying it. It seemed like very few other people saw it as a worthwhile value either. Two years ago I asked in this post, Do you know anyone actually using a Kindle?

When it first launched, the Kindle went for $399, which was just plain silly. Then it dropped to $299, which was still the price of 20 or so new hardback books. Then it dropped below $250 (when I bought it—grrrr) and has now come down to $189.

I still wouldn’t call that a steal, but it’s now not a hard purchase to justify if you’re a traveler or you have kids who come with you. I am a traveler, but had trouble pulling the trigger on it until the latter reason came into play: I was going to be moving to Mexico for a year and knew I’d need more books for my daughter than I could drag along or buy locally.

Which brings me to the greatest feature of this e-book reader: you can download books in an instant from international locations. So let’s say you’ve run out of reading material in Puerto Vallarta, London, or New Delhi. Press a few buttons and presto, you’ve got a new book loaded and ready to go. If you read a review that sounds promising, you can download a sample first. If you like it, click the buy button and it’s done. Publishers have jacked up the price of some books, but most are still $9.99 or less, down to free in the case of public domain titles—most of the classics.

But what’s it like to read on this thing? Not perfect, but not bad. I’d still rather have a real book on my nightstand, but when on the move this is a good substitute. It doesn’t strain your eyes, it’s easy to hold in bed, and it feels almost like reading real paper and ink instead of a glowing screen (like the iPad has). Since it really is meant to do just one thing—deliver a book to your eyes—you’re not tempted to check your e-mail or go surf a website. To me that’s a good thing: no temptation to remove yourself from the immersion. (You can post to Twitter or Facebook from the Kindle, but thankfully not many people seem to want to do this.)

Where it bests a regular book is its instant defining of any word you put the cursor on. It’s also searchable. When you make bookmarks or highlight text, you can see a list of all those places you marked later in one spot. Since you can store more than 1,000 books on it, there’s no limit to what you can carry around in this little 10.6-ounce package. The battery life is really impressive: you can read a whole long novel before it runs out of juice. I’ve gone weeks, then it recharges in four hours. The keypad works far better and faster than the electronic one on a pad/touch device.

There are downsides though. It only displays one page at a time, so you’re hitting that “next page” button (loud enough to irritate a bedside companion) quite often. It doesn’t show page numbers while you’re reading, rather a percentage of completion, which feels quite odd. It’s harder to flip though, to browse, to mark a page, etc. Using a search function for something like a guidebook is not nearly as simple or quick as just turning to it in the real thing. The e-pub format used is not kind to illustrations and maps, which is another reason this is still a sub-par experience compared to a regular guidebook. It works better for straight-text books like novels.

With most any e-reader, there’s no such thing as a used book and it’s hard to loan one to a friend—like you easily can with a real book—without giving them your $189 reader. What do you do with a book when you’ve finished it? Good for the environment, but it doesn’t feel like you really own an e-book.

There are some other features that I tried out quickly but don’t use, like a text-to-speech reading function, a built-in PDF reader, a newspaper subscription service (extra $), wireless Wikipedia access, and an MP3 player.

The pros far outweigh the cons, especially now that the price has dropped down below $200. If you’re a frequent traveler packing light or a parent whose kid plows through a lot of books, I would recommend plunking down the money for one of these sooner or later.

My colleague John has reviewed a few other e-readers, including the the Sony Reader, but neither of us has tried the Nook from Barnes & Noble to make a comparison. For me the worldwide 3G wireless access, included in the purchase price with no ongoing contract (compare that to your iPad bill) was the clincher.

Kindle Wireless Reading Device, Free Global 3G – $189 & free shipping

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