Amazon's Kindle a godsend for 'extreme telecommuters'

SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. -- Everybody's talking about Amazon's new Kindle e-book reader, including me.

The Kindle is exciting news for Bedouins and extreme telecommuters who live a big chunk of their lives outside the office. (If you're unfamiliar with the Kindle, read this and this.)

E-book readers vary in their functionality, but Amazon trumps them all with a single feature: 3G Internet access that's totally free of charge. They never bill you. It never expires.

The downside of Kindle's wireless for anywhere computing is that it's limited to the United States. But that doesn't kill the utility of the device for international travelers. You can buy and download books, magazines and newspapers on a laptop, then transfer them to the Kindle.

The upside of course is that, with the Kindle, a thousand books (assuming you use an SD card for added storage) and a huge stack of magazines and newspapers weighs less than 11 ounces and takes up less space in your carry-on than a single John Grisham paperback.

Another benefit of Kindle, and one I personally intend to take advantage of, is for public speaking notes. I have always printed out paper notes to use during any kind of presentation I do. No more. From now on, I'm just going to move my Microsoft Word-based notes onto the Kindle, and read them right off of the device.

Yet another under-appreciated bonus is the use of Kindle for Web surfing and e-mail. It's possible to use Gmail, for example, from the Kindle (the m.gmail.com mobile version works best). The experience is better on a full laptop, but some situations like a crowded airline bus, while walking down the street or in a restaurant might call for using a Kindle rather than a bigger device, such as a laptop, or a smaller device, like a cell phone.

Amazon says my Kindle arrives December 6. I'll be writing about using the Kindle on the road in December, when I'll be traveling the Florida Keys, in January, when I'll be in Central America, and in April, while I'm traveling throughout Greece and Italy. Will the Kindle be as awesome on the road as I think it will? I'll find out and let you know.

It also needs to be said that Kindle is uniquely suited for offering free wireless because the device is optimized for buying things from Amazon.com, so the company has a vested interested in making it easy for you to connect. But what about iPods and other media players? What about GPS devices where you can buy maps and get traffic reports on a pay-per-view basis? It's easy to imagine a universe of connected gadgets where the connection is just always there, and the companies can justify the costs because they're selling you bits of content here and there.

Someday, perhaps, with ubiquitous free Wi-Fi, gadgets with Kindle-like free wireless baked in, and other options not currently present in available devices, All our gadgets will auto-discover the best free connection, and everything will be connected, all the time.