The latest Amazon Kindle ebook reader is, for me at any rate, a dream come true. Certainly, I would gladly admit that, as someone who considers reading as one of my main leisure activities, I must be very much Amazon’s target market. Typically, I would expect to read an absolute minimum of one book weekly – and it’s not unusual for me to have one fiction, one non-fiction and any number of reference books under consideration at any one time.

I don’t think that’s so spend quite a bit of money on books. Apart from the financial side of things, my collection of books does tend to take up quite a bit of space at home. Once in a while I go through the pile and, setting reference books and favourites aside, have a bit of a tidy out. More often than not the books go to friends or charity shops.

I recently cleared out over fifty books before moving house. It wasn’t until I saw them all, bagged up and ready to go, that I realised I was looking at a sum of money of somewhere between $500 and $1000 which had built up in just under twelve months.

Now, whilst the Amazon Kindle is a fairly expensive item in itself, the downloadable e-books from the Kindle store are typically quite a bit cheaper than the printed equivalent. After all, there are no printing and distribution costs for the publisher and no mail charges for Amazon. Even saving no more than a few dollars a book, which seems quite reasonable, anybody who reads on a regular basis could fairly quickly recoup the cost of the device and then start to save money with time.

The potential benefits aren’t just financial. The Kindle 2 has a storage capacity for around 1500 e-books whereas the Kindle DX, which will begin shipping on June 10 2009, can accommodate 3500. That’s a lot of books – and a lot of physical storage space that will no longer be taken up in your home or office.

Some users have suggested that the Kindle is a green, eco-friendly, device – based upon the fact that it will save on the volume of paper used. It’s easy to see the logic, but clearly some consideration needs to be given to the materials employed in production and also the manner in which the device will be disposed of when it reaches the end of its useful life.

The actual benefits achieved will vary from user to user and will probably depend mainly on how many books are bought each year. However, for keen readers, it does appear that the Kindle could offer a number of different advantages which should more than offset the initial purchase price.