Today is the big day when Steve Jobs puts on his dog and pony show, and the waiting world gets to see the most eagerly anticipated new Apple gadget since, well, the last one.

The perfect day, then, to continue my Me and my Kindle report, before Apple renders the device utterly obsolete. Perhaps.

I took the Kindle into the office last week, for a sort of impromptu show and tell. The screen provoked immediate attention. I can best liken the E Ink "electronic paper display" experience to reading on some sort of high-res, souped up Etch A Sketch. One of my colleagues, who is wedded to his iPhone, immediately jabbed at the screen with his finger, and upon finding this had no effect whatsoever, threw his hands up in horror and turned his back on it. In his world, no touch-screen equals completely pointless. It was an interesting example of user interface expectations. Another colleague who's already regularly using his iPhone to read books was intrigued by the reading experience too. With his phone he's able to read one-handed while squished on a London Underground train, not something the Kindle is terribly suited for.

Its pluses include the fantastic battery life - my Kindle ran for the best part of a month on its initial charge. The screen is as restful on the eyes as ink on paper, if somewhat greyer, and you can view it from all angles.

Minuses include a nagging annoyance that the Kindle version of a book typically seems to cost as much as a real one. Somehow, I feel cheated at not owning the physical book itself. I daren't read it in the bath, in case I drop it (again) - it does seem to have a tendency to slip through the fingers. Given the yawning pay desert that is January, I am too mean at the moment to buy one of the expensive designer cases available that would probably alleviate this problem.

I have purchased my first proper book for it - Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger - via the on-board Whispernet wireless delivery system, and this is hugely impressive. I clicked "buy" and wondered how many minutes it would take to download. The answer was no minutes, as it popped up in seconds.

I went on to read pretty much half of it at a single sitting. The weird thing is that the only way of knowing this is via the progress bar at the bottom of the screen. It's very strange not experiencing the physicality of pages turning in one's hands. This leads me to another minus, in that I would usually pass on a book like this to my best friend, but I can't. While the author and publisher are no doubt delighted at the potential for extra sales, I feel sad at losing one of the shared joys of reading.

It's too much to expect to buy one, get one free, but I would hereby like to propose some sort of "buy one, get it again at a discount" deal, whereby I could purchase an actual book and get the e-reader version of it at the same time for a small premium. That really would be the best of both worlds.