Amazon’s new Kindle is a mind-breakingly cheap $US79. Bloomberg originally reported the $US79 price. The cheaper model doesn’t have touch controls, like the $US99 Kindle Touch, but it’s faster, smaller and lighter (170g) than previous generations.
The $US79 price is for the Special Offers version, so if you’re totally ad-averse, you’ll have to plunk down another $US30 for the $US109 no-ads model.
The new model also dumps the keyboard from the previous generations, which could be a good or bad thing, depending on how you use the device. It’s available to order now and ships today.
Update: If you’ve used a Kindle, this is no new terrain. But the cheap-o version is appreciably smaller and lighter, to go along with its skinny price. There’s no QWERTY keyboard to be found, however — you’ll have to click through an onscreen keyboard and select each letter. Which is slow.