There are problems with the Kindle outside the USA - currently Whispernet only works with one carrier in the USA, for example.
I've been looking at alternatives - tried a couple of small tablet PCs but while they were both pretty good as etext readers, they were both too heavy and bulky to carry around casually. Ditto all of the netbooks I've seen. So what I've ended up going back to is my elderly HP Jornada pocket PC, which has quite a nice letterbox screen, a 2/3rds size keyboard, and a 2gb flash card. No comms (you can use a WiFi card but it doesn't work very well) but it'll run Mobibook reader and some other eBook formats, so I can just download what I want and put it onto the flash card, read it at my leisure. Not as nice a screen format as the Kindle, but it works.
Hopefully something more like a cross between an ebook reader and a netbook will be coming along soon - something pocket sized, e.g. about the size of a DVD case, but hopefully including a keyboard and say Linux plus Open Office and some other programs, would suit me VERY nicely. There are some encouraging things around, such as low energy electronic "ink" screens, flexible plastic screens, etc., but nobody seems to have quite got round to putting everything together to make a really good pocket PC for the modern user.
