The kindle costs about $300, with books usually running about $10-$30.
I spend about $800 to $1200 on required textbooks a year, and I buy them from amazon or other sellers not my college bookstore.

The kindle will most likely be MORE economical, not to mention negating shipping times and costs as well as a heck of a lot easier to carry around (no more choosing which textbook to leave behind each day because of insufficient room in a bag).

The question is can college students afford NOT to use this device?

Still, I’d be very happy with black and white if it improves upon e-ink’s speed and white level.

A CMYK color display that uses ambient light is an exciting prospect for those of us who work in the graphic arts and printing industries. One of the most frustrating aspects of desktop publishing and digital pre-press has been the attempt to match colors produced on an RGB display with colors produced by a CMYK printer. A number of different color “matching” systems have been developed, but since the two methods of color have different overall palettes, you can really only match the overlapping colors. Other colors are “out of gamut” and have to be “mapped” to the closest available color, a compromise solution at best. A CMYK display would greatly reduce the disparity in colors. These displays would still have their inherent limitations and would not likely be able to display every color in the CMYK gamut (just as an RGB display cannot reproduce every color in the RBG gamut), but it would still be a huge improvement. Maybe in five to ten years I’ll be able to afford a high-quality CMYK display.