I have a kindle and I absolutely love it, but I wouldn't use it for textbooks. It might be cheaper but for one it is technology so there is a chance it will break or die right when you need it the most and then your SOL. Also, you can't flip back and forth between pages easily, and unless you book mark it, its really annoying to get to a page in the middle of the book when your at the beginning or the end of it. While you can highlight and annotate, I just don't think it would be as reliable as having an actual textbook. The night before your big chem exam when your studying you don't want to find out your textbook broke and you can't use it to study.