Kindle was designed to do a completely different job. It uses a specialized screen -- I think it's ePaper, or something similar, based on some work from MIT a few years back -- that's designed to make the text as easy to read as a printed book.

AFAIK, there's no color support on that kind of screen technology yet, or if there is, it's prohibitively expensive.

Correct. That screen utilizes eInk (ePaper, whatever currently the hype word is for it). The main idea behind this technology is readability and minimal energy consumption. Next generation of this technology will probably be OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) with which it will be possible to have thin and colorful displays. Sony has developed interesting prototypes which you can see e.g. here. (http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=NcAm3KihFho)

Very nice link. It's incredible how thin and flexible they are. Do you know what the time frame of launch is on these and the prices?

I am not an expert in this topic but they sell this here already. You can e.g. find here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_light-emitting_diode#So... some information about it.

I wasn't really talking about the screen, more about the exterior of it

great comment and very true - although the Kindle serves a different purpose (ie. selling ebooks from Amazon)