I own a Kindle, and love it. It’s best features are the selection of reading material available, and the ease of downloading them. Books are also a lot cheaper on the Kindle than in the dead-tree version. That helps the budget a lot, except for the fact that it’s so much easier to get the books, so it’s really easy to buy more than you would in a bricks and mortar store and spend too much money. If you can take the hit of the initial cost, I’d recommend it.

Bear in mind, however, that the selection of textbooks available in Kindle format is limited – and you can’t sell them back at the end of the semester. Also, depending on the content of the textbooks, the Kindle may not be the best format for them. If they are graphics-heavy (like biology books), those pictures will not show up well, if they show up at all. It’s also harder to flip between sections. And if your teacher assigns an entire chapter at once, no problem, but if he tells you to read certain pages, there’s no way to find those specific pages on the Kindle.

Regardless of whether you use it for textbooks or not, it will be nice to be able to carry a lot of regular books with you without the extra weight. Good luck!