a.) I have a keyboard one I'm perfect content with for regular reading. I haven't tried the Touch yet, but unless there's a radical lack of quality control, I think it'll be a personal preference thing on which you get.
b.) everyone I've seen who had special offers says it's not intrusive and actually fairly useful since they get notified of book deals earlier and sometimes (maybe?) are the only ones notified of special deals occurring. To give that context, I'm getting my sister for Christmas the Touch 3G with offers because of the reviews of how useful the offers were and it's something she'd take advantage of since she loves to read as much as I do. More convenient than getting them over email, I will say that.
The e-ink is fantastic for reading; even with my Fire, my regular Kindle is still going to be my primary reader. The battery life for the keyboard is long enough that when I'm using the cover with light, I only recharge every two or three days (I read a lot). When I'm not using the light cover (I almost always do, but it's happened that I didn't) it's about a week before i need to do a recharge, and it recharges fairly fast.
But yes, you will want a cover of some kind and you will want a reading light. I use this one pretty religiously: Lighted cover (http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Lighted-Leather-Burgundy-Keyboard/dp/B003DZ166Q/ref=sr_1_3?s=fiona-hardware&ie=UTF8&qid=1321461137&sr=1-3) and I'm on my third one (my nephew broke the first and second when my Kindle was left out by accident). It's perfect.
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b.) everyone I've seen who had special offers says it's not intrusive and actually fairly useful since they get notified of book deals earlier and sometimes (maybe?) are the only ones notified of special deals occurring. To give that context, I'm getting my sister for Christmas the Touch 3G with offers because of the reviews of how useful the offers were and it's something she'd take advantage of since she loves to read as much as I do. More convenient than getting them over email, I will say that.
The e-ink is fantastic for reading; even with my Fire, my regular Kindle is still going to be my primary reader. The battery life for the keyboard is long enough that when I'm using the cover with light, I only recharge every two or three days (I read a lot). When I'm not using the light cover (I almost always do, but it's happened that I didn't) it's about a week before i need to do a recharge, and it recharges fairly fast.
But yes, you will want a cover of some kind and you will want a reading light. I use this one pretty religiously: Lighted cover (http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Lighted-Leather-Burgundy-Keyboard/dp/B003DZ166Q/ref=sr_1_3?s=fiona-hardware&ie=UTF8&qid=1321461137&sr=1-3) and I'm on my third one (my nephew broke the first and second when my Kindle was left out by accident). It's perfect.