Uh... right.
Many students apply for scholarships and grants, or take loans to buy what they need.
If a college student feels that he really needs a Mac, it is not that inaccessible.

Uh... you're missing the whole point.
If you actually had some of your sensory modalities intact (vision and audition), you would know that this thing is not supposed to be like a book.

Not including useless shit that detracts from the product (glossy screen, proprietary cables, etc) is something that I would pay for, but that's beside the point.

While I am not sure which one has better color production between NEC and Cinema display, it is not that unusual for 24 inch high-end graphics monitors to cost this much–just check out Eizo's products.
As such, your explanation that NEC is simply out of their mind doesn't seem very likely.

Cinema displays are glossy though.

Is that u, Ken, Barbie's bf?

/sarcasm

Oh noz.
But Newegg haz 26 inch BENQ for $250 dollaz.
Why is dis sooo expensiv?

/sarcasm

Textbooks?
What kind of textbooks do you use that are 9.7 inch diagonal?
Most textbooks are 8.5 x 11, at minimum, and many texts are even larger.

This won't work for textbooks and Amazon won't support PDF's anyway.

If they at least made it 8.5 x 11 and included PDF support, I might have considered it, even without color and annotating capabilities, but without any of those features, this is just another Amazon junk for me.

In for 1!

By that, I mean real GPS software, with re-routing capabilities, 3D navigation and maybe text-to-speech.
I don't expect that to be integrated but I would like for them to allow TomTom and others to enable this.

Better GPS anyone???