A Kindle owner can pay a small fee and email almost any standard format document (.doc, .pdf, etc) to their Kindle email address and have it converted into Kindle format and sent to their Kindle. My problem with reading off computer screens would carry over to a notebook, frankly, and E-ink technology is why I would chose a Kindle over a notebook. It is possible to "dog-ear" and annotate pages in a Kindle e-book, in case you didn't know. Sadly, the textbook market has not caught up to the technology, yet, but I suspect it will shortly start moving that way. I suspect that part of the holdup is publishing company's greed not wanting to make Kindle format texts price competitive. However, like I said, as an upper division undergrad, most of what I read is non-fiction books and journal articles, anyway, and very few actual textbooks. I would think this will be similar in grad school, but I'm not there yet. ;)

Anyway, my point is that unless the document is in some weird format or a .xls or something not based on words, it is possible to have all of one's class related papers, annotated texts, and other notes on a Kindle.