These are great points - count me in the 7" tablet + kindle crowd.

I recently sold or traded in various devices and bought a Kindle paperwhite and an iPad mini. I can easily do all of my mobile computing except software development and Excel stuff on the mini, and I do read a lot of material on it - NYTimes, Washpost, Flipboard for feeds, Twitter (mostly as a source of links), etc. I had an iPad 2 but the mini is really a different experience - size and weight are so much less - but no less utility. But that's probably another thread.

For reading actual books, the Kindle wins. Great screen, lighter than a paperback, SITS FLAT without holding it (try reading a paperback on an exercise machine), and to @tentseller's point NO DISTRACTIONS. You can in theory run a browser on a Kindle, but you won't want to, and so there's no nagging feeling that you need to just pop over to the email app to check it - you're just reading your book. I do wish the paperwhite would still play music, but I have a lot of music sources including an iPod shuffle that weighs effectively zero so that's not an issue.

The total weight of the mini and the paperwhite is about what an iPad 2 weighs, and I can use one charger and one cable (with the usbmicro-to-lightning adapter that is horribly overpriced but that too is another thread) in a teeny little case that fits in any briefcase or bag.