Kindle for PC and then maybe Kindle in color?

It's getting to be hard to keep track of all the different ways/places you can read these days. Kindle for PC, now available, will allow you to use Kindle connections to read on your PC. (Kindle for iPhone, of course, lets you do the same on your iPhone.)And something called Whispersync keeps everything coordinated so you will never lose your place as you move from device to device.

But in examining Amazon's  announcement of the launch of Kindle for PC, both PCWorld and Wired raise an interesting question: Why does the screenshot of a PC open to a book ("Winnie the Pooh," as it happens), show the book's illustrations in color? Kindle does not yet reproduce color illustrations.

As PCWorld asks:  "Is this Amazon's flirtatious hint toward bringing full color to future iterations of its reader?"

The answer on color would seem to be: It had better be more than just a flirtation. If Amazon doesn't do it sometime soon, someone else will (and hopefully, for less than Fujitsu’s Flepia, the Japanese e-book now offering color along with a price tag of over $1,000).

Marjorie Kehe is the Monitor’s book editor. You can follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/MarjorieKehe