The "free shipping if $total > $35" tended to be fast enough for me, and often things arrived sooner than I would have expected given what I take to be Amazon's scheme of "add to the truck if and when there's free space". That is, closer to 3 rather than 5 days.

But since getting Prime I've had things show up the next day. It's sort of freaky. I trialed Prime for the VOD aspect and I bought some product or another, forgetting about the delivery thing. And BAM it was at my house. I got that "I could get used to this" feeling.

In most cases I appreciate having whatever it was I ordered ready for use sooner, but I'd have to give some thought to whether it really makes all that much difference to me, especially since I'm not using the VOD thing as I expected.

And $3.99/item 1-day shipping, which I find comes in handy quite often.