Well let me jump in with a few questions even though this is an old thread:
1) Wife wants a Kindle which model is recommended these days, is the Fire the one to go with, I also seen some 6" as
Olbriar mentioned.
Personally, I'd go with a kindle that uses the e-ink. It's really a great thing to read. Also, the battery life is excellent. On average reading (by my standards) I was getting about a month per charge. That'd usually include between one and two books. When I was reading several books a month, my battery life wasn't as good. That's to be expected. From my understanding the screen change is what uses battery.
2) Has anyone rooted theirs, and if yes what are the advantages.
I looked into rooting mine (not sure if on this model it's called "rooting" but, basically the same thing IMO)... and I didn't. The only thing that I wanted to do was have the 'sleep' image be customized. Not a big deal really, so I didn't risk it. *shrug*
3) I don't have to get the eBooks from Amazon, I can load any eBook correct ??
Well, kinda. On the Project Gutenberg you can find a bunch of old kindle books. And I believe that you can use Calibre to convert most formats into the kindle format (.mobi is what I use... I believe kindles accept a couple of other formats). I'm not sure how copyright protection mechanisms work with converting and all that though 
4) Anything else I should know before I go out and buy her one, she doesn't care for a keyboard, but I definitely would want one with WiFi, any other input or recommendations.
I got the one that has 3g (att I believe), it's a bit more, but you have that option when away from wifi. I hardly use it, but I do sometimes. I would say it's probably worth it - that being said, I don't have wifi so it'd be the only way for *me* to use the internet on the kindle.
5) If you are using WiFi, does it allow you to surf the net also ??
Technically, yes. It's not nearly as smooth as on a phone though. You get some odd things and it's a bit of a hassle on some sites.
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