A friend of mine got a Sony Reader as a present last year, and I've tinkered with it enough and been impressed with eInk enough that I've decided to get one. What I'm not impressed with is Sony's interface. So I'm looking around, but I can't quite tell what's actually out now. There seems to be a lot of "any day now" stuff, but as far as I can tell there's only the Sony, the iRex, the NUUT, and one of the HanLin's? Are there others?

The Bookeen looks nice and I'm on the mailing list but I'd really rather not wait 3-4 months for something that may never make it to market(I'm a skeptic).

I've looked into the NUUT, and am considering it, but I'm hoping someone else will get one first and let us know how well it works and how being an English only speaker will be using it.

So the short version, I'm looking at what my choices are if I were to order something tomorrow.

Thanks!

Nope - you've got the list right.

What don't you like about the Sony, as a matter of interest?

It's hard for me to nail down, it just feels clunky to me. It shouldn't require as many buttons as are on there, and it's not entirely clear to me that the excess buttons provide anything more then redundancy.

My friend has also mentioned the visibility in less then optimal lighting, so I'm also interested in the newer generation eInk, although if someone can confirm newer Sony Readers have this, then that is less of an issue. Page redraw could be faster, but same is the same situation as the lighting.

If it comes down to nothing new being out in the next month so I probably will give in and just get the Sony and deal with it.

I also have mixed feelings towards that row of numbered buttons. If the joystick button had had a better implementation their use would have been superseded and the price of the reader could have gone down. On the other hand, if a phone type alphabet and input capability had been added, that row could have been really justified.

All in all it looks like those missing software bits are a voluntary neutering of the device. It could have had and still could have many other functions. But for what it does it really does good.

Did you look at:

http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix

Did you look at:

http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix

Yes, but there's no indication in the Wiki as to which devices are actually available right now.

voluntary neutering of the device

That's the specialty of Sony. I wonder how many sales of various devices they missed because of their repeated harebrained schemes in trying to pull off a "gilette".