[MerLock]

If that is indeed what the freehand note feature is, that would be really cool!

In my opinion, the 700 looks very solidly built. I think some high up manager listed a bunch of features he/she wanted on the 700 and built in side lights was one of them. Probably as seeing that there are many requests for a built in light and perhaps the covers with lighting sold very well showing considerable interest in it. Also, it's a feature that no other e-reading device has.

Unfortunately, they should've look at the prototype and realized that the added lights created a very poor contrast. I'm pretty sure if that if the 700 had similar contrast as the 505, that it would've been a big hit.

So it looks like the 600 addresses the issues that made the 700 lacking and offers a lot of nice features at a good price point for consumers. I don't see many additional features but I see it as a "correction."

I've only seen pictures but it seems like Sony are building units that are more affordable than adding a lot of extras into making the units look cool and solid. I just hope they don't "feel" cheaply made. That's one thing I've never heard about any of the e-readers from Sony, that they feel cheap.