@Ashjuk: Indeed, you are NOT locked into the Amazon ecosystem. I too am very supremely leery of these kinds of situations. However, the fact remains that my Kindle is perfectly happy eating a steady diet of decidedly non-Amazon material. And I am delighted to leverage Amazon's free email conversion service for non-native supported file types, receiving excellent service and results.
I also looked long and hard at the Sonys - I have been resisting a dedicated ereader for years, spending the last few reading on Blackberrys. Now, after living with my K3 for a couple weeks, there are only 3 significant changes I would make to the device:
- a much more stylish, thin METAL frame like the Sonys;
- better music functionality [purely a luxury and not really essential - K3 is an ereader first and foremost for me, but if you are gonna throw mp3 music support on the thing, you should at least have a halfway decent navigation and control system for music...that the K3 plays mp3 music files ONLY IN THE ORDER it was copied on the device is just plain useless and quite frankly, stupid];
- slightly faster processor to provide snappier navigation outside of actual book reading.
It was a tough decision for me between the Sonys and the K3. In the end, I decided to go less expensive, get built-in Wifi and sacrifice the superior eye candy design of the Sonys in favor of the K3. I made a good decision.
YMMV of course.
And back on topic, I really hope that Sony does not abandon the ereader market anytime soon as I still plan to grab one of their next gen models [if one appears].
Time will tell...
cheers,
-les