I love my 350 too. It is small enough to fit into a dress shirt's front pocket, even with the cover attached, and so it is my take along reader. I liked the 950, but after I got the nookcolor I realized that I used it more than the 950. The eInks are terrific in highly lit areas, but not so much in dimly lit areas. Inside where my study and living rooms are it is not well lit, so I always had to use a clip on light, which hated, or make sure I was sitting near a good lamp which is not always convenient. Hence the reason I bought the nookcolor--to easily read in low lit areas without worrying about clip on lights or lamps. At that time the iPad was not an option in my mind. After a couple of months with both my 950 and nookcolor for inside use, and my 350 for outside and portable use, I realized that my 950 rarely got used anymore. So I finally decided to sell it.

I really thought that would be the end of the story as I only looked at my nookcolor as a reader and was not that interested in Android apps--nor am I to this day. I'm sure Android will eventually mature enough to be a decent OS, but it is not even close to that yet.

For a few years I've owned iPod touches (1G, 2G, and now 4G). They are okay for reading and about on par with my old Palm and WM PDAs, but that tiny screen as you noted does not lend itself to long periods of reading. The 4G has the Retina display and though it is not as good as the one in the iPhone it is terrific for reading on, but too small. Besides, unlike the iPhones which seem to have good battery life, the touches are notoriously horrible in the battery area, so I could never use the 4G as a take along portable reader because it would run the battery dead within 3 hours. However, having had the touches a few years I'm well aware of the various iOS apps that are available, and I began to wish my nookcolor could run similar apps as well and as easy as my touch.

You see I'm the president of a large Amateur Radio club in Arlington, Texas and I'm a division staff officer in the US Coast Guard Auxiliary (which is strictly volunteer, civilian, non-combatant, non-law enforcement, and has as our mission boaing safety education and vessel examinations). Both of those hobby/jobs require my use of computers at the meetings and events. I started out with a laptop years ago, gladly went to a netbook when they came around, but would dearly love to use a lighter weight tablet. So it seemed natural to me that I should try to use my nookcolor, even though it is not rooted. It wrked, but just barely and a bit sluggishly. I knew I would have to root to get office apps that were more than read only, and I was reluctant to do so, at least until after the expected major update hopefully coming in a few weeks. My touch 4G was way to small and battery challenged to take on the task. I was truly hoping, though I knew better, that Apple would announce a new smaller iPad with about a 7" screen. That of course didn't happen. But an unexpected refund of money from an unrelated project and the announcement of a $100 price reduction on the iPad 1 set me up for one of my compulsive purchases. I never considered the iPad a reasonable value at $500, but at $400 I decided to try it.

I've had the iPad for about a week and a half now. My nookcolor doesn't get used much anymore, much like my nookcolor resulted in my 950 sitting unused. I took my iPad 1 to my monthly Amateur Radio club and was very pleased that it had all the functionality I needed that I had previously used a netbook for--viewing and amending my agenda during the Board of Directors meeting which immediately precedes our membership meeting. Taking notes with an onscreen keypad that is big enough to be very useful to an old, fat fingered guy. (Well at 53 I'm middle-aged but I often feel like I'm old!) The nookcolor keypad is really too small and requires more typo corrections. And I can even connect my iPad to a VGA monitor/projector. The nookcolor will probably never have that ability. Granted only some apps are compatible with VGA mirroring, but there are enough of them that I can use the iPad for presentations!