[vaughnmr]

Analysts have been predicting the demise of Amazon since it's inception. Most of them aren't around anymore... Now I check with Amazon before I make any serious online buy.

When I bought my ereader a year ago, the only two players, really, were Sony and Amazon. I looked at the Sony in person at Best Buy, and wasn't impressed, especially with the price. And the software problems, so-so bookstore, poor support, poor service, etc. was horrible, just from what I was hearing from the users and my own download testing. About the same as the experience I had with my expensive Sony "feature" phone that cost more than my current Sprint HTC smartphone...

Bought the Kindle sight unseen, and I haven't looked back. Got Calibre (thanks Kovid) and now no ebook is a stranger to me, I'm not walled in by anyone but myself. Been to the beaches, parks, baseball games (met a lot of fellow ereaders there, mostly grandmas, but who's complaining...), read myself to sleep every night, and it hasn't missed a beat. I absolutely love it. It's performed better than any other electronic device I've ever owned, and I'm 56yo. Stuff that in your quality column.

And this is a refurb K1! Get over it folks, the Kindle is a fine device. The mobi format is just fine. Epub is ok too, but it's already turning into the "apple ipad epub standard" and "all other epub standard". Calibre makes a great library database and converts ebooks like no other software available, so I can deal with just about anything out there (except German ebooks, sorry).