A week and a half ago, I went to Borders and Barnes and Noble to check out their respective e-readers. I've never owned an e-reader before, but the convenience and latest pricing points are just too attractive for me to pass up!
My position going in was I wanted to find something that was superior or comparable to the Kindle with a good price.
First stop was Borders to check out the Kobo. Their kiosk had a bunch of empty boxes on it and no model unit, so I asked the cashier if she could let me see a model unit. The cashier came back in a few minutes with a model unit and she was very nice, and it looked like a good e-reader. It reads books and doesn't do much more, which was cool to me, but the Kindle is almost the same weight as the Kobo, it's $10 cheaper for the wifi model, and it has dictionary look-up, something that I imagine I'll find invaluable. Additionally, the highlight/note feature with Kindle is something I was missing with Kobo. So I decided to pass on it, unfortunately.
Next stop was Barnes and Noble, and my god, they pimp the Nook out like you wouldn't believe. There was a guy behind a Nook Desk and his only job was to be the Nook Guy. And it worked - while I was there, I saw some Australian woman buy a 3G/wifi model. The $85-$125 Kate Spade covers were on prominent display and she nearly bought one of those, too. Anyway, after playing with the Nook, I realized a lot of things about it - it's heavy, the LCD is more confusing to use (since it acts as a second screen, you're looking back and forth between the e-ink and LCD), and most importantly, the glare from the white glossy casing was incredibly distracting. Maybe it was just the florescent lights in there but I was getting some serious glare from the casing. The LCD screen turns off by itself while you're reading, but I found it distracting as well. Ultimately, just too glitzy for its own good.
So, I decided on the $139 wifi Kindle. It's a great price and seems like a good unit. I wish I could've put my hands on it first before buying it, but judging from the features, dimensions, and weight of the thing, I think I'll be pretty happy. Really wish the Kobo was, like, $80, because I probably would've bought it, but no such luck.
Anyway, I just wanted to post this since I thought it might be useful to people still trying to decide...