[barium]

I welcome any thoughts from someone who knows about ebook readers. There's so many out there, it's difficult to choose. I'm considering several factors, and I'm hoping to find a reader that:

*Is as easy to read at night without a lamp as an iphone/ipad
*Can browse a calibre content server over wi-fi
*Flips pages quickly (i.e. as little of the e-Ink refresh lag as possible)
*Can be easily held in one hand
*Is relatively durable and water resistant
*Is no more expensive than the cheapest Kindle
*Can access wikipedia and a good dictionary quickly and easily
*Is compatible with epub, mobi, PDF, lit, doc, and rtf
*Offers easy navigation of a large library
*Offers easy navigation of detailed tables of contents
*Offers a convenient way to click on links to another page in the book (e.g., footnotes)
*Permits entry of annotations that are saved to the ebook file
*Functions perfectly without communicating with the manufacturer's servers

Hm, that's a long list. Any thoughts at all?

I was leaning towards the Kindle, since it's inexpensive for a reader with a nice screen and a wifi radio. I haven't used one yet, so I don't know how many of the criteria above it satisfies. I probably won't get a Kindle, though, because I don't like being tied to the Amazon format, and I don't like the level of control Amazon seems to have over the device. I don't want them knowing what I read or when I read it, and I don't want them deleting anything from my device or my computer under any circumstances.