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Originally Posted by DiapDealer
That makes sense to me. And I hope to always be able to make that choice... now, and in the future. But, I fear that the choice will be taken away from me at some point. If past technological trends are any indicator, then dedicated eReaders will eventually die out in favor of these multi-function devices that happen to support various eReader apps.
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Not really. I'd call it a function of pricing. The cheapest tablet I can think of at the moment is the B&B nook color, at $249. That's sold as a reader, but once rooted, acquires all sorts of additional potentials, and rooting one is apparently fairly easy. You can get an Amazon Kindle for $139, and various "off brand" readers are available for $99 or lower.
As readers become more pervasive, they will become commodities with commodity pricing, and prices will drop further. Viewer software is certainly available to embed in the firmware. I expect cheap ebook reader devices to be around for the foreseeable future.
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While I certainly won't belittle anyone who loves their swiss army knife, I prefer the simplicity of owning several "fixed" blades and a separate pair of tweezers. 
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I sympathize, but the question becomes just how many fixed blades you are willing to carry when you travel. The Swiss Army Knife is popular because it can do a number of things, and while it can't do them all well, it can do them
well enough, and you
don't have to carry a whole toolbox for the occasional instance where you'll need to do one of those things.
In the context of this discussion, I'm willing to carry around a tablet and a cell phone. I'm not willing to carry a tablet, a cell phone,
and a reader, when the tablet can be a reader, and do so quite well.
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Dennis