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For me, it came down to a couple of things:
1) I am buying into the service, as well as the reader. Amazon's overall user-experience for the Kindle is well-crafted, and their customer service is especially good.
2) In terms of DRM'd books, beyond the pricing, I'm gauging risk on how long the DRM will be alive to let me read them.
Sony is a bad risk in that regard, IMO, for all the reasons mentioned before--this is a marginal thing for them, and they've only had nominal success in the market.
Amazon, however, will be successful if -anyone- is successful. And if they're not successful with the Kindle-specific service and device, I think there's a reasonable chance they'll make Mobipocket and Kindle cross-compatible (i.e. offer a conversion service from AZW->Mobi for reading content on future Mobi devices and make the AZW devices officially Mobi compatible by loosening the PID spec to allow the asterisk). This isn't wholly unreasonable, given that they own Mobipocket.
And for all the reasons others have mentioned, the instant availability and novelty of the device are getting me back into reading again, so there you go. I didn't sense that I'd have the same experience with Sony. Being able to navigate to Feedbooks.net, Webscriptions.net, or similar and just instantly download free novels is fantastic, never mind the Amazon store.
My other choice--which was about neck in neck, but I wanted the wireless--was actually the Cybook Gen 3. If I had to really bet on a format, it'd be Mobi, given that it's the only one with significant cross-platform support, and the Cybook looks like the best affordable Mobi reader (Iliad beats it for best, but not for affordable). But at the time, the prices on Mobi content were still pretty high, and that AZW/Mobi relationship makes me think things will eventually equalize out with a chance of a soft landing, whichever way it goes.
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