[Alisa]

I understand you think it's ugly but I think it's a bit of an overstatement to call it a "failure" as a device. It's amazingly easy to use. The feel in the hand and the smooth action of the buttons are way nicer to me than the Sony. I know Sony is a sleeker gadget. It's way prettier. I wouldn't mind if the Kindle were thinner and a different color, but the interface and feature set are WAY better. Holding it and flipping through pages is much more natural feeling than the Sony. Ultimately, though, it came down to features for me. If Sony had what I consider basic features such as search and dictionary lookup, I'd have one. They didn't manage to come up with those things in over a year. Whispernet is cool and all but people act like it's just a frill and the only differentiating factor. It's not. The first time I saw the 500 I wanted it. I thought the interface was a bit cumbersome but I loved the e-ink screen. When I found out you couldn't search text let alone use a dictionary, I really was appalled. I figured they must eventually add such a basic feature. How could they not? You have text. You have some basic computing power. Duh. Make the thing do more than just let you look at the text. Take a book to the next level. Nope. To me, both Sony's were failures as devices because they don't deliver simple, basic features. Pretty isn't enough for me when the insides show a complete lack of imagination. I was close to buying the Cybook because at least it had a dictionary. The Kindle is the first device I've found that has the basic feature set I want. I hope it lights a fire under Sony's butt to improve their device because I want to see some competition in this market. I don't want Amazon to be the only game in town.