Yeah, but Sony also doesn't have the most sterling reputation in taking care of their products over time. I love my PS3, I love my PSP, I love my stereo.... but even the PSP is a 1000x better hacked than as the product itself. And the PS3, with other people providing extending software, is better than what it came out of the box like (media, etc.)
Which isn't to say the 505 isn't awesome, it is... but it's awesome because of the community. If it wasn't for this community, it would be a nice, but limited e-reader with an ok selection of books and a beautiful display.
And it's not like the Amazon is all that constraining.... I've converted everything I put into lrf into .prc format without any significant amount of work (and I scanned in my own books here, so I was working from the very bare bones of it).
I have faith that lots of cool tools that make some of the more painful bits less painful will arise, I have faith we'll see a solid community appear around the Kindle doing amazing things with it as well.
But, again... I don't think it's about being superior. It's about innovative and I think the Kindle did that. My mom actually knows what one is - that, in itself, is quite the achievement on Amazon's part.
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