[tomsem]

I intend to get one of these two ereaders as a companion to my Kindle. I expect to use it mostly for library ebooks and for testing ePubs that I generate - but who knows, I'll probably find some books I prefer to have in ePub format. Sorry Sony. Update Adobe SDK, drop the price a bit, and I'll consider you too.

I've played with Nook STR at the B&N but had mixed feelings about it, in particular lack of a functioning web browser and weak support for PDF (secondary requirements for sure). It had some issues with selecting text (for example selecting a hyphenated word). The fonts were okay, but not as good as my Kindle. But even with ePub support it is a little deficient: can only navigate top level of TOC, which sort of defeats the purpose of having TOC navigation. I don't care about having physical page turn buttons, except insofar as they are needed for 'Fast Page(TM)'.

Kobo Touch seems to have a better web browser and PDF support out of the box (but evidently no reflow, which Nook does have), as well as Mobi/CBR/CBZ support, which is nice. I don't like that it needs to work with proprietary desktop software for something ADE apparently does not do, and that the dictionary apparently does not function with side-loaded content. But without some hands on it is difficult to know how it compares to Nook for mainline ePub viewing (how do the fonts compare? does it share the TOC navigation limitation? does text selection work better?). I like the idea of reading stats.

I'd also like to know how easy it is to navigate links with the touch interface (footnotes, etc.), are PDF links supported at all, etc.? What happens to notes/highlights in each system, are they basically marooned on the device or are they synced like Kindle? How does customer support compare?

I'm no doubt agonizing over this way too much, they both look pretty capable for what I need them for, 'nothing is perfect', and I'm kind of to the coin-flipping stage of my decision process. But I thought I'd ask to see if I'm overlooking anything. Nook, Kobo, or wait awhile for a round of updates?