[forcrp]

I stumbled into this place after seeing the extremely useful comparison chart for e-readers when I was trawling for info. Sorry about the extremely lengthy first post here; any help is definitely appreciated. Thanks anyway!

Here's the background. Kindle Touch(out only after Nov. 21st) or the Sony PRS T-1(price now down to $129).

I decided that it would have to be either of these since I live in India and it'll be close to impossible to get support/hardware help for anything else. Having said this, I still plan to get a friend to buy it from the UK, US or Dubai because shipping costs can be anywhere from $25 to $40 extra and are potential deal breakers. I have a limit of 200$ to spend for the new reader. It would definitely be great if I could get any and all accessories also within that budget. Otherwise I'll just have to get something else locally.

Requirements:
I read loads, mostly pure text, so black and white is fine.
It has to be touch. The Online store is of no consequence to me since I have all the books I'll read.
Wi-Fi is a yes.It'll be great if the browser was half decent; not looking for anything special. As long as I can check mail and Wiki.
I don't need it to play games or watch anything(plus I can't pay that much). So colour's ruled out.

And here's the mental battle.

T-1.
It could be just my bias, but somehow I only keep finding less-than-impressed reports of the T-1. If anybody could clarify specifically why(w.r.t the requirements listed), it'd be great. I've also read stuff like -clunky interface-slow refresh rate-plastic casing sucks, etc.Since it runs a heavily modified version of Android, it's a bonus for tinkering interests.


Why not Kindle
With their non expandable memory, limited/choosy format support(requiring conversion), I'm not sure I'll have the freedom I want. And with their Nov end release, I'm not sure when I'll get my hands on it.

Why not Nook
Somehow I didn't consider it. Hate the U shaped button and the other two play audio and have web browsers.

So my primary concern is the reading experience, smoothness, stable firmware. Disclaimer: I'm sure some of the stuff in this post may be wrong/outdated. If so, I'd love to know.

Questions
What exactly is the Special Offers edition? Will my screen ALWAYS have a strip at the bottom(or where?) with their ads or is it limited to some mode/time period? Roughly how much of screen space might it swallow up?

ppi- I understand why it matters and the Kindle has 167. What about the others? And is there any noticeable difference in clarity?