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I went through a similar process just recently and ended up with the Kindle. I had the same reservation about how the Kindle looks and was worried about accidentally hitting the next page buttons all the time. Let me tell you that in real use as an ereader it is not an issue at all. The ergonomics are very natural in person and the Kindle is very thin, not like the way it looks on all the videos and on Youtube for some reason. Honestly, when you are reading you don't really even notice how the device looks, it just works flawlessly.
More importantly there are some features that make it really enhance the reading experience. The dictionary lookup is one of the most used feature. It is so convenient that I can't help but look up words everytime I read. Add to that you can look up on google, wikipedia, etc. and it is almost unlimited as an instant reference. The qwerty keyboard makes it so convenient to enter something on the browser or to search. The device is snappy and responds pretty fast to input.
I am not sure what you mean by being tied to Amazon for content. The Kindle supports non-DRM mobi, prc without problem. There are so many easy conversion software on mobileread that it is no barrier to getting content on the Kindle. You should also know that it has a fullscreen 800x600 picture viewer function that I use routinely to read pdf documents that I have converted to jpg and a split in to thirds and viewed in landscape.
The battery life is easily 5-6 days with heavy reading and light whispernet. Unless you have no access to electricity it is more that adequate for most people. I don't even think about battery life as a concern any more. It does cost more but I think it delivers a more complete reading experience. I am no fan of big corporations like Amazon but in this case the Kindle pretty feature rich device. If you are in the US and in range of Whispernet it is hard not use all the features on it.
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