[jbcohen]

Well if you want to buy the one that consumers reports like then you will be buying the Nook Simple Touch with Glow light. Number two is the Simple Touch without the glow light and the third is the Kindle 3G

However I need to point out that anytime you mass produce anything there is always a number of slipups. That goes for the Nooks as well as the kindles and every time you buy an ereader of any brand you select a unit at random from the batch of available units. The likehood of getting one that has issues, as you put it, is always 50/50 and the simple fact that you have had several kindles with issues is purely random. The nooks are subject to the same thing as well. You are just as likely to get a nook with issues as a kindle with issues. The only thing the maker can do is to simply replace the one you have with another, which is sort of like spinning the wheel of chance yet again. Fortunately my kindle has some issues but nothing terminal about it, I still love reading with the thing.

I understand about the tons of free books that you have downloaded already. Simply go to calibre-ebooks.com and download calibre and you can translate those ebooks into any format you desire, this way the free ebooks in your library are sort of a non-issue.