I can understand not buying a Kindle because of not wanting to support the "idea" of a closed-system (even though its not truly closed), and the desire to support the small underdog against a huge company (though that point seems a bit bizarre if you own a Sony!) but I don't really get the comparison to Apple. The latter overcharge, force you to buy proprietary accessories and you bascially pay a hefty price for repairs, upgrades etc. Amazon only force anything with their ebook format, you can charge your Kindle and use different brands of accessories that will work with other ereaders, they don't abuse their strong market position with prices but instead are very competitive, including repairs and replacements, plus their level of customer support is very high.
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Originally Posted by Man Eating Duck
Amazon has demonstrated on numerous occasions that they have the means and the inclination to remotely disable a Kindle, and to delete legitimately bought books from it.
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There have been plenty of scare stories of people having their accounts closed for alleged missuse and losing access to their books. Usually you find that a) they haven't actually lost their books from their Kindle and have in fact just not been able to access their account because it's been closed or suspended, and b) they aren't being very honest when they say they have no idea why Amazon closed their account.
The fact is, the chances of you having books removed from your Kindle are next to nothing. Besides, anyone who keeps all their books on their ereader and doesn't have them backed up anywhere else is being a bit daft. They could easily lose their ereader or break it and then they'd have no books?!
You can use a Kindle without registering it to any Amazon account just like you can do with most other ereaders. Personally, I have mine registered, I ocassionally have wi-fi turned on to download books wirelessly from Amazon, but mostly I sideload, and always with books that have their DRM removed, immaterial of whether I've bought them from Amazon or eslewhere or free books from mobile read, project gutenberg etc. Do Amazon know about all these "liberated" books I read on my Kindle? Who knows & who cares? Why on earth do you think they even know or want to know?
I can understand the anti i-Whatever, just think the bias against Amazon/Kindle is a little nonsensical at times. There are perfectly plausible reasons not to want to buy a Kindle (no SD card the main one), and things like comparing them to Apple, complaining about them doing their best to avoid paying as much tax as possible (unless you avoid doing business with a ton of other companies that try the same), and big brother behaviour seem pretty weak to me.
I've personally been tempted to switch to the Kobo Glo just because of my personal tendency to side with the underdog, but I am far from convinced about their update/bug-fix practices. I'd probably still buy most of my ebooks from Amazon as I like their store far better than others, but I am happy to pick the best device for me, and not worry about who makes it.
As for the capacitive touch screen, I'm not fussed between it or the infra-red, just as long as there are page turn buttons too. On the side like the Nook & the older Kindle's please!