For me, the software benefits of the Gen3 outweigh any perceived shortcomings in its "sturdiness" (and note that "Tribble", our long-time member and German seller of the Gen3, reports that he's seeing failure rates of well under 1% for the Gen3's that he's sold).
The key thing for me is that the Gen3 supports MobiPocket format, which is very much a de facto standard, with numerous eBook stores selling the format. The Mobi format supports dictionary lookup - another (for me) essential feature; the Sony does not.
Other useful features of the Gen3 are:
- The ability to load any TrueType or OpenType font onto the machine, and view any book in any font at any of 12 different sizes (the Sony only has three font sizes).
- Proper support for bold and italic fonts (the Sony synthesises them).
- A user-replaceable battery (the battery in the Sony isn't user-replaceable).
- Completely operating system independent (Sony's "eBook Library" software only runs under Windows).
These factors made me decide to replace my Sony by a Gen3, a decision which I've not regretted.
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