i must agree with bill's comments above, but for me they weren't serious enough considerations to convice me not to get an eti2. here is my perspective on them.
- small and pricey memory cards : true. but on my original 64mo card i could have over 100 books (including several omnibus editions, and several illustrated books, so i estimate closer to 120 books or more). now i have a 128mo card which will hold over 200 books. for my needs, this is plenty ; i recently took it on a 3 week trip and had plenty to read whatever my mood. if, with over 200 books to choose from, i still can't find anything to tempt me, i must not really be in the mood for reading. and since i'm rarely away from my computer for so long, i can easily add new books as i go, depending on what i want to read. as for the price, i definitely recommend buying the eti2 with a memory card to start with ; one might be enough for you, depending on your reading habits / how far away you are from your computer on a regular basis. if you want more, keep your eyes open for deals, sometimes you can find a (somewhat) better price (check ebay and also our flea market here).
- plays nicer with windows than other OS : true if you use the original software, however take a look in the ebookwise forum, i'm pretty sure that the same nrapallo has been developping some linux tools, and i
think the perl tools can work on other OS (but i'm not positive). i don't know how far along they are, i don't use linux so haven't been following too closely. nonetheless a good point, particularly for mac users.
- imp is a dead end format : sad but very true, and not only that but it is in some ways frustratingly limited (doesn't support a complete UTF-8 charset, so for instance the phonetic transcriptions of dictionary entries using special characters often can't be displayed properly), and the two default fonts (which can't be changed, to my knowledge) are not the most attractive i've ever seen. ironically, in other ways it is actually better than, say, mobipocket (supports true pagination, can embed images in the text rather than just insert them between two blocks of text...). nrapallo (him again !) is also working on a way to recover the text from imp files, but it's still an imperfect system and might never be really satisfactory. so like bill, i strongly recommend that any book you buy be in a more easily archivable format (like mobi or even better lit, both of which can be "exploded" into their basic elements including an html file, which is very good for archival purposes and can be converted to imp or any other format in seconds).
i originally bought mine because i wasn't sure i would like the digital reading experience, and it was a cheap way to test the waters. now that i've used it i love the ergonomy so much that i find it compensates for all the other shortcomings (although i do get frustrated and complain about them sometimes). i still want a liseuse with an e-ink screen, but to be honest i'm not sure i'm willing to sacrifice the brilliant ergonomy for it. my ideal liseuse would have an e-ink screen with those two big buttons on the eb1150, and you would be able to rotate the screen and have the buttons automatically remap correspondingly, so you could hold it in either hand comfortably and read one-handed (oh, and it would support at the least html, epub, rtf and doc natively, with images and external links). i'm still waiting for that...
