I got the 700 today, have 505 with light wedge and 18 months old 500. After reading these posts I was prepared to see a "worse" screen on 700 so I was not disappointed. It's closer to 500 screen, which was fine for my reading experience.
Next to 505 the new reader does not look good. But when I moved away from 505 and started reading, it felt to be a great device. Ergonomics are much better, at least for me. Touch screen is very responsive. Browsing my library (around 200 books on SD, many of them larger than 10Mb, lrf, epub, pdf) is very fast. I like the thumbnail view of books (it fits 9 books per page, showing cover pages). Search is fast, if you need it (I'd love to be able to search for a keyword within multiple technical pdf books, may be a hack later
). As a plus, you can use the stylus for reset.
I created few feeds through Calibre in epub, moved them to 700 through Sony library (Calibre doesn't support it yet), all is good.
I only need to get the hack for Russian fonts and Calibre support.