[jduvall]

Edit:

It occurs to me I should really break down what I'm looking for in a reader

Collections, I loved this on my sony, I could put all my books (Say The Dresden Files) into a collection and it kept them in order so I knew what book came where.
Quality, I want a device that isn't going to feel cheap and is going to last for several years to come, my sony lasted me 2 deployments back to back and kept working up until my toddler dropped it off my counter
Battery Life This seems largely irrelevant they all seem to have good life
Glare I read outside sometimes or in bright rooms, my sony struggled with this, the glare making it really hard to read sometimes.
Interface the interface on the sony was pretty good
ads I'm buying this device I'd like to keep ads off of it, I understand amazon has two price points 1 with ads and 1 without (annoying IMO and unacceptable) Does the kobo have ads? Does buying the kindle without 'offers' really mean an ad free experience? I understand they are designed to 'not be intrusive' but I'd rather they just not exist period.

Things that are less important
Warranty I will purchase one through square trade whom I highly recommend
store I really don't care which "store" I purchase books from, I buy them where ever they are cheap and rip the drm off them anyway
price I plan to keep this device for several years (until it breaks or no longer meets my needs) so I plan to pay a premium for it
networking Part of the reason I love the memory card reader is not having to worry about running out of things to read if I'm away from a network.


So my old sony ereader died and sony no longer seems to make readers, which is a shame I liked mine.

With that said, I'm in the market for a new reader, after looking around I have some what interested in the Paperwhite and the Kobo H2O.

The Paperwhite is nice but it lacks the memory card slot and epub which means my current library will have to be moved back to a computer and then converted from epub to kindle (Mobi? AZW?) and saved to the limited space on the device (I have roughly 6 gb of books currently so that could be an issue)

The kobo is larger(and more expensive) but has a memory card slot and support for epub (and is water proof which is a plus since I sometimes use my ereader to look at recipes while I cook) I've never seen a kobo in person, and looking around it looks like they tend to require more tweaking out of the box than say the kindle does, is this really the case or can I just stick a book on it and read right away? Will I need to convert my books from epub to a specific kobo file type or will it read epubs just fine?


Anyone who has owned/used both devices care to weight in on this? I'm kind of leaning towards the kobo but not 100% sold on it yet so I can be talked out of it, I tried searching but it seems that people tend to either be 100% kindle or kobo and that just tends to bias a search.

Thanks!