[brudigia]

Originally Posted by peaceridge

Thanks, guys. I'll give the EZReader another look and the Kindle is definitely out.

Do not put down he Gen 3 too soon.
About folders, the Gen 3 has folders on the file system you do actually put your books in, if you wish.
These folders are not visible to the Gen 3 application, but you can sort your books by filepath (=folders). You still have a flat display, but books are sorted based on their directory. It is not the most, but it can suffice, depending on your tastes.
It also has a rock solid mobi reader. With the Calibre tool and mobiperl toolkit you can port amost anything to it with very good results.

One thing that I now have to consider, the EZ has a max 4gb SD card - the 700 has a 16gb on their website with the 700 - with that much I could carry my audio books along. Of course, I could just switch out SD cards on the EZ, but I'm concerned about the electronics of putting the SD card in and out over time. Anyone know anything about that?

There have been people in these forums saying they like to carry basically all of their books with them, therefore a large storage is mandatory. Ok, the ebook can double as mp3 reader, but would you like it ? Most books are aroung half a megabyte, usually (with many exceptions, of course). With the Gen 3 512 Mb ram you can carry around between 500 and 1000 books, probably. Do you want to ? Also because the Gen 3 takes a while during the bootstrap to scan all of your books to re-create the list view.
With 150 books my Gen 3 takes about 30 seconds to boot. I think it is tolerable.

I do like open source and I understand the EZ could have wifi in March.

I would not want to appear a bore, but do you really need wifi ? What for ? Think about it. My opinion is that, right now, only the kindle benefits from it, in the USA. Elsewhere, at least now, it is not a feature you will exploit. Maybe the iRex can use it a little bit (but its batteries rarely last more than one-two days).
I would suggest that you also look at these features. How long do you want the battery to last, what do you want to do with the reader, etc.
Maybe the anser is a netpc, which have comparable prices.