I am willing to pay an arm and a leg for the best ereader available. What I don't want to do is repurchase the same book every time I switch readers (ecosystems).
I don't have a permanent repository for physical books and have been forced to part with thousands of physical books over just a decade(not always purchased brand new, also includes used books such as garage sale books, dude selling books on the sidewalk in random countries, books I got for free etc). For the most part, it was without hard feelings because I know possessions come and go. I would live in houses and then later reduce my possessions back to only what I can fit in a backpack. I collected ebooks then too, but rarely used them.
I love dedicated ereaders because they utilize a very 'book-like' display and Amazon wins because they make it easy for me to browse and make impulse purchases with the one-click button. My only issue with them now is I have been trying to move to a Chinese card which is having problems so one-click doesn't work and I think I owe them some money which I will get around to fixing eventually
To veer off topic: I don't use Kindle Unlimited expressly because I want to own and backup my files and do feel that if you have the means it is unethical to not pay the author/publisher for their labor. I understand that if everyone pirated everything then authors wouldn't have the means to continue producing. Anything I have pirated is something I wouldn't pay more than 25 cents for at a garage sale. I do my best to be really honest with myself and try to frame my actions as categorical imperatives and how I live my life. I might consider Kindle Unlimited if I read more periodicals, content that I don't care about keeping.
I am not a rich guy at all but will gladly pay anything for the best reading experience with the ability to side-load books, guaranteeing the portability of my archive. It is silly to frame "The Sword of Shannara" as an important piece of literature but at the same time reducing our expectation for the lifespan of a book simply because it changed formats (same as allowing the legal reduction of our expectations to civil liberties) we in turn encourage vendor lock in and in the case of exercising civil rights, we are telling our governments that we don't really care that much about those things our foremothers and forefathers fought for. I know I am not the mainstream consumer and am content to be at the fringes. I am also the guy who requests a pat down instead of using the full body scanner. Mostly just on principle. Not because full body scanners are the end of the world or I have anything to hide, mostly just because I can.
To get back on topic, I would buy the next Kobo device if it got me a step closer to keeping my entire archive in a manageable form on a single device.
Didn't mean to start a discussion on the ethics of ebook licensing or anything. I read the last few pages of this thread and it was sufficiently interesting that I wanted to share my personal perspective, what I search for in an ebook reader and what would make me switch devices.
-pcr