I'm another one that definitely doesn't think Sony sucks. After much research, I just bought a 505 and couldn't be happier. Yes, the Sony ebook store leaves much to be desired. I figured out how to solve that problem though. I don't rely on it. Don't get me wrong, if there's a book I'm looking for I'll use it for price comparison, and if it's the cheapest I'll buy it there. I'm not crazy. But at the same time, it's not my main source of content and certainly not the first place I'll look. I see it as one option out of many.
To be honest, I don't plan on buying a lot of content. I already own quite a bit, and a lot of what I bought the 505 for would fall under the 'free' category. Info files, articles, etc. that I want to save to read offline when I have the time. This is why I found the 505 appealing, it seemed to be the best at handling generic content. If I was looking at a reader that was going to be exclusively for purchased content, I probably would've gone for a Kindle.
There are some things I will be buying and I did research prices as part of my decision making process. Surprisingly, the Sony store didn't have any of the content I was looking for. Amazon, Fictionwise and Baen did. Fictionwise was a dollar more than Amazon in most cases, and Baen had what I wanted for free, or $6.00, and was not available anywhere else. All of this I could live with to own a smaller, cheaper, device than the Kindle.
Is it the perfect reader? Nope, but from what I can see there is no perfect reader right now and this one suits my needs very well. Would I like a fully featured, low cost, easy to use store? You bet. I would love it if B&N or Borders stepped up to the plate and created a store with the selection and pricing that Amazon has. Or even if Amazon opened up the content to other reader formats. But I don't think that's going to happen any time soon. I'm not going to cry over it though, there are so many other places to shop I'm not tied down and I can find what I want when I want it.
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