Answers:
1. BeBook (Hanlin) probably supports the most formats.
2. Quality depends on the type of ebook. Different ebook readers have different strong points. BeBook offers an overall good quality.
3. Buying an ebook without DRM, very unlikely. Either you buy an ebook with almost 99% certainty it will have DRM, you download a pirated copy or you download from the overwhelming abundance of freely (legally) available ebooks. There are some emagazines that do not have DRM, see point 5.
4. A bit naive. If you buy a Sony, buy lots of DRM'ed ebooks and than think of switching to another brand and still be able to access all your legally bought ebooks, I am afraid that if the current situation continues you are going to be very disappointed in near future.
5. If by PDF you mean A4 or Letter sized ebooks or emagazines none of the ones you mentioned qualifies. Buy an iPod Touch or double your budget and go for an iLiad. But ask someone with an iLiad to test some of your PDF ebooks (largest page size, smallest print, ...). Some very helpful people on this forum.
6. The only conversion I have done is from TXT, RTF and HTML to optimized PDF using OpenOffice Writer. Very good.
I have written 2 reviews, one for BeBook and one for the iPod Touch.
http://blog.johan-mares.be/ict/gadge...o-read-ebooks/
http://blog.johan-mares.be/ict/gadge...-month-review/
Hope this helps.
Johan