[menudoBandit]

So I'm going on around 3 days now with the PRS300 and have a bit more to add for those indecisive souls - or just those who love a good debate.

Daffy4U is right - these two devices are indeed a class apart. The PRS300 is a budget, feature-stripped e-ink device. It performs the most basic on functions without frills or thrills. The Kindle2, on the other hand, is one of the most feature-rich (excluding format support) that I have used or researched. The ability to index content and search the Kindles contents - or Wiki/Google/Dictionary for that matter - is a powerful one. The wireless integration with Amazon (a mixed bag if you hate DRM) and other registered Kindle/iPhone readers is awesome. The page turns are roughly twice the speed on the 300.

It should be a no-brainer but the more I read the PRS300 the more I notice the lousy (by comparison) font and contrast on the Kindle. For me there are only two real things that keep me coming back to the PRS300; screen/print quality and form factor. The Sony is capable of displaying multiple font types; the Kindle2, 1. The 300, to me, looks more like natural print than the Kindle2, and that could become a more significant factor over time.

The 300 reads book; no more, no less. If you want something simple and purpose-built it does that well, in my opinion. If you are a gadget fiend and love bells and whistles (not to mention legal access to Amazon's content) and are willing to put up with slightly less contrast and slightly wacky font, the Kindle2 is a good choice.

As a side, I received the third eval reader yesterday - a PRS600. I was hopeful as the opinions on the glare issue seem pretty evenly divided on the web. After un-boxing it and trying to read some of the sample text, however, I sealed it back up and hit Sony for an RMA without further eval. It;s packed with a lot of nice features, and the form factor is great - but that touch-layer completely ruins the long-term readability, in my opinion.

Good luck to all you indecisives out there...