I'm from the UK, and bought mine in San Antonio, Texas in late November.
Despite what follows, I'm actually very pleased with it, and tend to recommend it to others, albeit with the following caveat. I travel quite a lot, for business and pleasure, and am lucky to have a boat in the Aegean, which I try to spend weeks at a time on, out of reach of civilisation. Since I read a lot (a book a day in ideal circumstances) the Sony Reader would logically appear to be the perfect solution, enabling me to carry a library without the volume and weight restictions of paper books (I can take a suitcase full!). However, there's a problem in this respect, and consequently I offer you the following VERY SERIOUS warning:-
Although you won't find any indication in the store where you purchase your reader, the reality is that you'll be discriminated against, because they forbid you from buying content for the Reader at their on-line "Connect" store. Unless your credit-card is registered to a US address, you can't register at the store - I've tried every trick that I can think of! It appears that they've - peculiarly - struck US only licencing deals with the publishers (why? - haven't they heard of the WORLDWIDE Web?) in a way that other ebook suppliers haven't.
The problem then becomes one of purchasing your books. The only other supplier in the proprietary Sony Reader format is at
www.manybooks.net, where they've converted the better bits of the Project Gutenberg list of free ebooks - which, let's face it, although most of the "classics" are there, PG mostly consists of tens of thousands of very dull texts that are only of interest to a narrow academic audience. Manybooks.net also have a small selection of non-PG books that are also free, and have a much better interface than PG.
Otherwise, if you scan the "torrent" sites, you can find some content, although by and large this will be illegal, or you can purchase ebooks in non-compatable formats from other vendors (if bookwise can convert to the Sony format, why not everyone else?). Personally, I've tried some in the MS-Reader .lit format, as you can get a free converter from
www.processtext.com. However, converting seems not to be 100% perfect; takes some effort; doesn't always work (I've had particular failures trying to convert from the Palm format); and never seems to provide a text that's as easy on the eye as the native Sony format.
www.fictionwise.com has a large selection in the .lit format, although their strength seems to be romantic fiction, which isn't my personal cup of tea, and other posters to this forum enthuse about Baen - although they apparently only do SF, which doesn't grab me either.
Going back to the issue of discrimination against non-US citizens by Sony, I've had a long and frustrating correspondence with their so-called "customer service" people on this issue, which has reached the point where I've threatened to sue them; anyone want to join me in a class action?
Hope this ramble helps you in your decision making.
Steve