If you want more formats, the Kindle is probably not the best choice. It can only read its own format, although you can convert Word and text documents using Amazon's service. The big draws of the Kindle are the Amazon store and the wireless/computer-less usage.
I am in Canada and have a Sony. I love it. It can read many formats including epub which some say is the emerging standard, and PDF. Battery life is amazing and it's easy to use. You can also borrow library books from Overdrive in epub and PDF format, if your library is a member.
I buy multiformat books at Fictionwise and load the LRF right onto the Sony. I also buy other formats which can be converted. I use Calibre (a free program) to do these conversions painlessly and load content onto the reader. File formats I have used:
- LRF (needs no conversion)
- ePub (needs no conversion)
- PDF (needs no conversion; but how it looks depends on what size 'paper' the PDF is)
- HTML (one-click conversion in Calibre; how it looks depends on what you started with)
- Secure eReader (needs decrypting and cleaning up to get an HTML file)
- RTF (looks fine but you need to set it to a large font size or it will be tiny-looking)
- Plain text (needs to be saved as RTF or HTML, and tidied up accordingly)
- Word documents (needs to be saved as RTF or HTML, and tidied up accordingly)
I have no direct experience with the Kindle. But my perception was that its big draws are the store and the wireless---not its format friendliness
The big omission with the Kindle is epub, which is the emerging standard and which is used by the library books