[animedude01]

Originally Posted by davidspitzer

I would not agree - If the Kindle DX is available in your area it works very well with PDF's - yes it does not do TOC's but it renders almost every pdf I have thrown at it with ease - i have 20 law books scans that range from 30 meg to well over 200 meg and it read them all with aplomb. With the recent update i dont even have to crop them becuase in landscape mode it automatically crops the white space on pdf's now. and for $489 US it is a pretty good value. In my opinion the DX1000, while a very good pdf reader is simply not worth twice the price; plus with the DX you will have access to a huge library of books from Amazon. (insert negative comments here from Amazon haters and DRM blah blah blah )

The OP is in Europe, so the DX isn't much of an option at the moment

Originally Posted by davidspitzer

Like most consumers (check out Apple and Itunes) most people dont care about being tied to a single store; although your can load all the pdf's and open mobi books you want on your kindle, as long as they can easily get what they want at a price they want. Ease + Selection + Moderate Price = market dominance. Its a model that has proven itself over and over again. In my mind Amazon is the only one with the full equation, with the Nook being the only other real player to offer a complete vision.

A lot of the time that's because most people don't know that they're locked in until something happens. Why do you think Apple dropped DRM? Why are so many people starting to jailbreak their iPhones? People don't care until they run into a limitation, then they start looking for workarounds. How many people on these boards are Kindle users and wondering how they can load onto their Kindle that nifty new ebook they just bought or downloaded online? What happens when they find out they have to format shift from ePub and can't because of the DRM?

Originally Posted by davidspitzer

Sony has its Daily reader coming out with wireless,and while I absolutely love thier 550, the new ones with the touch layer; I risk a jihad here, seem to me a wrong direction for sony. Also the Sony book library is smaller and on the whole more expensive than Amazon

Currently the Sony hardware is more open that the Kindle and the Sony store is pretty much matching the Amazon pricing for most of the books I've looked at. By more open I mean that you can load books purchased from other vendors in ePub format, even with DRM (except B&Ns DRM until it's adopted more broadly).

Originally Posted by davidspitzer

I ditched my DR1000 because it felt to much like a niche product and without a viable consumable market (ie books) i can not see how Irex will sustain anything but a tiny and highly specialized market share.

There are many great devices that are niche products and you never know, as the limitations on Kindle and other readers affect more and more people, iRex and other open readers may become much more popular. I can read books from multiple vendors on my DR1000 and Iliad. Kindle users can't. For me, that's a benefit. For others, it may not be

Originally Posted by davidspitzer

I have also tried the netbook route - I have not found anything a netbook does well - they are on the whole slow, cramped and underpowered. 3 hours is the most you will get out of most of them also, so unless you intend to stay tethered to power they seem very impactible to me - maybe if some come out with the Qpixel screen and take on more of a teblet form factor will I think they would be decent book readers

A netbook isn't a full power PC, it's something small and portable and it's designed for the 80% of people that only do e-mail, browsing, play some music, look at some pictures, update their twitter/facebook/whatever pages. I have one and I've started to use it more than my laptop because 80% of the time I'm just doing e-mail, browsing, logging into the servers remotely and it does exactly what I want it to do. I also do some reading on it and it does that fine. In fact, many people are using their smart phones in place of their PCs because most of what they want to do, the smart phone does!

Originally Posted by davidspitzer

I do agree with the the thread though that reading full size pdf's other than casually is an excercise in futility on most 6 inch readers

See... it all comes down to what the individual wants and will use their device for. I don't like the fact that the Kindle is tied so tightly to Amazon so I go with a different reader. You like that fact, so you go with the Kindle. Different strokes folks and all that.

The OP needs to decide what he/she wants to do and then find the reader in their budget that does that. The fact that a device is tied to or works best with a particular vendor/retailer is part of the equation. There are plenty of people who like their Kindle/iPhone/iPod device because of the tight integration, and plenty of people who don't like them for that integration. Where the problems most occur is that each side thinks their way is the best way and the other is deluded.

I don't hate Amazon, but I don't like the Kindle because it limits what I can do to what Amazon says I can and I don't like DRM because it limits what I can do with my legally purchase (purchased, mind, not licensed) media. Why shouldn't I be able to read that ebook on whatever device I want? When companies treat users/customers like criminals, those users start to feel like they can act that way (I'm not saying that's morally right, just that it happens). When you treat the user/customer as an adult and with respect, they'll return that respect (granted, not always, but there are never any absolutes ). Look at Baen books. They sell ebooks with no DRM and in multiple formats. I'm sure they've lost a couple sales to copied grabbed off the net, but they make it really easy to by a reasonably priced, DRM free product and their sales are pretty good.

Anyway, back to the readers, it all depends on what a user wants. If the OP wants a device now that handles large format PDFs and live in the EU, their choices are really limited. If they can wait 6-8 months, then they'll likely have multiple options at better prices.

I hope this long winded ramble helps a bit and didn't tick off too many readers