[Yottie]

What a great Christmas prezzie - and what a shame that your wife's pleasure in giving you something you appear to have expressed an interest in will have been spoiled.

I have the 505 and the associated CD, and was genuinely pleased to have some old favourites available straightaway - my partner on the other hand, has never loaded his "freebies", tending to buy new novels from Waterstones etc. We both love the convenience, the fact that we can go on long journeys and never run out of books, and carry lots of books around with us for very little weight.

Compared to a paperback, you don't need as much light for the reader, because you can simply adjust the font size. However, I do have a clip on light for low-light situations, and find it works well. I wouldn't want backlighting (spoils the e-ink effect), nor any form of lighting that drew from the eReader battery.

So far as Waterstones go, clearly they got it wrong when they told your wife the books would be pre-loaded, and they should have been better informed. I don't think selling you the power supply was such a bad thing (unless you already have a PSP power supply, and of course, the price was a bit steep) - if the 600 is anything like the 505, you will find that occasionally when the battery gets very low, you really need to charge it via a plug and socket rather than a usb. Also, it's faster - and useful when you are on hols etc, and may not have a laptop with you. However, I don't think Waterstone's should give up on selling the eReader altogether, it's surely part of the future of bookselling - and I would rather buy an eReader from someone who loved reading than from someone who spent all their time playing PC games (for example). They just need to make sure their staff are better trained, and this is always more difficult at Christmas.

As others have said, a lot of these questions could have been resolved in advance if you had done the research prior to purchase. As it is, it seems that your wife, who is less computer literate than you, wanted to surprise and please you with a great Christmas gift. For someone considering buying an ereading device, her choice is a good one, and it seems the only thing she expected to get, but didn't, was some pre-loaded books which are easily available from the Sony site (and other sources). The fact that you don't happen to like the books on offer is irrelevant.

I do hope you enjoy your Christmas present, and that your wife gets to feel you aren't too disappointed with it.