Good dialogue. Thanks to all. I think this thread has served its purpose. Key take-aways:
1) Current and near-future e-readers in this class are not well suited as mobile reference libraries.
2) Get an e-reader for recreational reading
3) Word search, while useful for reference use (see 1 above) is just not a big deal when reading the latest Michael Criton novel (agreed). I hadn't considered the "input" and "proccessing" requirements neccessary for this functionality. Living in a world of PCs replete with "word search" and "spell checkers", it just seemed to be a no-brainer.
4) Page flipping, when reading a liniear document, doesn't need to be fast.
Given infinite resouces, I am sure a book reader that can do it all is possible. But without an adequate pool of consumers to buy them, who would be foolish enough to make them. I will carefully watch the near-future crop of readers and likely select one just for recreational reading.
