Sarah, great post. It should be a mandatory read for prospective eDGe buyers. Indeed, know what you want and/or need; know what the device can deliver.
I think my expectations are in line with the reality of the eDGe. It's certainly not going to replace my iRex DR800 for long-form prose reading, nor for many PDFs -- not when I want to kick back for hours of reading. And I've been fooling around with the Android SDK emulator so I'm quite aware of the limitations of that platform. Nevertheless, for reasons I won't get into for fear of boring everyone, I think the eDGe will suit me well. For the purposes I foresee.
What I "didn't want to hear" was the report on usability, the flaws such as the zoom resetting of the browser window when changing page, laggy on-screen keyboard, inaccurate (?) touch interface on the LCD side. The latter concerns me most because one of my purposes for the eDGe includes Japanese written input (kanji, kana). For translation and self-education.
Has anyone loaded up aedict.apk and tried the KanjiPad recognition? It's very good using my mouse to draw in the Android emulator. Got my kanji recognized every time. But if the touch interface on the eDGe is sloppy there may be a problem.
Anyway, I'm still good to go on the eDGe. I'm not looking for a turnkey appliance like the iPad. I like to get my hands dirty, so to speak. (One of my other purposes is to try out some ideas via the Android SDK. Brushing up on my Java now.
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