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Originally Posted by Albyr
4.) Do I have to use the stylus? If all I want to do is read, can I leave the stylus at home?
5.) What's the battery life like? I've heard conflicting opinions.
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TGS answered the other questions pretty well, I just wanted to throw in my $.02 on these.
Technically you do not need the stylus to use the device, but if you are trying to do a lot with the interface it can get a bit tedious without it. The UI was really designed with the stylus in mind. With that said, if all you are planning on doing when away from the styus is read, then you should be fine. I typically use the stylus when navigating to open a new book, but the entire time I'm reading through the book (usually takes several days at least) I don't need the stylus at all. If you absolutely have to though, you can get around the UI without it.
Regarding the battery life, most reports are that you should get about 2 weeks on a charge. The device is in standby mode when not in use, so it doesn't actually turn off. This costs you around 6-7% battery per day, but the benefit is that every time you go to use it there is a very quick wake-up and it is ready to go. If you could shut it down in between uses then the battery life would be even better, but you'd have to wait 40-50 seconds every time you wanted to turn it on for reading.
There are a couple known bugs related to the battery though. In some situations the device does not correctly go into it's standby mode. That can obviously cause higher than normal battery drain (possibly why you are seeing conflicting reports). One of the issues with this in the original firmware was related to a specific document type (PDB, I think). There seems to be something similar in the beta release, but I don't know if it is entirely understood yet.