[crionox]

Well, I just did the deed... Placed my order for the Kindle and hopped in the ever-expanding queue for this thing (I notice that the site now doesn't even mention the "after Dec. 24th" bit now, they've just switched to the more generic "out of stock").

This will be my first e-ink device and I'm pretty excited about it. The fact that I won't effectively have it until next year is actually fine, it gives me the chance to catch up on some pbooks that have stacked up. Because I know that as soon as the toy gets here... pbooks will just have to wait for a while.

I spent a lot of time both on this forum and elsewhere researching between the Kindle and the Sony. It actually was not a very easy decision, I kept going back and forth between the two. In the end, though, it came down to two things that gave the kindle the edge:

(1) the ability to search content. This is really key as I hope to be able to use it for reference-type books (computer books, cookbooks, Bible, etc.) and that is a key feature for making them more easily usable. (2) I just inherently trust Amazon more. As much as I think that Sony builds good hardware, I've seen them time and time again screw up software and format implementation. Granted that once you have the Reader it's yours to use how best you see fit, but I'm thinking more about the longer-term viability of their store and locked content. This is definitely a crap shoot, as Amazon is for the most part untested in these waters, but... at some point I had to make that choice for both of them and pick a side.

Overall, though, I'm just glad to finally be getting in to the dedicated ereader scene. I actually think my overall reading time will increase with the portability and space issues out of the way. I have a friend who is also trying to make the Kindle vs. Sony decision, so I will be interested to see which way he falls as well. Looks like the digital book world is starting to become a lot more mainstream.

David