Just thought I'd interject a brief analogy with this device and another device that didn't initially jump mainstream... the Palm Pilot.
When this device first came out, not many people used it and the user-base was quite low. I saw it for what it could do and embraced it quite readily. Now, 13 years later there are a ton of devices that, initially, mimicked the device and eventually evolved into their own. While I cannot draw correlations with the original Palm Pilot developer, Palm Computing (a division of US Robotics), and mega-bucks $ony, it did start as a good idea that eventually evolved into many of the devices you see today; i.e., mobile phones PDA's, stand-alone PDA's, and their ilk.
The way I see it is that Sony sparked the fire by jumping back in with an eReader and supporting it somewhat through its infancy. They could have ignored it and settled things by moving on after their aborted Librie fiasco, but someone very smart in their enterprise saw the potential of such a device and look at things now, there are quite a few clones popping up and many happy users.
I know it's not right to make a statement to the effect that Sony pioneered the eReader movement, they didn't, but they have given it quite a push that will see it to it's inevitable fruition.
I'll tell you what though, if I worked for Adobe I'd pitch a device that supported their format and tailor it just right; just imagine what kind of device they could have and the potential for revenue it could generate. Amazon is smart, they saw the eBook revolution coming and jumped on a wave as soon as they saw it (let's just hope they don't get tossed too hard for their crappy prototype! Yikes, were they the lowest bidders?)
Bottom Line: Don't give up hope. For me, this device has become so much more extensible with the tools I've found and used since joining this forum. It will never die until superseded by a greater tool/device.
