other than fixing the looks of thing

Have you seen one in person? I actually think it looks pretty cool when it's in your hand. Which shocked me, as the pictures are indeed ugly as sin.

I think that PDF should be right up there with (actually ahead of) their touted Word compatibility.

The main problem with PDF support is technical. PDF as a format is designed to be read on pages of a certain size. Many, many of the PDFs out there do not support text reflow very well or at all. That makes it incredibly unsuitable for something like the Kindle: you'd have to zoom it way out, do weird scrolling, or some other such thing. If you read some reports of PDF support on the Sony, you'll find that in almost all cases it's basically unusable: tiny, unreadable text or other problems.

The Mobipocket Reader (and the "Experimental" Kindle e-mail conversion process) can convert those PDFs that DO support text reflow just fine. The ones that choke it just don't work for the format.

I wonder how Sony deals with that.

They don't.

And frankly, the low cost of the books is bullshit - aren't most of them $9 or $10?

Most of the books are between $5 and $10. The ones that are $10 are generally new releases and hardcovers (which do make up a large portion of the selection at the moment, though the back catalog is growing rapidly). I'd say that 99% of books are significantly cheaper than the most common print version, though not cheaper than ordering it used from Amazon.

Which is more than your standard mass-market paperback?

I'd say the prices are about equal for most books that are available in mass-market. Maybe a little less on the Kindle.

Which I can lend out and donate to the library when I'm done with it?

True dat.

But then, yesterday I ordered two books from the Amazon store ($9.99 each but they're only available in hardcover for $18.99 list right now) while lying sick in bed on a freezing cold day. Then I read one of them. They used no paper, and therefore had a low carbon footprint. The other book (along with several interesting free sample chapters, plus Middlemarch, which I really do intend to read soon and got for free from manybooks.net) will be with me on the drive upstate I'm sitting for this afternoon, not to mention the Sunday Times.

Pluses and Minuses.

I would be surprised if the next Kindle competitor could come up with a Whispernet analog. That's the most intoxicating thing about them for me.

I will probably only be able to judge its appearance from pictures unless they deploy them to stores.

I can read PDFs on my phone. It's not the funnest use of it ever, but if it's doable for a few pages, I expect a dedicated reader to be doable for a few more.

Me, I give fiction away and only usually keep reference, which is picture and diagram heavy, so I don't think ePaper is it for me. Yet.

But then I think of one device containing all my recipes and searchable to boot--I get a little light-headed.

Yeah. I really need the convergence thing to get cracking. I need all my devices at home to be one item, and I need all my devices mobile to be one thing. Two things. One that docks into the other.

The problem with one device for the home is accessibility. One device won't work unless it moves with me--one device with multiple heads? Multiple devices (networked, of course, because I don't want to leave data behind) is probably a better way to go.

As noted, I don't like the idea of leaving data behind, but I guess I can stand to leave apps. Read only in the kitchen, for instance. Reading and web browsing in the bathroom (stop looking at me funny! I like a good long bath!) Full horsepower is bedroom or office, and a subset of that in the living room.

Some people have suggested the "the one laptop per child" AKA $100 laptop as the perfect e-reader. (One problem that this is actually a $200 laptop, and costs $400 in the U.S. because they make you buy one for a poor child as well as yourself -- which I guess is fair enough") The one flaw I can see as an e-reader is the 3.2 pound weight, which makes it as heavy as pretty thick hardback. (I have a Paul Robeson biography that weights about that. 9 X 7 X thick, though I have read books that size in bed.)

The key to this laptop as an ereader is that while the screen normally acts as an reasonably high resolution color laptop screen, when you switch to black & white it becomes 160 dpi - which is not as high as print, but still e-reader quality. And the battery will last 24 hours in that mode. If you are e-reading, you can fold the keyboard out of the way, and just use arrow keys built into the screen frame. You get your ebooks via normal internet connectivity, wi-fi or wired ethernet. It has a gig flash storage built in, with 200 meg of that consumed by the OS. So storage capability really is more ereader than laptop. There are also three USB port for standard connections, so you could carry a thumbnail around with additional books. I have not seen one, though the pictures and all descriptions make it look similar to a fisher-price toy. The screen is 7.5, which I think ought to be able handle standard PDFs at the 160 dpi resolution. (But I leave the judgement of that to someone who actually has seen one.) The O.S. is a non-standard linux which everyone agrees is fairly high learning curve even for someone who already knows Linux. I have not seen this. But a lot of reviews say it is a distinctly second rate laptop, but a first rate e-reader.

I'd be curious as to peoples opinions about it as a possible e-reader.

Update: Apparently there is still a certain amount of problems with software for ebooks, and even the larger screen still handle pdfs imperfectly. The workaground are eplacing the native browser with Opera, and using FBreader for most formats (meaning just as with other readers, you translate pdf to non-DRM mobibook.)

The only thing I'd want an eReader for is newspapers & magazines, so I could read them on the train without having to contort myself trying to fold the damn things without hitting my fellow passengers. But even then, the price would have to be at least cut in half.

I'd like to iPod my library. I'd like to have every book I own (or have out from the library) available to me at any time. I bore really really quickly, and even without a long bus or a train commute there are enough times per week where I find myself wanting reading material that makes me feel it would be practical for me. But it would have to be on a par with the size of a current paperback, otherwise I'm not carrying it around.

Really, when I look at it, I'm an unsolvable problem. I am two pretty distinct book customers.

MacHeads. Seems like some of the commenters missed the last few moments of the trailer.

I have Acrobat Distiller installed but I don't see the PDF option from within Word. I'm almost positive I've created a PDF in Word on this computer before... Any ideas?

Did you try Print?