As much as I'd love a dedicated reader, for about the same amount of money I'm leaning toward a netbook. It just makes more sense for me to have a multi-functional device that's super portable. I really wish they'd come down on the price of dedicated readers which would open up the market for book readers. :)

I have a netbook and I love it. I have an new Acer Aspire One and paid approximately $350 for it. It’s the size and weight of a hardcover book, it works as well as a full size laptop (but with no internal disk drive) and reads all my formats. I love it. I have for the past years been flying back and forth across the Pacific splitting my life between two countries. I’ve been buying ebooks for over five years now. I have so many different formats but can read them all on my net book. No worries about folders or memory. It’s not quite as small as the Kindle or Sony, but still completely portable with good battery life for a laptop. In comparison the Kindle and the Sony seem very limiting to me.

When Amazon was enticing readers to buy online, they had great discounts on all the (paper) books they sold. Now not so much.

So – while the 9.99 may be around for awhile yet – I wouldn’t use it in my “pro” column, because I don’t think it’ll be around in the long-term.

A greater enticement for me would be the greater number of books that seem to be available at Amazon only. I think Fictionwise is making a real push to catch up with it’s eReader format, but the last time I paid any real attention, there were still books available only at Amazon that I’ve wanted to buy.

Sadly, I still think the Kindle is ugly. I just hate that keyboard! So I’ll stick to my Sony (and PDA). They have served me well so far.

Keyboard? Two chapter excerpts free of charge? New hardcovers and bestsellers for just $9.99?

I couldn’t care less about the keyboard, but I am not a note-taker in digital format (doesn’t the Sony 700 have a note-taking capacity, though?). I rarely read excerpts before buying books anymore (and can’t you get at least one chapter at an author’s website?). And I don’t think the 9.99 price is still holding, based on some other post I saw not that long ago. Plus, isn’t Amazon planning to release Kindle books for other devices?

Keyboard? Two chapter excerpts free of charge? New hardcovers and bestsellers for just $9.99?

The keyboard does nothing for me. I don’t write in books (or crack spines or anything I see as damage) so I don’t miss it. I have enough issues with book buying that the 2 chapter excerpts and wireless buying would be bad for me.

I’m likely not going to buy a new hardcover unless I know the author already – and will still get paper for my standard hardback purchases. Honestly, my hardback purchases are few and far between so I’ll just wait for paperbacks (e or print)

The longer the Kindle is out there, the less interesting to me it becomes. Except for the wireless downloading capability that would allow me to circumvent the Mac compatibility issues, I can't see what the advantage over a Sony would be.

Keyboard? Two chapter excerpts free of charge? New hardcovers and bestsellers for just $9.99?

Then again, file-systems have supported folders or their equivalent for like a bazillion years, and that didn’t stop the Kindle.

(In fact, the Kindle *does* support folders on its physical drive–you can create them when you plug it into a USB port–it just won’t render them on the Kindle screen. Argh! Why, Amazon? Why?)

Just remember the more books on the device memory the slower it will go because it is having to keep track of them and list them for your browsing.

The SD slot appears to be removed.

Where do extra books (that don’t fit on the 1.4 GB available to the user) get stored then? On Amazon’s site?