The fact that it doesn't have wireless purchase, and my friend bought it that it won't recognize the usb connection when it is indeed connected. I'll stay out of this.

I own both. I'm selling the Sony now. It's hard to compete with a free EVDO connection. Plus according to the Sony eConnect store email I just got today most Sony new titles are $14 or more. Many new books on Kindle are $9.99.

If you want classics email them to your Kindle for $.10 a pop after downloading the txt from project gutenberg.

A lot of those classic books might be on gutenberg.org for free. Haven't bother checking, but I'll stick with the kindle.

I'll guarantee you that all the Sony classics books are royalty free, and 99.99% of them are on Gutenberg.

I'm not really impressed with the Kindle's design (in fact I hate it), but the fact that they have 90k books and recent best sellers on there makes it the first time we've really had viable eBooking.

But how much will it cost for the kindle to read a damn PDF file?

I still prefer a tangible book. Call me old fashioned...

@LillieDesigns: I agree, but 10 years from now when we have flexible OLED books with leather covers, we'll look back the Kindle and the Sony Reader like we do the cassette. The only difference is, people actually used the cassette.

The one thing I've always wondered about these readers, is how do you bend the spine back on the book to annoy someone?

@Taime: I think people annoyed by bending the spine are already annoyed by the fact that some electronic gizmo is replacing their beloved dead trees.

Do you really think they will let us kill cows in 10 years?

This whole market feels like the portable MP3 market in 1997. The Sony can be the Samsung Yepp and the Kindle can be a Rio PMP500.

If someone makes one that is elegant, and markets it to make it relevant both of these readers will be history like said MP3 players are now.

But I see the Kindle as a step forward in connectivity over Sony.

These books are "classics" which are available elsewhere on-line for free. I couldn't find 50 that I wanted, let alone 100. And most of what I downloaded is "if I stuck somewhere with absolutely nothing to read" books, like War and Peace.

This offer should NOT influence your buying decision - it is much less than it seems.

I like the Kindle much better than I like the Sony Reader, mostly because I'd actually use the Kindle. Still, I'm going to wait for either version 2.0 (if there ever is, considering they'd have to address some stuff before I buy in), or viable competition. That being said, you have to admit that the Kindle has done something that no e-reader has done before. Make it commercially viable, because books and Amazon have always gone together. Especially since Amazon started with books.

The Kindle has moved it just out of the nitch stage. Heck the first batch sold out, and now they're out again. So obviously somebody is buying it, and probably in greater numbers than the Sony Reader. Why? the biggest thing would be that they have books, and a convenient way to get it. Sure its DRMed, but so is Itunes music and I guarantee you that if there had been no Itunes at the beginning of the Ipod there would have been absolutely no great MP3 revolution. That's why Amazon is going to be more successful than Sony in the long run, because they have a total product while Sony only really has just the hardware.

I give Bezos respect. I said along with lots of others; "There is no money in shipping books, they are too heavy and if it could be done Baker and Taylor would have sold to consumers years ago".

But I was wrong, and Jeff was right. In truth, I email myself .txt files because for a dime, I don't want to mess with a cable or an SD card. Yes, I am that lazy. I might even pay $0.12..

Let's say I pocket $20 per hour after taxes. If I fuss around with a cable and an SD card instead of working on billable stuff for 1min, I'm ahead with 10 second email to the Kindle.

I agree that iTunes helped solve the DRM problem that it helped create.

Rod&Todd: "Thank you, God for saving us from the moth that you sent."

I'm just curious, do either of these offer school books. If I could download school books the thing would pay for itself in one semester.

Sony's Reader, the prettier, cheaper, but EVDO-less alternative to the unavailable Kindle, now comes with another reason not to wait for Amazon to crank a few more white slabs out: 100 free e-books.

@Kittenparade: I'm a freshman finishing my first semester in college. I barely had any textbooks, yet they cost me $400. Next week we can start selling them back, and I won't get more than $90 in return.

MY ADVICE TO YOU: (I am doing this for next semester)

Get the ISBN's of your textbooks, and purchase them from Amazon. I just did a search earlier and found I could have gotten my textbooks for a little over $100 thus saving me $300!!!

Should I buy a crappy, overpriced reader from Sony or from Amazon?

@yojinbo: There's plenty of money in shipping. It's how e-tailers stay in business - marking up the shipping cost.

Titles you can get for free, should have known coming from Sony.

@taureg: Same here...though bittorrent and libprs500 makes for an endless library!

The real problem is that they force you into their platform. Once you pick, you're forever stuck to one platform. That's F'd up! Just think, those who buys kindle today along with an entire library of books will really Shit themselves if Sony comes out with a super duper gen 3 device. That would suck. I imagine the people who bought Sony or Kindle will be shitting bricks if Apple decides to release their version of it?

The electronic versions of books should be much cheaper than the paper version. Hell, I would think $.50 might be the cost to deliver, Charge 2 bucks at most for the most recent titles. 10 bucks? That is just too much for a book you can't even share.