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Actually, I have been looking, and Amazon's behavior with DRM and whatnot sold me on getting the Sony instead.

Um, Sony's not "about" to get in the market, they've been in the market since probably before Amazon has. I have a Sony PRS505 and I LOVE it. It has saved me a ton of money and space, is extremely convenient to use and is perfect for travel. The only real criticism that any of the professional reviewers ever seem to give it is that you need to read it in light which is a stupid critique because that is no different than paper. Books aren't backlit. And the whole point of eInk is that you don't have a horribly back-lit LED screen giving you migraines and making it hard to read. I would never want to read for hours on an ipod or laptop or tablet PC but I have comfortable read for hours with my sony eReader.

Frankly, even if Amazon's technology was available up here in Canada, I wouldn't want to use it with all the DRM and ownership issues (vis-a-vis the 1984 incident). Shortly after I purchased my eReader, Sony opened it up via a software update so that it was able to handle DRM-free formats as well. Sony's store has a large availability of books (as well as third party sites like Books on Board), although some of the titles are only available in the US.

You missed the two best readers on the market. The Cool-er (http://www.coolreaders.com/) and the Cybook (http://www.bookeen.com/ebook/ebook-reading-device.aspx). No DRM. No fees. Just copy your books to it and read 'em.

I am hoping to get one of these sooner or later. However, I would want to find out which reader would allow me to actually get the books I would want to read.

So... which of these allows one access to the largest amount of books? I just checked the link suggested by the previous poster but the Coolreader would be useless to me beause I could not find any of the books I searched for. Amazon, on the other hand, had them for Kindle.

I'll stick to the ones that can't steal your books back from you while you're sleeping. Like Sony's old, non-wifi reader.

I would love one of these, my job has me traveling for about five days every other week with a lot of down time in the hotel. Carrying a pile of books and newspapers isn't real practical, so something like this would be a god send. I know Sony's been around for a while, Target carries a reader from them, though i haven't looked to closely at it.

I just read stuff on my iPhone. Kindle is available for it - I'm assuming other readers are available for it, too.

Why buy / lug around yet another gadget?

That having been said, the iRex is by far the best-looking device. The Kindle is just hideous.

sunspot42: for me, it's all about the eink technology (and screen size). My iphone is too small to read off of comfortable without resizing moving all around and being a backlit screen it's a strain on the eyes. But even with a laptop/notebook, having a larger screen, it's still an eye strain. The eink technology is almost as good as reading on paper. So I'll be more likely to use it. I used to read on an old palmtop but it was just too uncomfortable.

UpNorth: I had typed up a response but I don't know where it went. You can get a lot of books on Amazon but that doesn't work in Canada and plus you don't ever really "own" the books, you're basically renting them. They can technically recall them at any time and if you lose/sell your kindle I believe you lose the books too.

With my Sony eReader, I have a fairly big selection on their Sony Bookstore (although most of them are crappy romance novels) but you also have the ability to purchase books online from third parties such as BooksOnBoard). Plus, you can legally download books that are public domain from Google or Project Gutenberg (which has saved me a ton of money for my English degree). Their device used to be tied to their DRM but they opened it up a few years ago and now you can use other document types (including Adobe digital editions and PDF's).

I'm not a Sony shill :) Just sharing my experiences, I'm glad I bought the eReader.

Another vote for the Sony PRS-505 - make sure you look for the 505 specifically! It's the one with no backlight, and it really does make a huge difference (the backlight makes the e-ink look washed-out and crappy).

The Kindle is nice, but I want to own the books I buy. And if Amazon goes out of business, that will be a very expensive paperweight. The Sony reader will continue to take any PDF you can feed it until the end of time.