I have the new Sony and love it - love the way it looks and feels (in its leather cover, you can hold it with one hand between your fingers the same way you hold a paperback book open, the ease with which you "flip" pages (great for reading in bed - despite the need for a bedside table lamp) and the battery life. Since I got it as a Christmas present, I have read 25 books on it (I read quickly - and a lot) - and I particularly like the fact that I'm not cluttering up my too small apartment with books I'd only read once. While Sony's ebooks aren't as cheap as they should be, I do like the fact that I can buy newly issued books for about $10.00-12.50 (instead of the $16-30 I'd pay for a hardcover or high-end trade paperback). Even taking into consideration the 30% discount that often applies to bestselling hardcovers in stores, ebooks are almost always a better deal.

I would also add (for the benefit of single women considering the purchase of a Sony ebook reader) that when I took my Sony on a business trip in January, it worked as well as a cute puppy would work for a man - in terms of its capacity to attract the opposite sex. Never in my life have so many charming and attractive strangers crossed the room and paid attention to me (or, more accurately, my Sony).

One of my colleagues has the Kindle and he says that, while he prefers the look and feel of my Sony, the Kindle is a better option for him because he wants to be able to read newspapers and magazines on it - he has a 2.5 hour commute in the mornings and he leaves the house before the hard copy of the paper arrives at his house. However, he doesn't like the fact that the battery life is a lot shorter with the Kindle than my Sony's battery life.

One thing I don't like about the Sony is that, so far, ebooks seem to be a little cheaper (but consistently a little cheaper) on the Kindle. New, popular releases are often priced at $12.60 in the Sony ebook store but only about $10-11 for the Amazon Kindle, and books that are priced at $10 for the Sony are often priced at $9 on the Kindle. That will eat up the price differential between the two units fairly quickly, if you're an avid reader.

But I still love my Sony.