gooberking: I have the original Nook. I like it for the most part. I have issues with the Wi-Fi on mine but I don't know that anyone else is. Baring that, its comfortable and easy to use. It is really nice not to have to try and force a book to stay open while you are reading it. Its not quite as "snappy," as I hope such things will one day be but it's not usually a problem. Hooking it up to a PC is easy and it makes dragging and dropping personal or unprotected PDF's easy as it gets. I was able to use my own images for the standby mode, which is a cool feature. Also I do have to say I wish the text was a wee bit darker and it has a funny way of counting pages. One thing that scares me is that I can buy a book through it at any time without having to verify anything so someone could just grab it and start buying stuff. I guess all in all I can imagine a better product but I in no way regret buying it.
The page thing is kind of annoying, but I believe it has more to do with trying to keep page numbers somewhat consistent with the print edition.
And you don't have to leave a CC on the account, you can delete it after you make the purchase if you want to. Which is something that I really ought to do.
orcishgamer: I second your recommendation, the Kindle without 3G is a pretty big savings and will work the exact same in almost all scenarios. It's not like they don't hold weeks worth of material at a time, you're not going to "run out" of stuff to read like you might run out of movies to watch on your netbook.
I was being somewhat more generic than that. I've personally got Nook, I know that Kindle is also quite good. Hardware is excellent in both cases.
The main reason to get Nook over Kindle is just a matter of being able to buy books from most retailers rather than being stuck with Amazon and having that MicroSD slot.
But yeah, the 3G is a complete waste of money for anybody with any patience at all. Unless one doesn't have a home computer I wouldn't even consider getting 3G on any ereader.