Ugh. This.

I love my Kindle, but this is ridiculously stupid. If you "lend" a book to someone, it deactivates it on your account. Which I can understand. But you can only "lend" a book once. Stupid. Dumb. Moronic. Idiotic. (Insert whole host of adjectives here.)

Another PRS-505 user here. It may be an older model but I don't feel the need to get a new one because, frankly, it doesn't seem to be an upgrade. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think newer PRS devices support SD cards and Sony's own Memory Stick Pro Duo thing, whereas my 505 does.

Also it can run most of the DRM-free file formats out there, and the others can be converted.

Edit: Oops, ignore the thing about newer models not having card slots. Turns out some of em do.

i have had a kindle for nearly 6 months now never had a prob and have only bought 4 books from amazon lol (rest come from other publishers still in mobi format) if not just get a converter it's what i do

How is the price of the books? From what I saw they cost higher than a paper back. Or was it just at amazon?

Usually the same or slightly cheaper. Occasionally is a good bit lower. Occasionally it is higher though. This is because some of the publishers don't like ebooks. They would rather you buy the hardcopy, so they price the ebooks a little higher. Its just them fighting the inevitable.

This reminds me of a big advantage to ebooks. People can independently publish their books on Amazon, B&N, Sony, whatever. These books are often not edited quite as well. As you can imagine, some of them are poorly written too. Some of them are really good though. They usually cost 1 or 3 USD. This makes people really wonder about the future. ebooks are in their infancy now so its much too early to tell, but in the future its possible that they will be much cheaper than paperbacks. You remove the need of the publisher, and the price plummets. This may be why some publishers are fighting ebooks so hard.

Ah thanks. I can see why. That is what is holding me back since I can get hard covers super cheap with the book club.

Since no one mentioned it yet for some reason - there's also iRiver's "Story" line of readers that's integrated with Google eBooks...
Of course, as of yet, Google's ebook store is US-only :|.

I have a 2nd generation Kindle and I love it, I haven't hit any DRM that everyone is talking about but then I'm not downloading PDF via Torrents or what not. I highly recommend it as a E Reader

You know you can software root your Kindle in about 5 minutes, right?

I'm not a big fan of the Kindle, but I don't think Amazon actually makes a profit on the hardware and you never need to put any DRMed books on there if you don't want. It's one of the better e-Ink readers on the market (and you're correct to gravitate towards e-Ink for this, imo).
It depends a bit on the author (though Amazon influences this with their payment scheme), some authors sell their ebook for 99 cents, some sell it for only a few dollars less than the hardback. Most price in the sweet spot for Amazon payout percentage, which iirc is 1.99 to 7.99 or something. Sony switched to glossy screens for some reason a few model revisions ago. This would SUCK on a ebook reader so maybe double check that the model you're looking at is matte.

There was a glare problem with previous e-ink readers with a traditional touchscreen (not just Sony, who had non-touchscreen models too) but since Sony, B&N, and other manufacturers have switched to an infrared sensor to get rid of the touchscreen layer, their screen is as sharp as any non-touchscreen model now;

Getting a new Nook Touch in 2 weeks, was a 50-50 choice between Nook and Kindle, but since Kindle is stuck with almost-dead .mobi format I chose Nook. We'll see how it performs.

I bought a BeBook (BeBook Mini) because I wanted to avoid anything that forces me to install special software on my computer. Unfortunately there is no scroll function on the Mini so reading .pdf files is often uncomfortable.

If you should look into the Kindle from Amazon (I know you said you'd rather avoid, but still...), maybe the following is of interest:

http://www.techspot.com/news/44682-amazon-to-release-9-inch-android-tablet-before-october.html

Now the thing about the tablet might not interest you, but the following phrase might:
"The Kindle is the best-selling product on Amazon, and the company likely wants to keep pushing forward with it, but sporting a further reduced price tag. "
Of course, all of this is based on rumors, but they seem solid.

Being on the lookout for a nice eReader myself, I will wait for whatever Amazon comes up with the following months. It might also trigger reactions from other companies.

FYI, with some effort you can remove DRM from your books purchased outside of Amazon and read them on Kindle.

I know it's not e-ink, but I've found that my Motorola Droid works as a very servicable eBook reader, especially with the FBReader app installed (it gives you a customizable background color, night reading mode, and adjustable brightness).

My mom's Kindle 2 is nice, though.