I read a non-zero number of scientific papers in a month. Most of them have colour illustrations, diagrams and charts. If an e-reader doesn't allow me to view those in colour.. what point is it? For not much more than a Kindle DX (only readers of that size are useful for reading high resolution PDFs) I can get a tablet which *will* view those PDFs in colour *and* will allow me to read books *and* will allow me to zoom in smoothly and quickly to the images in the PDF *and* will let me watch a movie *and* will let me surf the net *and* will let me reply to emails from the office *and* will let me play a few games while I'm sitting on the plane, etc.
In the case of an eePad transformer (by all accounts a great little tablet) we're only talking $20. That's a whole lot of extra value for my $20. If I go for an iPad I have to shell out $120. Still money well spent.
Sure I lose the really amazing readability of the e-ink display. But most high-end tablet displays are *very* readable for me and, personally, I don't spend much time reading outside in the sun so glare is not an issue. Also, I don't have to deal with any of the drawbacks of e-ink either. If they manage to make an e-ink based device of the right size, with fast enough refresh and rendering *then* we can talk. Until then, for my reading dollars, a tablet is the way to go.