Refresh is about 1/3 to 1/2 a second. Contrast is "pretty good". Third gen improves contrast by about 50% but subjectively it looks much better than that. I would put it comparable to better mass market paperbacks but less than good textbooks.

Amazon offers 30 day trial. Best thing is to simply try it for 30 days.

nook & amazon ebooks are not cross compatible however the DRM for kindle and epub formats have both been broken. Once DRM is ripped you can use software like calibre to convert between the two.

I haven't found that problem on the Kindle DX. The first and second gen Kindle didn't display pdf they did a conversion.

Kindle 3 displays native PDF but the display is too small (since most pdf are fixed size docs formatted for 8.5"x11". The DX is nearly perfect.

Only a couple issues.
1) Most reference books have a lot of wasted whitespace (I use pdf editor to quickly crop off the whitespace).
2) Internal links (i.e. table of contents w/ links to chapter headings) don't work.

2 is just sad. Hopefully amazon resolves it in a future version. Sadly I doubt it. Nobody sells pdf ebooks hence there is little vested interest to improve pdf support.

Meh. A couple hours of charge w/ blinding backlight, inability to read outdoors, and 3lb heft vs month long battery, lightweight, thin reader.

Amazon may lose the ebook wars but it won't be due to iPad. The iPad sounds like a great reader until you actually sit down to read on it. I would be interested to se what % of iPad users have actually read more than 5 books.

Why?

Would books look less cheap if was printed with colored text or maybe printed on color paper? Would you pick one reference book over another one based on how colorful it was? Maybe if it had metallic stickers on it?

To each his own but to me the Kindle (especially latest gen DX w/ graphite border) has this subtle air of distinction. It simply works, and works well.
It doesn't have the flashy but useless mini LCD screen like nook
It doesn't try to be "cool" like ipad (along w/ backlight and power drain)
It doesn't have a touchsreen and the associated glare of Sony readers.

It simply works and provides an effective (is boring) solution.

Kinda like BMW styling compared to a Honda Civic w/ giant wing spoiler, after-market exhaust, and blinged out rims.

Not true at all.

It is like saying all cars have internal combustion engines thus they deliver the exact same performance.

The older Kindle displays were on par w/ nook and Sony display.

The gen 3 Kindle (plus latest Kindle DX) us pearl display which marketing term aside is a significant improvement in terms of contrast and refresh rate. The newst Sony model also has the same display.

No version of nook uses the highest contrast eink display.

No you don't. You don't know a single person who pays no taxes. The false meme is x% don't pay FEDERAL INCOME TAXES. At least get the false meme right.

Total taxation = federal income tax + state income tax + sales tax + payroll taxes (FICA) + real estate (and other property taxes) + service taxes (notice the $5.48 on cellphone bill) + excise taxes (gasoline, guns, alchohol, etc) + import duties (paid indirectly via higher prices) + govt fees which are simply another form of taxation (DMV fee, licence plate fees, pet license, etc).

While not all those taxes apply to every individual and in every locality it is virtually impossible for someone to pay no taxes.

Federal income tax is roughly 20% of all taxation in the US. While you may know some people who pay no federal income tax you don't know ANYONE (not a single person) who pays no tax. Hell a homeless man buying a cheeseburger from McDonalds will pay taxes in most states, and if he buys alcohol instead he will be paying taxes everywhere in the US.

Similar to the console model the Kinect isn't a money maker. People buying Kinect games is the money maker.

Similarly Sony takes a dim view of using PS3 to make computing clusters, or running Linux. They aren't in the business of selling consoles. consoles are merely the medium to sell large amounts of console games.

Why would they?

You (and million others) just proved yet again they don't have to. Hell they don't need to EVER fix the bugs.
You likely will buy the new fallout title prerelease and it will be bug ridden as well.

Companies don't write good software to get karma points. They write software to get paid. If you are willing to pay for bug ridden software why should they take extra time/resources/money to produce better code.

I mean if I told you that I would pay you $10,000 in advance to build an addition on my home and you could do a good job for $5,000 in material and 2 weeks of labor or a half ass job for $2,000 in material and 4 days in labor which would you do?

What if I sweetened the pot by:
a) giving up right to sue for faulty product
b) promise to keep using your services no matter how bad it is.
c) tell you and other people it is routine to accepts bugs in large construction. I mean there are thousands of nails, hundreds of feet of wiring, and all that lumber which needs to be cut exactly right. It is simply impossible to have a bug free wall on the first try.

You would be a fool to take twice as long for less profit under those conditions. Those are the EXACT conditions you are giving game developers. They would be idiots to spend more time, offer beta copies, offer discounted tester copies, etc. You will pay 100% full price on launch day for bug ridden code.

Why should they provide you anything more than what you want at the price you want it?

The problem is most of the bugs THEY NEVER FIX. Period.

They get the money up front from people who believe a "crash to the desktop every 4 hours " = "less serious than fallout 3".

Community mods fixed over 380 bugs that Bethesda never fixed in Oblivion (years after game release) and there are documented over 800 more bugs that can't be fixed because the community SDK simply doesn't have access to the resource that is bugged.

Fallout 3: NV uses game game engine as Fallout: 3 and there are STILL ORIGINAL FALLOUT 3 bugs in Fallout 3: NV. I am not talking abuot custom scripting issues but unresolved (after millions of hours of combined "beta" testing). Hell the best fix for Fallout 3 & Fallout 3 NV is a custom dll which strips out/ignores bogus shader calls. Thats right nearly 2 years after release the engine is making shader calls which are simply impossible and it crashes the DirectX runtime.

So if your theory works one should see games be buggy but after years be nearly flawless.
The reality is that is utter fantasy land BS
1) companies gets cash up front hence have no vested interest to solve anything
2) Many bugs never get fixed. Ever.
3) They don't even fix the game engine because using it on another game.

While bugs have been around as long as software. Bethesda gets the ire because they bring it to new levels of crap. I mean 4 of their latest (and largest) releases have been essentially unplayable at launch.

Oblivion after a dozen patches and years still has hundreds (not an exaggeration) in the latest version.

So all software has bugs however you have some companies like Blizzard which at least make a token effort to release quality software and on the other extreme you have Bethesda who must have a sign hanging that says "if it compiles it ships".

Eventually they will release game partially completed w/ stubs for the portions that wouldn't compile and you need to download them if/when they ever get that portion working. "sorry you can't enter this area yet. Bethesda regrets to inform you that components necessary for this gameplay area were not ready at launch time".

Not as a boot drive.

Then again not likely anyone "needs" a >2TB boot drive. Still most computers sold only have a single drive and eventually dell, hp, and the like will want to sell 2.1TB drives. Booting from >2TB drive requires UEFI.

You think google is that stupid? Really?

You don't think apps will be cached locally and then the cache synced w/ cloud when connectivity returns.

They likely paid nothing.

The bigger players are intimidated by Microsoft & Intel. Developing a non-Microsoft, non-Intel product isn't going to go over well.

Inventec obviously doesn't care whose feathers it ruffles.

Then you sue the PARENTS.

The idea that a 4 year old can be held responsible for their negligence (which requires understanding of potential consequences) is a joke.

Parents however are responsible for the actions of their children.

There is no reason for this wacky judge to allow a lawsuit against a 4 year old (age at time of incident).

The market considered capacity more important than bandwidth.
Since VHS PAL came later JVC was able to tweak the spec to optimize it for what the "market wanted".

VHS PAL uses lower bandwidth and thus lower speed compared to VHS NTSC.

By this time the Beta vs. VHS war was already won so JVC hedged the spec in favor of capacity over quality thinking that would push more units. Changing VHS NTSC at this point was no longer possible hence two different bandwidths for the "same" format.