"Being able to download (ONLY FROM the vendor's store) over 3G wireless seems like more of a tether, to me. You're locked in..." This is a misconception that I find annoying. I have a Kindle (a gift) and haven't had the 3G on in months. It may be true that Amazon _wants_ me to buy their eBooks, but I don't. I have books from Baen, authors' sites, Guttenberg, and publishers sites on my Kindle. It all became trivial when I found Calibre. "I can shove ~90 gigabytes of books into this thing (at present)." So? 90gigs of eBooks is absurd. I have about a dozen books on the Kindle now, which will last me a couple more months. (Some are books I love and like to have around and some are books I'll read and jettison). For a dedicated reader, built-in ram is usually plenty. Now, using a memory card to load books could be useful... Does the Sony support that? (I really don't know and just thought to wonder about it now, but suddenly I'm curious.) If I were to purchase an eReader, I might go for a Sony, but the Kindle is a really nice device as long as you honor Amazon's phantom lock-in.

I keep hoping that someday I'll read a Slashdot article headlined, "Is xxx doomed?" and the answer is... Yes!
So far... no.
Maybe we could see something like, "Is this the year that the Linux desktop doomed?"