Have been contemplating on buying a Kindle for about half a year now, but kinda put it off, cause I still have some actual books to finish and wanted to wait till I’d go traveling. I heard the Kindle 4 might come out early summer this year.. but I’ve only heard some vague humors. Who knows more?

I considered the Kindle for awhile, but after really looking at what all the readers had to offer, it was an obvious choice to go with the B&N nook.

Most of the information/reviews for the nook are, for whatever reason, very old. They don't take into account all the new features and improvements B&N have made to both the nook firmware and the actual eBook store. For example, if you look up nook vs Kindle reviews they will often mention that the B&N online catalog doesn't have as many good titles as Amazon and that the books are all more expensive, but this hasn't been true for years. A simple spot check with your favorite books shows that not only are the catalogs comparable, but the prices are always within a few cents of each other.

The Kindle 3 does have a slightly sharper e-Ink display, but this is only really noticable with images, and since the inclusion of images in eBooks cost the publisher more, few eBooks have images to begin with. The real-world battery life of the Kindle line will also be a bit longer as the hardware is more simplistic, but in practice they will both last weeks between charges so at some point it becomes a non-issue.

Beyond all that, Amazon's DRM has already proven to be troublesome, and I want no part of it. I personally won't buy a device that may receive a command remotely to delete the content I paid for without warning, as Amazon has done on the Kindle in the past.

Not only have they removed purchased books, now Amazon is messing with lending ebooks.

I'm not touching the Kindle, or any other e-reader, until I have the same rights as I do with a dead-tree version.

thank you guys you saved me i was about to buy a kindle wifi cuz they are cheap and i would have used them for web surfing. i wont buy 'em anymore

Pretty much why I won't buy any of those readers.

Also quite ironic that a book they revoked, which then caused some brouhaha, was '1984'

Why would you buy a kindle for web surfing? Their screens are very specifically optimized for reading Kindle-formatted ebooks, not for anything else.

If you want a clipboard-sized device for web surfing, get a tablet.

Incidentally, I was looking for a free Kindle-like font to use in my Linux software (e.g. FBReader), and I found this:

http://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/fonts/17-fanwood

oh well i figured that if it has wi -fi
it would be good.

tablets are way to expensive for my budget,

Nook is a much better choice. Can read ePub without any conversion (very handy if you're getting free eBooks or checking them out from the library). It's also a good blend of a user-friendly touchscreen for navigation and e-ink screen for long battery life and not getting eye strain.

So can I say that the general opinion here would be that the Nook is a better choice?

The Kindle is absolutely more popular, but from a technical standpoint I don't see any way to justify getting it over the Nook. I researched and used both of them, and to me it was obvious the Nook just made more sense.

That said, the full QWERTY board on the Kindle is nice if you plan on taking a lot of notes for the books (perhaps if you were doing school work), as the touch screen keyboard on the Nook is not very responsive. The Kindle 3 is also thinner than the Nook, and being more popular, there is likely to be more accessories available for it on the market. Minor issues, but they might be important to you.

Just to be clear though, we are talking about the e-ink Nook here, not the Nook Color. The Nook Color is an exceptional deal if you are looking for an Android tablet, but as an ereader it is somewhat ungainly. No debate that e-ink is better for reading books than LCD.

There's a free program called Calibre (Windows and Linux) which will allow you to convert any ebook format to another so you're not tied to Amazon for your content. I used it to convert my Palm PDA held Tolkein collection then pulled in the metadata; cover, etc, via the isbn Number. Converted them to mobipocket format and loaded up via the USB! You can also use Calibre to subscribe to newspapers, etc, which can be loaded as well.

Me? I'm very happy with my Kindle. No need to have a clear out of read books every now and then. Downloading the new Wilbur Smith while sitting beside the pool in Spain last week was cool. One of the reasons I bought it! No different to the Nook I suppose.
Apart from the weird freezing problem the cheaper Amzon case seems to cause (No longer supplied I note, Shame I've got one and don't want to shell out £50.00 for the one with unwanted LED! )I think it's great. I probably chose it because I already had an account with Amazon though and the price was good.

Play Bonny!

I have both the original nook and the 10" Kindle DX. I like the larger screen for reading pdfs. A full page PDF is scaled down somewhat but still readable, and you don't need to pan left and right. If you orient it on it's side, the scale will be even larger.

There is a web site, manybooks.org that has thousands of public domain books. I'm reading Moby Dick now. You can download Cory Doctorow's books sans drm as well.

I second the advice of using Calibre. The magazine/newpaper downloader is very good. It can upload to either the Kindle or the Nook.

If you will be browsing the Web, a tablet may be a better choice. There is a book reader program that is a free download on Android. (I have it on my 5" Archos tablet) You can download books from it. A tablet is much better for web browsing than using a Nook or Kindle e-paper book reader.

The Nook e-book reader does allow you to share books. This doesn't return all of your first dealer rights that you have with a physical book, but is probably the best that B&N could get the publishers to agree to.

---
I almost forgot. The Nook's Sudoku game is better than any Computer or Android Sudoku game.

Can you comfortably read Communication of the ACM PDFs on a Kindle DX without zooming or panning?

http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2011/4

Right side, the link is "download a PDF of this issue."

dugan: Yes. The smaller fonts in the footnotes are readable but very small. Didn't have a problem with text in the article. And, I'm getting used to my new bifocal glasses.

Also, reading it in landscape mode and moving down one column and up for the next column isn't difficult, and the text looks full sized.

Looking at page 14 "ACM on the Move", at 100% scale, the editorial on the left 2/3 of the page is nicely centered. About 65% if the article is displayed vertically. It matches (size wise) reading the article at %150 percent on my laptop. Looking on other pages, the first two columns fit across the display.

In the Landscape view at 100%, about a quarter inch of margin is cut off the side.

FYI, RMS calls the Amazon's product "Swindle"