I opted for the Sony reader because of its openness: you plug it in an USB port and voila! You are free to drag and drop files into the reader.
I used it in all sorts of lighting and places: in the dim light and shaky environment of public transportation to the comfort of a sun lit office. So far I successfully used it for:
- Paperless meetings: instead of printing meetings' material, I now upload them to my reader.
- Long blog entries: I simply can not read long articles on a computer screen so I use the reader for long blog posts.
- Reference guides: the search feature of the reader is convenient to find passages of reference guides or technical books (like Mule in Action).
- Book reviews: instead of printing the books I am reviewing, I now upload them to the reader. The annotation feature is a little too slow to take long notes on pages but fast enough to attach a few words that are reminders for building the final review.
- Full fledged e-book of course! So far, I have only read a few technical e-books from InfoQ. Hundreds of pages later, I can tell it is really a great reading experience. I sometimes have to zoom on a schema, but most of the time using the landscape orientation guarantees a seamless reading.