[colmedindustry]

I wonder why people BAM about the $350 Sony Reader price, but don't give a second thought to dropping a grand or two on a laptop.

I'll probably buy a Reader soon. Or I may wait for version 2 (not yet announced). I would like it to have 1024x768 rather than 800x600 resoultion and a slightly larger profile.

The best approach for owning these books probably is to buy a dead-tree book, cut off the binding and scan-to-PDF. The tools to do this quickly and painlessly are available at my work. We try to keep everything in PDF here at work. Very handy. I'm sure our outfit isn't unique.

The SD storage cards are starting to become very large. 4 GB, f.e. Quite suitable for storing a great many books, even in a PDF file containing images, as the scan-to-PDF process generates. Absolutely no need for a USB drive configuration.

Regarding your wish list of fancy features, AFAIK, the software isn't anywhere near that sophisticated level at this time. Of course, development continues.