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How about Sony PRS-600? I'm in the same situation as you (thinking about buying an ebook reader in a non-US country), and the Sony seems to be one of the few valid alternatives to Kindle. It doesn't have that ugly keyboard and unnecessary wifi/3g connections. Regardless, with Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) even blog reading should be possible.

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I've read full length books in both devices and the Kindle is far superior. The Kindle has much better button placement. The touch screen barely works. You don't want to be holding a pen all the time while you're reading. And that Kindle keyboard is extremely handy if you like to annotate while you read. You can use Calibre with both devices.

Sony's touch screen makes the display (which is the most important feature in a reader) inferior to Kindle's. Also it's expensive compared to Kindle.

Well, Kindle is $259 and Sony is $273 at Amazon.com, so the price difference is negligible. Don't know about the screen quality, though. Real side-by-side comparisons would be interesting; assuming that Kindle is better, how much better it is?

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