From a Mac/OS X user's point of view...

I've been looking at the Sony Reader since it's release, and though the device's build quality was excellent (no plastic here, solid metal case construction, as if someone actually designed this thing to last forever, imagine that!) and the e-ink display was very close to printed paper...I just couldn't justify the high pricetag at $349 MSRP.

Thanks to a series of coincidental rebates and discounts:
-Sony dropped the MSRP by $50 (the same discount can be found at the retailers who carry this) and offered free shipping from their online store
-They're still offering $50 in credit for eBooks purchased from their store and an additional $100 of books from the "Sony Classics" list (which are older classic lit. titles that are no longer copyrighted and free for download from other places...I didn't consider this latter bit a real discount)
-Applying and using a Sony Credit Card (Chase Manhattan Visa) gave you a $100 credit on your first purchase from their online store

All told, this brought the price for me down to $150 ($180 w/ tax)...so I finally caved in and ordered one...2 days later, I've been reading from it non-stop.

The e-ink display is VERY impressive. It looks even better in bright light than in dim light but isn't backlit or sidelit so if you want to read in the dark, you'll need a clip on book lite of some sort. This device is extremely usable in the sun, however, try to keep it from heating up as it will cause the display to lose contrast until you refresh the page (but no permanent damage will be done).

The device itself is thin yet very well built and quite solid. The reader is proportioned well and easy to carry/hold even with one hand. The interface is well designed, actually, much more so than what you usually find in Sony products. Sorry, IMHO you Sony guys just can't design a user interface as well as Apple does. It's not perfect (ie. you need to be able to organize your eBooks into folders/subfolders as your collection grows, this alas is not supported very well), but for a dedicated single purpose device, it gets the job done. I'm assuming that Sony placed the two sets of the page forward/back navigation buttons on the left edge and bottom left of the device so a right handed user could hold the reader and navigate with the left hand, and still have their right hands free (to take notes, etc). Oddly enough, the placement of the buttons suit a lefty like me just fine.

Many reviewers complain of the slow screen refreshes, I believe this is somewhat unavoidable as this is an inherent limitation of the e-ink technology itself. You will however get excellent battery life in exchange. The 0.5 sec black blanking of screen when it refreshes/turns a page is at first a bit annoying/distracting, but you soon get used to it and it is easily ignored (I just look away for a second, helps to rest my eyes : ). The audio player is a welcome bonus feature, but seems to have been thrown in as an after thought, it really needs at least a shuffle/random play feature if not also an ability to use playlists and uses up the battery very quickly when playing.

From the PC/Software side, I don't really use the Sony Connect software as there is no Mac/OS X version. Not a huge deal if you already have many ebooks in a non-proprietary format and you're not planning to buy alot of eBooks from the Sony Connect store. There are numerous tools and applications (for Windows, Linux and OS X) that let you prepare your existing ebooks (html, txt, rtf, lit, chm, pdf, etc.) into Sony's own ebook format (lrf) even without Sony's notoriously bad Sony Connect software. Though PDF's are supported, unless you create the PDF to display in a larger font on a page defined to the Reader's screen size, you'll likely have problems viewing it. You'll be much happier with ebooks in lrf or rtf (a standard word processing format that allows preservation of font information unlike plain txt files and avoid the odd/ugly text wrapping issues that plain txt ebooks have when resized on the reader) as you'll have the flexibility of selecting between the 3 font sizes that the Sony Reader can reformat text to on the fly.

www.mobileread.com is the place you'll want to go to for help with finding non-windows applications for ebook conversion and help with other ebook design/layout issues. They have a great community and the forum is chock full of good information on the Sony Reader as well as the iRex/Iliad readers. There is an active community working on hacking/enhancing/improving the capabilities of these devices.

labs.docudesk.com offers 2 free OS X applications (GUI, easy to use) to help you manage the files on the Sony Reader and to do very nice PDF to lrf conversions.

The other user/fan created software offerings require multiple steps to get your more complex ebook conversions done (ie. converting a .lit format ebook purchased from another store to html then to rtf or lrt to display nicely on the reader) so if you're not into tinkering, make sure the Sony Connect store has enough of the books you want before you buy this device. Note that a book you buy from the Sony Connect store are copy protected/DRM'ed and can only be authorized to be read on 6 devices total at any given time.

This is as close to primetime as any ebook device has come. If the PDF support was better (ie. the device could reflow PDF's for optimal viewing on the small screen and set larger font sizes, though this may realistically be beyond what a low power/limited CPU/small memory footprint device like this can do) and the Sony Connect store had a larger collection that was let's say 1/2 the price of paperback it would be nearly perfect even at $350. As things stand, if they sold it more in the $150-200 price range, it would sell.

For me, I think this year I'll be having a very nice summer outside by the pool...