When I was looking for a digital device to use for reading, my first round-up of choices was a palm device, be-300, dedicated book viewer and psion revo.
I felt that Palm will not do because of a small screen. I'm still not sure if I'd get used to it or not, but given that it was almost the same price as either revo or BE-300, there was no point in trying it. I bet it would be annoying to read a long book on that screen, because I tried reading on BE-300 with the page turned longways up, and I did not like it the least bit. It's possible, though, that if I had no choice, I'd get used to it and would not mind it at all.
As I said, BE-300 has a larger screen but it's still very tiny. I was wondering if it will be enough. I was leaning toward a dedicated reader, but a few things stopped me: 1. it was quite a bit more expensive, at $120, 2. It would be bulkier, of course, 3. I've read online that its screen is very hard to read and 4. it can be only used for book reading. Unfortunately, I don't remember right now what was the company that made that particular book reader gadget. I think it may have been Franklin, but I'm not too sure.
BE is the perfect size to fit in the pocket and still have a large enough screen to read a long book.
But let's go a little back, to Psion Revo. In some way, it seemed a better choice because it had a better keyboard and that seemed like a good idea to me because I like to take lengthy notes and to keep a diary. I still think Revo may have been a better choice. I've heard nothing but good things about it online, but I wasn't certain it'd be easy to set it up to read in russian. It also seemed that there's more programs available for BE-300 and there's a sizable community of tinkerers who work on BE-300 sites, resource lists, advice for modifications. The price for either (used) runs at around $40 on ebay, so I reluctantly picked BE-300.