ereaders? smart phone? tablet PC?

[altogetherisi]

 Does anyone know anything about Kindles/generic ereaders?

My dad wants one for Christmas, and I have a couple of questions I am looking into before buying, so if anyone has any answers or opinions to contribute I would be very happy to hear them. I am wondering

1. Are Kindles the best? Is there a different brand that is better, or just as good but cheaper?

2. Can Kindles only do ebooks from Amazon? Can ebooks from Amazon only be read on a Kindle?

3. Would a Kindle brought to the UK from America work here? And if so, would it be ok reading ebooks brought from Amazon.co.uk or would it always need them to come from amazon.com?

I'm also feeling a bit confused about how giving someone an ereader effects my intention to also give them physical books.  Hmmm.

In other news, I'm still vaguely unsure about whether to ask for a smart phone or maybe a tablet PC for myself, given that it might be neat to have one but I don't actually really want one, and only want money, but I'm unlikely to get money tbh, so I might as well ask for something shiny.

I'd rather avoid Apple, so Android it is, and I want something properly small, because this actual computer is a 10" eee as is so I want something about half the size of the screen I suppose, that I could actually put in a handbag. So I've been looking at 7" tablets but I don't really know what I'm looking for and it's all a bit meh tbh. 

Any thoughts?

Comments

[sarkysnarky.livejournal.com]

I only have a UK kindle bought January this year: they support most ebook formats (definitely azw and mobi, not sure what else) and pdf, and you don't need to buy them from the Amazon store (for example, they support Open Library and Project Gutenberg, and advertise them here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/b?ie=UTF8&node=434020031 ) When balancing out price, easy-to-useness and usefulness I found it to be the best value for money at the time (I mainly use it for lecture note pdfs, textbook pdfs, classics and fanfic).

[altogetherisi.livejournal.com]

Thanks boo! Yeah, I particularly wanted to know whether they could support Project Gutenberg stuff :)