Having come from Palm, I started reading on a Zire31, 160x160 about 3". It wasn't great, but it had its' advantages. However, I quickly upgraded to a Palm TX 480x320 little smaller than the N8x0 screen. Much better than on the Zire31. Two reasons: 1) Screen size and 2)Screen resolution. The tablets are even better.

Limiting the discussion to ebooks doesn't do it justice. There is a large percentage of users that read ebooks, pdfs, daily bible readings, email, websites, etc. There is just a lot of reading done in this format. On the whole more reading than on smartphones in my opinion. The screen size matters for reading. Whatever your comfortable text size is, if the screen size is reduced, the font size/zoom needs to be increased to compensate. Increase the font size = less text on the screen. Less text = more tapping/scrolling/paging. More tapping/scrolling/paging = less time reading. Less time reading = less enjoyment. Less enjoyment = less use. Less use = less reason to purchase.

The current tablets hit a sweet spot (at least for me, and it seems for a lot of others as well). They are easily portable and fit a decent amount of text on the screen. Reading on the Zire31 was tap..tap..tap..tap..tap, on the TX tap.....tap......tap.....tap, the N800 tap.....tap......tap......tap. In short more time spent reading, less time spent tapping. For portable reading, the current tables are borderline too small and borderline too big. In other words, just right.

I could read on my cannon camera (I have a text reader for it) if I were so inclined. The 2" screen is way to small to really do that though.