I've been evaluating book readers for the past couple of months, including the Sony and the Kindle-DX. Both have a 30 day trial period after which you can get a full refund.

Apple offers a 14 day trial, after which you can return it less a 10% fee for "restocking". They do offer lots of demonstration facilities at their retail stores, plus some customer classes. I asked if I could load the files of my chip collection on one of their demos to see how well it worked. They have a policy; no customer files on their company-owned demonstrators.

I do like very much what I have seen in the Apple stores, but am still pondering the fee for trying out their hardware. By the way, the price for the basic I-Pad is the same as for the Kindle-DX and you don't have any monthly cellphone charges with the Kindle.