I’ve handled Palm Pres at press events and they seem pretty neat. I would love to try one, but as they are only on Sprint they don’t use SIM cards so I can’t buy one and slip my SIM into it. When the GSM version comes out I’ll see about getting one.
As far as applications go, the Palm app store is still pretty thin and the only ebook reader available seems to be Shortcovers. So it’s not a reading platform so far. However Winged Chariot Press has just released their own ebook for the Palm. It’s a digital picture book and you can find info about it here. Let’s hope more reading applications show up soon.
I can’t speak for the Palm version, but I have this picture book on my iPhone and it’s cute. My 17 month old has fun sliding through the pages and animations. I got an email today from WingedChariot that there’s a second picture book out now, too (but only for iPhone so far): http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=333278967&mt=8