Of course, the iPad (full-sized or mini) aren't "e-ink" screens. OTOH, the Kindle does seem to be pretty much a 'one-trick pony'. And, apparently, not one that has been 'broken'! The two devices are totally different. I noticed I actually have more than six different 'ebook' readers even on my iPhone (not a device I'd recommend for reading a book! While some of those are actually PDF viewers, they do include Kindle and Nook apps. I can only assume they offer the same functionality (I really don't like that word... ) as your "dirty" device but they are probably harder to read in Sunlight.
My onliest complaint is the dearth of styling in all except the iBook. I don't understand why they are such crippled html viewers (extremely limited font choices, poor indenting, ridiculous auto-hyphenation, etc., etc.. Even IE 5 could display better text formatting!
It seems to be an attempt to build for the lowest common denominator, except they created a format that displays worse than text on an Apple ][ (without an 80 column display card)!
Of course, the file sizes are minimal... easy when there's so little there!
Good luck with getting a satisfactory replacement. Sounds like two different "Amazon's"!