Why are you running out of time? If your Verizon contract is up, you do NOT have to choose by any specific date, you can go a month or two (or more) "without contract"
Given the choice of the two mentions, I would certainly go with the Eris, Android is awesome... However - The HTC "Incredible" is supposed to be released on the 29th of this month, which will be the best phone currently out on any network, also running Android, but with a CPU that is about 4X faster than the Eris - The form factor is pretty much the same as the Eris, however it's just slightly larger because the screen is larger and much higher resolution than the Eris. (480X800 vs 320X400) It also has and 8MP camera, vs the Eris' 5? or is it 3.5? AMOLED instead of LCD (Super bright, super-crisp display) that uses less power than LCD... Other than it will probably be about $75 or $100 more than the Eris, there really is no reason to choose the Eris over the Incredible.
(BTW, the CPU "speed" is only about double the Eris, but it's a newer "generation" of CPU and can perform 2 to 3 times more operations "per clock cycle", making it 4 or more times faster than the Eris - This much faster CPU will enable it to do stuff like live wallpapers than the Eris will never be able to do.)
