Cheap Ebook Readers

I would love to get a Barnes and Noble Nook or Amazon Kindle but its price tag is keeping me at bay. I’m excited to see some competition enter the realm and I have to say, I’ve been nothing but appalled by what they have brought to the table. The Que is this amazing new plastic ebook reader. It looks absolutely amazing. But its features and looks get ruined by its $600 price tag.

Where are the $100 ebook readers? I just want one that has no wireless, a big greyscale/bw display that can read PDF format. I realize PDF isn’t the friendliest for a micro computers to handle and would require the reader to basically be a full blown linux OS with some graphic environment. But what other open formats are out there? I don’t want any DRM controlled files that require my ebook reader to wirelessly connect to its producer monitoring everything that I’m doing on it. With both the Nook and Kindle with its no pay 3G network, can you imagine what type of data warehousing they could be doing. Watching how long it takes you to read a book, if you finish the book, what pages you spend more time on. Am I being paranoid, perhaps. Our web traffic is all monitored and for many of the clients I build applications for, I’m the one writing in some of the data warehousing of analytics (thats what we call your personal trends…) But the DRM ebooks will know who you are. I’m alright with giving up privacy if it benefits me but most of those big companies are using it to their advantage to get me to buy more.

Just get me a cheap no frills ebook reader so I can start reading the piles of PDFs I have. Thank you.