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By David Rothman

ewReader123px_64MBMobileRead and Dr. Ellen’s Hage’s blog carry details of a sale on the EBW1150, a backlit e-book reader, which goes for only $99.95 right now without a memory card. Price from eBookwise is just $130 with a 64MB card and $170 with a 128MB card. In each case prices are $10 below normal.

As Ellen notes, you can buy four of the $100 versions for the price of a Kindle. Your selection of DRMed books won’ be as extensive, and the screen won’t be as sharp as the Kindle’s is. But you’ll be able to read easily at night and in dim light.

But what if you want a laptop instead, for e-booking among other activities (I myself prefer tablets or PDAs, because the keyboard gets in the way when I’m reading)?

Well, you’ve got four options if you go by an Inquirer article:

–Compaq Presario C713NR at $399 from BestBuy. This includes “Dual Core T2310 processor, 1GB of RAM, a double-layer DVD-RW, 15.4-inch screen at 1280×800 resolution, 80GB SATA hard drive, 802.11b/g wireless, three USB 2.0 ports plus 10/100 Ethernet built in, a SD slot, weighing in at 6.4 pounds.” Ugh, that’s too heavy , but some might like the large screen for purposes other than e-books. Max RAM is a G. Actually the just-given link leads at the moment to a page saying the chain has sold out the Compaq, but maybe it’ll be back.

–Toshiba Satellite A-135, costing around $400 from Circuit City after you do mail-in rebates. “The Compaq would have better CPU performance, the Toshiba has better expandability with RAM and the Type II PC Card slot. You may need the 2 GB of RAM for Windows Vista Home Basic and you should always have a slot in your laptop in my opinion.” A visit to CC online suggest that the Toshiba is still available.

–The ASUS Eee PC with Linux, which has includes FBReader, capable of displaying e-books in .epub, RTF, HTML and other formats. “The 2GB flash version of the Eee in ‘Blush Pink’ can be pre-ordered at J&R for $299; includes a 7-inch 800×480 display, 802.11 b/g WiFi, 10/100 Ethernet, an Intel Celeron ‘Mobile’ CPU, 512MB RAM, an SD reader and three USB ports. A black version with a 4GB flash drive can be pre-ordered for $349. Both units weigh in at around two pounds and boot fast with the flash and Linux code load. Interesting, the 4GB Eee is listing as high as $420 through some outlets.” See Ellen’s observations on her hassles buying an Eee—and on the use of Windows on it. “I was concerned that Windows would run slowly, but it doesn’t.”

–The Linux-OS OLPC XO. “For $399, you can get one OLPC sent to your house and the other one sent to “empower a child” in a developing country. Join Masi Oka, Tim Kring, and everyone else at xogiving.org/laptopgiving.org/laptop.org in the “limited time” offer extended to December 31 to get a hardened Linus laptop with a 1GB flash drive with 256MB of RAM on a 433MHz AMD Geode processor, plus 802.11b/g, weighing in at 3.2 pounds.” One cool thing about the XO is that it an fold into a tablet. In fact, I have one on order. See my thoughts on the XO as an e-book machine.

(Inquirer article via Mike Cane.)

 
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