Intro, kind of

[wide_worlds_joy]

Hi, I'm Daven. I'm an author of articles and short stories. I've recently started in on ebooks, but not the readers. See, I can't afford any of them. So I make do with the free ebooks on line and on bittorrent. I have to say that Project Guttenberg has been a life saver in a lot of ways.

I have nearly 10 GB of ebooks at this point. I read in .lit, .pdf, .doc, .txt right now. I've started converting some long .doc into .lit and .pdf, just to keep them "secure" and smaller in size.

All I have to read these on however is a laptop. I'm trying to see if I can get a text in such a format so I can read it on my phone, my non-Apple Samsung phone. I figure if I can read a message on there, I should be able to upload some texts and read it on my phone.

I'd love to have a Kindle or an iPhone so I could read regular texts on a reader, but right now that's not an option.

Anyhow, thanks for letting me blabber.

Comments

[amalthia]

I'm hoping the e-ink devices come down in prices so most people can afford to buy one. Though at the moment the Sony I think is about 60 dollars more affordable than the kindle.

I'm not an expert on txt and iphones.

[cyprinella]

I've heard that the problem is that the screens alone cost about $100 to manufacture. Once you throw in the processing parts and mark up for profit, it's not surprising they cost as much as they do.

[amalthia]

I also don't see much incentive for them to lower prices.

[finesharpedge]

If it's a do-able screen size/brightness you may want to look at older PDAs. I've been reading ebooks on various Palms for years now, and Palm Pilot-era devices can sell for less than $50 on eBay. Don't know if that'd suit your needs or not, but it might be a cheaper option than a Kindle...

(Hell, the Palm Centro I read and write on now was less than a Kindle and it's also, you know, my phone.)

[jackalibis]

If anyone happens to be in the Alabama area, you should try to get to Scottsburro's Unclaimed Baggage (http://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/). They have Sony Reader 505s for $125 to $225 (price varies based on how many books are on them--which is a downside seeing as the books lock when you register them under a new name), Amazon Kindles (G1) for $225.