Drawn by talk of $12-$20 Juice Boxes with e-book potential, lots of newbies have dropped by here.
But remember–the price could be much higher by the time you’re through adding essentials, as well as extras like a decent-sized memory card. And you might not like the screen. Plus, you won’t be able to read books in commercial formats, especially those with Digital Rights Management. So you might also want to ponder some other bargain-priced choices.
–Cheap used PDAs, via eBay–such as those from Sony and Palm. Go for a resolution of at least 320X320 pixels if you want a decent image. You can pay as little as $60-$70 for a gizmo with that res and perhpas $40-$50 for 160X160. The LCD will be smaller but much-sharper than the Juice Box’s. Also, you’ll have a wider variety of software such as Mobipocket, which can run on Palm OS machines and Pocket PCs alike and offer you access to best-sellers in DRMed formats. Within this price range, I’m partial to the PEG-SJ22 Clie, shown here.
—eBookMan machines, with black and white screen that are bigger than many PDAs’. Alas, I find the eBookMans to be unreadable, even the deluxe ones with backlit LCDs, but fans of the device would disagree. There are also product-quality issues, such as jog-wheels that don’t hold up. Used eBookMans can go for as little as $50 or so. What’s more, the eBookMan runs Mobipocket, which means you can read best-sellers in that format.
–Used machines in the Gemstar/Rocket eBook family. Especially check out the the 1100 series, which let you pick up fonts from your Windows PC. Alas, they’re harder to find than before, but if you’re patient, you maybe able to get one for $80 or so. The monochrome screen measures 4.75″ x 3. This is a good choice for people who couldn’t care less about books in DRMed proprietary formats. If you like public-domain classics with long paragraphs and have good eyes, you can pick up some small fonts from your PC and cram a fair amount of text onto your screen.
–The eBookWise-1150 machine, an update of the 1100, which, as far as I know, won’t let you pick up screen fonts from your PC. But you can adjust the size of the type via an add-on program that goes beyond the two choices that the eBookWise machine gives you (at least the program’s size feature works with public domain books). Plus, you’ll get access to some commercial titles with copy-protection–books that are not available right now for the 1100 series. Price is $129.95 and shipping.
–An 1150 equivalent from Filament Books, which offers two subscription plans ($19.95 a month for 12 months vs. $199 for a full year). You’ll get two featured books a month. Depends what your taste in reading is. Filament is big on alien books and sci-fi.
This is a quick-and-dirty guide, and if others want to use the comment box to fill in details, be my guest. Also, newbies should freel free to ask questions. I may or may not have time to answers them. But perhaps other e-book readers can.
Meanwhile keep in mind that I’m not saying to avoid the Juice Box. Just consider your other options.
The Juice Box only takes image files (which most likely means you need to do a cumbersome conversion of your books), it’s got a tiny screen even if it is bigger than that of the device I am using, you cannot use it (AFAIK) to annotate the texts you are reading, and it looks like what it is: a kids toy.
The two most surprising things though are its price point (in some stores) and the fact that it uses standard parts (such as a GNU/Linux operating system).
I believe that an ebook reader can be sold for less than 50 US$, and the Juice Box seems to be a device that certainly hints at that. Sure, its original price was 60 US$ or more, but that included the capability to watch movies and play MP3s.
I’m certainly one of the newbie-types mentioned above, stopping by to check out the prospects for the juicebox. As a recent college grad, I see this line of tech replacing traditional textbooks (obviously), as well as traditional textbook publishers (possibly). My pie-in-the-sky idea is a non-profit e-publishing organization that sells e-textbooks for $5-$10, with 80% going to the author, 20% plus donations going for editorial expenses. College students could pay less than $100/semester, authors would make the same as they do now (maybe more), and nobody would get fleeced by huge corporations. Some may say i’m a dreamer…
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Collin! – David