We moan about DRM laden ebook readers, but what's the alternative? With the death of public domain works due to endless copyright extensions, there isn't much to choose from, unless you're the kind who shops in the classics section at your local discount bookstore.
The new jetBook from Ectaco doesn't disappoint: The list of downloads in English begins with Austen, Jane Pride and Prejudice and ends with Wilde, Oscar The Picture of Dorian Gray. At least the Kindle and the Sony Reader have a library of current books. The reader does, at least, support plain text, PDF and jpeg formats.
The jetBook also takes a leaf out of the Kindle's book (sorry) with its design. Let's just say it's both uglier and redder. Inside, there is an MP3 player, a Li-ion battery to power the 5" grayscale display, translation dictionaries (Russian to English to Polish) and a useful landscape mode. But at $350, it's only $50 shy of the Kindle and has no internet connection, let alone an EV-DO radio. Our advice? Stick with dead trees for a few years yet.
Press release [PR Newswire]
Product page [JetBook]
