Ectaco 5" High Resolution e-Book Reader with Rechargeable Li-ion Battery WHITE (jetBook JB5W)

Pros: MUCH cheaper than a Kindle and there is no need to buy ebooks just from Am*zon with this.
And no need to email your own ebooks to Am*zon for them to convert to a readable format and send back to you. (See other thoughts for free, easy to use, ebook converters that you can install on your own PC. Takes literally seconds to convert your ebooks to whatever format you choose)
You can transfer ebooks from your PC to the Jetbook with a simple drop and drag. Most formats display well on the Jetbook, tho PDF is a little iffy. Again, see converters below if you want to change a book from PDF.
Charging battery to full by AC adaptor (wall plug) takes an hour or less, even when I've run the battery so low it's got one bar left.
(Charging by USB port cable on PC takes longer, is still fast)
I've grabbed textbooks online for my daughter-in-law (college) and saved her a HUGE amount of dollars. She uses her Jetbook for a lot of study work.
Has half gig capacity. Can add a 2 gig micro card.

Cons: I've found ONLY VERY MINOR CONS:
Make sure that the Jetbook is turned OFF when you plug into wall to recharge. If it's on, it does not charge and you will have to RESET it for it to work correctly.

Ditto for charging by PC.; turn OFF before plugging in.

(To add books to it, tho, make sure Jetbook is ON when plugging into PC)

It would be nice to be able to charge while still reading, so that is still a con for me.

Freezes up or acts glitchy occaisionally (four times in 10 months for me, so not a big deal) Stick a bobby pin or fork tine in the little RESET hole on the back. Voila, problem solved.

Note: It does take a long minute after reset when you turn it back on, for it to allow you to surf through your settings and books. Just use a minute's worth of patience.

Battery life is NOT 20 hours. More like 10 hours for me, but recharge IS fast. Even 7-10 hours is more than enough reading time for me and I'm a voracious reader.

Other Thoughts: I've had this little gem for 10 months now; don't know how I ever lived without one. I have hundreds of books on mine.

I love it so much that I bought one for my someone else and when a cousin saw me using mine, she made her hubby get one for her, ASAP. He's also now a happy regular at Newegg, as well.

FREE EBOOK CONVERTERS: Use Amber Lit Converter to convert .lit files to text or rtf or pdf, html and more. All can be read on the Ectaco Jetbook, tho I prefer RTF format.

If you want to convert a PDF to text, use the SomePDF to Text converter.

For a 2 gig micro card, I recommend Kingston. It won the reader's choice award and Newegg frequently has it on sale; free shipping.

I've not tried the MP3 player on the Jetbook, as I put my audio books on my little MP3 player. A 2 GIG card will certainly allow those who don't own an MP3 player, the room, if you want to listen to one on your Jetbook. Earphones are included.

I HIGHLY recommend the Jetbook as THEE ereader to buy!

Pros: Price. Easy on the eyes screen, with none of the FLASH at page turns that other readers exhibit. Easy to add stuff to either internal memory or SD card, just drag & drop (both show up as removable drives in Windows when jetBook is plugged in). Plentiful storage. Really quick boot from sleep mode, though sleep does drain battery faster. Can upgrade firmware easily at home, without sending to factory, a definite plus (see cons).

Cons: Battery does seem to drain quickly, though I always leave it in sleep mode rather than off. Unable to read DRM books out of the box, though mfgr. says will have firmware update on their website (jetbook.net) early 2010. Still, even with drain on battery I've had no problem getting a week out of it with moderate use.

Other Thoughts: If you have need to use during extensive travel, either take a laptop or the charger along (it charges through mini-USB port off either source. Or, consider the jetBook Lite, which uses 4AA batteries but is otherwise nearly identical (but claims to already have the DRM firmware in place). One last thing: if you're prepping your own docs for the reader, format 'em 6"x7.5" with 16-point or higher type face and .25 margins, then export to PDF. Gives near perfect screen pages!

Pros: easily read

Cons: will not download any current best seller. this is a secure download to this ebook reader and this reader doesnt have the software to read this. I have been told the software was to be available by the end of 2009 but still isnt here. bought this for my wife to read best sellers so it is worthless to her till this software comes out.

Pros: reads cyrillic.

Cons: freezes sometimes.

Pros: IT is very easy to use and the screen is very nice .

Cons: needs more format software so it can read other books.

Other Thoughts: all in all very useful .

Pros: Reads everything you can download of the net pretty good. You just need to find the right formats or convert it into text file which is what I do with microsoft word or just copy paste. The screen is nice, my eyes doesn't hurt like reading off the monitor. Memory slot means I have over 1000s of books on different sd cards. Way more than those non-memory slot kindles. Landscape mode makes the screen larger as you flip the text side ways to read bigger pdfs.

Cons: The dictionary seems to be lacking a bit at least the english-english one, and I don't really use the english-foreign language dictionary part.

Other Thoughts: For a first time ebooker, I'm satisfied. I don't know what other kindle lovers were smoking when they said theres oil..lol or the battery dieing on them in two seconds..I mean seriously, if it's that dead, use the warranty. I'm probably not going get another ebook reader unless it is a HUGE leap over the current kindle 2 or sony reader.

Pros: Lightweight... Fairly good screen... Very low price... SD Card Slot.

Cons: You get what you pay for!!! Battery gets very hot. Battery life is horrible, it doesn't even last through one flight from ATL to London and I slept through most of the flight. The case seems to absorb the oils in your hands through normal use and then those areas collect dirt. I had to constantly clean it. Charging takes a very long time given short battery life.

Other Thoughts: I bought this as a possible replacement for my first generation Kindle. I just couldn't justify spending $489 for the Kindle DX that I wanted and my K1 is on it's last leg. It was a mistake! I guess the adage "you get what you pay for" certainly applies here.

As I mentioned above, the battery gets VERY hot when charging and using. The charging takes forever as well! After discovering these problems, I returned my first unit for another one. I was promised that this one would be better. It was the exact same. I spent over 3 hours on hold and getting bounced from person to person trying to get this returned and a refund. (NOTE: This was not through Newegg, it was through Ectaco directily. I should have purchased through Newegg because Newegg has MUCH better customer service!)

Pros: Make no mistake - I am shocked at how much I enjoy reading on the Jetbook when I thought I was a lifetime paper-only kind of person, it is even better than a paper book !
It is a wonderful idea - easy on the eyes, keeps your place, and fits/operates with just one hand - it's very lightweight.

Cons: BUT ! The internal battery model is a disaster, the case started falling apart right away, the power button is finicky, the page-turner slider sticks, AND worst of all - the battery has been defective since day 1 according to their horrible customer service which does everything possible to be unhelpful and uncooperative.

Other Thoughts: I wrote about this soon after I got it here and that info stands; but if you are going to buy one you must know that the nasties at Ectaco ONLY honor purchases made DIRECTLY through them and since I got mine here they have done everything possible to deny warranty service in a nasty way.
My advice is to wait until Newegg gets the better/newer model with replaceable batteries and be SURE to get the extended warranty through here to avoid future hassles.

Pros: Jetbook is a very nice reader and does a splendid job of displaying .TXT ebooks as long as you ONLY need to read between lengthy charging times.

Cons: Potential buyer NEEDS to know:
1 - Claimed battery life of 20 hours is VERY misleading and if you are very lucky it will give you 5 hours total use - and then must charge for 5+.
2 - JETBOOK CANNOT BE USED AT ALL WHILE CONNECTED TO EXTERNAL POWER !!!
3 - Battery is sealed inside and proprietary.
If these will be issues then I suggest avoiding this product.

Other Thoughts: Support is about the worst I've ever encountered and when asked about the awful battery life they responded by emailing a copy of the manual's charging instructions.
Further attempts yielded no better results.

Pros: Good battery life, no screen flicker when transitioning pages (like e-Ink readers), now comes with updated firmware (so disregard the firmware cons in other reviews-- that no longer is an issue and it comes out of the box supporting all the advertised formats). The SD slot is nice, I ordered a cheap 2 gig SD card and when all is said and done, the 2 gigs plus the 64 megs on the device should be able to hold hundreds of books. My entire 800-1000 ebook collection could fit on here. I love being able to switch between portrait and landscape, and the page turn buttons are intelligently placed. I don't have problems hitting buttons I don't mean to. Looks great as long as you have light, and is easy on the eyes.

Cons: PDF support is weak. When I loaded a PDF, it was very small; when I zoomed in, once I got zoomed in far enough to read, I had to scroll side-to-side as well as up and down to see the text, which really bugs me. To get around this, I just downloaded Calibre (google it) and converted my PDFs into FB2's and they look great.

No support for LIT files (must convert with Calibre).

Other Thoughts: Overall very pleased with the device. I've read two books on it already, and had no eye strain.

Also to note, for some reason, copying to the SD card I put in it seems to be much faster than copying to the device. I'm using the same USB cable on the same plug and the card is faster than the actual device... kinda odd, but no biggie, I just put all my books on the card instead.

The best formats I have found to go on the device are RTF and FB2. I have not tested MOBI, but have tested TXT, PDF, RTF, LIT, and FB2, and FB2 is my favorite with RTF coming in a close second.