After my post on eBook readers coming down in price and three different conversations about eBooks in one day, I searched for bargains on ebook readers.

The prices are coming down. They will be well under $100 after Christmas if you can wait. Right now there are back to school sales so check Walmart other retail stores for dropped prices.

Before buying one of these, stop by Target or Best Buy and look at the demo units. These tend to be smaller than you think. Touch them and try reading to see if it is really what you want.

Right now, the cheapest eBook reader that I could find was Ectaco jetBook Lite. It has a 5 inch screen (small, but the size of paperback book). It was available for $70 + $2 shipping at NewEgg.com, but they are out of them at the sale price (but they have them at $125). You can get one for about $85 on eBay. Mostly it goes for $125, though.

You can buy the Kindle WiFi for $139. This requires that you download books using you wifi connection at home or internet cafe, or use a cable from your computer, which is they way I would prefer. This has the smallest screen of all the Kindles (6inch diagonal). Kindle is the best technology, but they make it a little difficult to load books from places other than Amazon.

The Book, by Augen, is available at TheNerds.net for $112 shipped. It is a 7 inch model making it about the same size as the big Kindle. It supports all the eBook formats.

The Sony eReader is available at NewEgg.com and most other online stores for about $150.

Consider as an alternative: a netbook. These little notebook computers are possible too small to do anything more than email, but they have great battery life. You can install free software to read most of the major ebook formats.

NewEgg.com has a nasty little netbook that runs Windows CE (not my first choice), but the price is right at $72. I really dislike Win CE because I’ve had to program Dell Axims and Palm’s using it. It is clunky for programming and requires you load “Sync” software on your computer. It would be clunky to load this with books – too many steps.

TigerDirect.com has a refurbished netbook with 3G wireless, if you want it. This goes for around $250 and a good choice if you can afford the data plan (I can’t). They have other netbook refurbs at around $220.