So my Best friend is in Afghanistan, he loves reading, but sending large amount books there is just not feasible. I need an ereader that I can email him books or send him lots of books on a single cd. It would be great if you could put them on an SD card. So what kind should i get him for.
Kindle. I don’t have one myself, but I hear Oprah raves about it. I want one… not because Oprah likes it though. 
I think you have to hack the Kindle to get outside books on it. I know you can buy them online real cheep, but he is deployed which makes that very difficult.
I have a sony reader. so far, I have not had any problem loading any ebook I have been able to find online.
how much did you pay for it, what is the exact model, and how do you load them on to it
I have a Sony PRS-505 which has a SD Card slot, as well as a Memory Stick slot. When I bought mine, Sony also included 100 free Classic books.
To load books onto the eBook reader, you have to use Sony’s ebook reader application which is very similar to the iTunes software if you’ve ever used it. There is also a freeware application, Calibre, that can be used to load and convert books that are not native to the Sony eReader. I found that the Mobile Read Forums a great place for information about all eBook readers and it also provides user contributed converted books (all legal).
The Ipod Touch makes a surprisingly good ebook reader, with the Stanza software installed.
I have a Sony Reader, and it’s good, but not that good.
The best way to read eBooks, by far, is to use Acrobat Reader’s booklet-printing function. (Ie, two pages per page, double-sided printing.) You can make these wonderful little booklets that pack a good number of pages (like 50). I’ve developed the technique to perfection. I have a long-reach stapler and thick all-cotton paper for covers. Finally I use an iron to make them perfectly flat. It beats the PRS-505 ANY day. It’s even better than fully-bound books.
P.s. If anyone here’s used the RasterFarian converter for PRS-505, then give up some props! (Or not, it’s kind of the definition of ghetto 
So let me get this straight: you take an electronic book, print out a hardcopy, and bind it. That’s not really much of an e-book at this point, now is it?
Umm, no, but it was free (almost) and dled off the web?
No. ! Magnolia fan has the same model of reader that I do, but the question that was not answered was price. I paid $250 USD or so, and another $40 to the store where I ourchased it for a three year no questions asked warranty.
I have been able to load form free ebook sites by opening the book I want, saving it to my desktop and draging it from the desktop into the Sony Reader Library.
Kindle person here.
The Kindle works fine with most common e-book files. It handles .doc files too. A big plus for the Kindle is you can get a number of US and European papers every day. It is just like being back at home.
WIthout regard to which reader you get, an e-book reader is wonderful if you lived overseas.
I use a Palm TX with a program called Palmfiction for plain text files, Plucker for HTML and there is a PDF reader available too. All freeware.
The TX will read a standard SD card; or an SDHC if you buy a driver app separately.
I use it for ALL my personal reading, it works great.
Forget about Palm. They no longer make regular palms. I don’t know if you can read ebooks on the cellphone ones they make (like the Treo) but I doubt you want to buy him a new phone.
The kindle can use SD cards and it also has a USB cable for loading ebooks on it.
I also have a Palm T/X. I don’t know what I’ll do if it ever quits working.
I’m looking for one as well. I’ve already ruled out the Kindle as I do not want a monthly fee to pay for my content and from what I’ve read it does not handle all formats.
I’m looking for a reader that has a great screen, long battery life, and no ties to any specific file format. It should be able to handle PDF, office docs, plain TXT files, and most of the standard e-book formats. So far I haven’t found one that fits the bill.
Yeah, but a kindle is $360, roughly twice the cost of a refurbished TX. Hell, you could get a netbook for less and those can do a lot more than the Kindle ever will.
re: Palm
Personally I have great hopes for their new webOS platform and will seriously consider the new Pre phone. It makes the iPhone look dated.
Let’s dispel some myths about the Kindle.
You do not need to hack it for it to read outside content. You do not need to pay monthly fees for most content - I currently pay a fee for a single magazine subscription since that saved me money over getting it dead-tree, which I was doing previously. Newspaper and blog content I obtain for free and read on my Kindle.
The biggest issue right now with the Kindle is that it does not handle pdf files natively. These can be converted into a format readable on the Kindle, but graphics heavy pdfs will suffer in the conversion.
nope, i have a sony kindle and any mobipocket slots right in, as does the stuff bought on amazon. I have like 500 from project gutenberg, my entire collection of baen webscriptions and one lonely amazon offering =)
i also have mobipocket loaded on my moto 9m … mraru has a treo and has mobipocket loaded on it.