Make your own DIY Amazon Kindle eBook Reader
This one is sure to kindle your interest 
. A Kindle (Amazon’s eBook reader) retails for $300. It has a black and white screen and you have to purchase and books, newspapers, magazines, and blogs to read on it. Sure, it saves a lot of trees, but it definitely has it’s limitations.
However, hope is not lost! We’ll show you how to turn a Tablet PC into a DIY eBook reader which can search thousands of free ebooks online, far from the clutches of Amazon. The project below is to design an eBook reader with a high resolution, full color display. All that, at a fraction of Kindle’s cost.
The building block of his version of a personal eBook reader is a tablet PC. Though it’s not meant to be a clone, it comes pretty close. The tablet PC is born again as an eBook reader in four steps:
1. Find a cheap tablet PC
Scrounge eBay for a cheap tablet PC if you don’t have one lying around. Older makes like Motion M1400 or Fujitsu Stylistic are recommended which can be bought for around $200.
2. Tweak the OS
The idea is to uninstall unwanted software and tweak the settings to make it more eBook reader like. For instance, a high contrast/white for the background, larger icons and remapping the buttons for page switching.
3. Install reader software
Choices are plenty with Calibre , Adobe’s PDF reader and ComicRack for eBooks. Zinio for digital mags, FeedDemon for RSS. Another suggestion is to bookmark newspaper sites like the New York Times Article Skimmer version and sites like Project Gutenberg for no-fee, copyright-free books.
4. Boot it up and enjoy!
A Wi-Fi connection really helps for instant downloads. With all the downloading done, all that’s left is to choose a quiet corner and turn the pages. Once you get hold of a cheap tablet PC, the rest is dirt simple. Your own Kindle replacement for $200.
As you start off with hacking the Windows OS, some of these tips and tricks from our windows hacks will help:-
October 17th, 2009
Yeah – but where is the always-on-wireless? That’ll set you back $20 – $30 per month. Kindle has always-on 3G wireless, no additional cost, in perpetuity. You do the math. of course it’s not as much “journalistic” fun to do a real apples to apples comparison is it…?
October 17th, 2009
Yep, it’s got Wifi anyways.
October 19th, 2009
The primary benefits of ereaders are completely missed by this project. eInk’s passive unlit display consumes almost low power, and is much easier on the eyes than a back-lit tablet PC.
For $200 you can get a Sony PRS-505. It doesn’t have wifi, but it’s much better than trying to read an entire book on an LCD.
October 20th, 2009
Not to mention the horrible battery life and eye strain you would get with this.
October 25th, 2009
actually I have done something similar and with the right tweaks I believe this to be much better than the kindle even the sony. and i can get like 4 hours or more for bat life
November 1st, 2009
This isn’t close to a kindle. Get a laptop and put a reader software on it?
November 1st, 2009
It’s the same basic concept anyways. The purpose is to re-use old technology (like the tablet).
November 15th, 2009
Reading text on a backlit screen like a tablet is much, MUCH worse for your eyes than reading the eInk screens of Kindles and other e-readers. This is a nifty project, but serious readers will find this woefully inadequate for their needs. I’d hate to use something like this to read a hundred pages in a sitting.