You want to get into the ebook action right? But you don’t want to spend money on a Kindle or a Nook. Well, if you own a netbook, you can just use that.

Lifehacker has some tips for turning your netbook into an ebook reader and it isn’t that hard. Their method relies fully on software installation, and you won’t need any tools or have to play operation on your netbook. It’s an interesting read.

Here’s a special Valentine’s day gift for that reader in your life. Sony is bundling its PRS-600 ebook reader for Valentine’s Day, which retails for $329. You’ll get a red Reader Touch Edition, a limited edition red cover with light and a code for a free ebook download.

The free ebook is “The Heart Speaks” by Mimi Guarneri, keeping with the theme. If your lady is a huge reader with an appetite for heart related content, maybe this is the gift she wants.

Endless Ideas has introduced its first WiFi-enabled e-Book reader called the BeBook Neo. The device is powered by a Freescale processor and offers a 6-inch E-ink display with a Wacom touchscreen. Some other features include 512MB of internal memory, a microSD card slot that will give you up to 16GB, USB port, 3.5mm headset jack and WiFi so you can access Google and Wikipedia.

And also a range of third-party e-Book stores is supported. It plays nice with most popular file formats. The BeBook Neo will cost you £279.99 or roughly $453. It’s available for pre-order now.

The latest ebook reader to hit the market is the new Hanvon N618 ebook reader from the WISEreader line. This one features a 6″ Vizplex e-paper display, Wi-Fi, a 3.5mm headphone jack, USB connectivity, 320MB of internal memory and an SD memory card slot.

The Hanvon will play nice with TXT, HTXT, HTML, PDF, DOC, XLS ebooks, JPG, PNG, BMP, GIF and TIF file formats. It also boasts handwriting recognition so you can jot down notes on your TXT ebooks. It’s just a tad expensive and costs half a grand in China. Keep in mind that this doesn’t even have an ebook store connection.

You’ll notice that they called this one Lexi, not sexy. It is in no way sexy and could never be called sexy no matter how many beers you’ve downed while reading your favorite book. Lexi is from Audiovox/RCA, who showed her off at CES 2010.

She won’t turn very many heads in the crowded e-book reader market. She features a 6-inch display, 800 x 600 resolution, 2GB internal memory, and a battery that will last up to 7000 page turns. We doubt that it will take on the Kindle or the Nook.

iPhone accessory maker Mophie has something interesting up its sleeve. They will be offering a credit card reader for the smartphone along with a transaction app. The whole thing is integrated into an iPhone case, so you can keep the reader on permanently, as long as you don’t mind the added bulk.

As long as the app is good and the price of the service is affordable, this should do well. Assuming you use your credit card often anyway. We should get more info at CES 2010.

E-book readers are all the rage. You may have heard a little something about them. Do you own one yet? The Owen E1 e-book reader is pretty good on features, plus it comes in black, where most others are white.

It’s just slightly smaller than the Amazon Kindle and sports a 5″ e-ink display and audio and image file support. Whether it supports color or not, we have no idea. There is also no word on pricing just yet, but the Owen E1 looks like it will be a worthy competitor when it arrives.

Sony in Japan has introduced the smallest USB biometric scanner yet, for reading users’ finger vein patterns. This new smallest yet is called the FVA-U1. Sony labels the technology mofiria and says that it’s more accurate and secure than fingerprint readers since it relies on unique blood vein patterns in the finger. The FVA-U1 connects to PCs via USB 2.0.

Mofiria uses a CMOS sensor that reads scattered light through the finger that originates from a near-infrared LED light. The FVA-U1 should ship in Japan on December 18th. No word yet on pricing.

If you want to get a Nook for this holiday season, you better get on that right away. The Nook is proving so in demand that they are pushing the second wave of pre-orders into the first week of December.

Many customers are delaying their order until they see the e-book reader in person at Barnes & Noble. Apparently display units should start arriving at the end of November, but it looks unlikely that there will be any units to sell. That means that you may have to get it sight unseen if you want delivery before the holidays. The cost is $260.

Looks like we have some early images of Barnes and Noble’s e-book reader. As we covered before, this thing is supposedly set for a Spring 2010 release, with a color display.

Then there was word that it would not have a color screen. But it looks like there is truth to both of those rumors. Apparently the dual-panel device will feature a typical e-ink display on top with a multitouch panel underneath. Think of it as a Kindle/iPhone mashup.

Sony just released its Reader Daily Edition wireless model that sports 3G. The Daily Edition is the latest in its line of Readers, along with the Reader Pocket Edition and the Reader Touch Edition. The Reader Pocket Edition has a 5″ electronic paper display and comes in navy blue, rose and silver for $199.

The Reader Touch Edition sports a 6″ touchscreen panel in red, black or silver for $299. The newest, the Reader Daily Edition lets you stay connected wirelessly through AT&T’s 3G mobile broadband network to Sony’s eBook store. The Daily Edition Reader will be sold through a bunch of retailers incuding Best Buy, BJs, Borders, Sam’s Club, Staples, Target, Toys “R” Us and Wal-Mart.

Jointech has announced their new JE100 ebook reader, a 7-inch device that uses an LCD touchscreen instead of an e-ink display. Based on Windows CE 5.0, the Jointech JE100 will not only boast Mobipocket Reader, MSReader and eReader support, but also likely play back video and audio files together with viewing and editing Microsoft Office documents.

Inside it features a 400MHz CPU, 128MB of flash memory and 64MB of RAM. Transflash cards up to 4GB in capacity can be used to boost storage, and it rocks two USB ports: one a host, for plugging in external peripherals and the other a slave, for hooking up the JE100 to a computer where it presumably mounts as an external drive.

E-reader maker iRex promises to deliver a high-tech color, writable ebook reader by 2011. They claim that this device would have a brightness level three times that of the existing additive color electrophoretic displays, thanks to a system of subtractive color mixing.

Subtractive e-ink technology is compared to physical printing whereby colors act as filters to absorb portions of white light striking them and reflect back the desired hue. The additive system mixes together backlit or illuminated colors to create hues, often requiring filters that can reduce overall quality.

It hasn’t really been a secret that Google wants into the ebook market. Now it’s happening. Tom Turvey (Google’s director of strategic partnerships) says that the program will be ready by the end of 2009. Details are still a bit scarce, but according to The New York Times, the plan involves selling the books at prices set by the publisher.

This is a departure to the rather strict Amazon pricing guidelines that sees most Kindle titles selling for $9.99 (Many publishers don’t like that). Also, the company will be selling readers online access to the titles. This means that access to your books won’t be limited just to a specific device, but it will require Internet access and some sort of off-line caching.

Here’s an e-book reader that does things that the Kindle 2 won’t. Like fit in your pocket and have built in PDF support. The reader weighs in at just 5.3 ounces and packs a nice resolution of 200 DPI. Some other features include a 6″ display, 1GB of flash memory that can accommodate ePub, PDF, HTML and text formats. You’ll also have access to a catalog of 150,000 books.

Software features would let users pick one of 12 font sizes for readability as well as let owners organize e-books by folders. Battery life will give you about 8,000 page flips, which is quite a few novels(Or one Robert Jordan Wheel Of Time novel.) No 3G wireless feature, but you’ll get 21 days at standby.