An insanely cheap e-bible with suspicious lineage

December 16, 2008 by robotics
Filed under PDA

China never fails to amaze me with the kind of products that it suddenly and unobtrusively releases out to the worldwide public. Recently, I got hold of a new product that, frankly, astounded me because of its price and functionality.

The e-Bible (yes, the product’s name is that generic) is a small device that allows you to load a number of bible programs on it. The e-Bible is being marketed as an e-book reader – more specifically an e-bible reader but it’s so much more than that. It’s because the e-Bible is actually a perfectly functioning Palm PDA!

I researched on the item and found out that the device looks like the Palm Treo 300 as seen from this site: http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=175, only without the protective cover and the antenna. It carries the similar Palm OS 3.5 and even syncs with the PC using the same Palm syncing software.

The e-bible software is provided through a CD and it is up to the user to install which e-readers and bibles to load on the 16mb internal memory. Loading the e-bibles was easy and I even tried loading some other productivity software. I was amazed at how perfectly it functions. But the most impressive part? It only costs £6.95 retail. The e-Bible obviously straddles a very fine line between legitimacy (the Treo 300 has been discontinued) and illegality (I’m pretty sure Palm doesn’t know about this). The bitterly ironic part is that the product is being marketed as a prayer companion.

It’s indeed a strange time we’re living in.

Spread the word: