If you've dropped $700 on an iLiad eBook reader, it may have occurred to you at one point or another that this is a lot of money for a device that basically does two things: lets you read books and take notes in the margins.

But one enterprising member of the MobileRead forums has taken it upon himself to add the feature set of a really old Palm Pilot to the iLiad. To be more precise, he's ported several personal information management tools from the GPE handheld Linux suite to run on the iLiad.

The suite includes a calendar, contact manager and to do list. There's no way to synchronize this data with your computer at the moment. But perhaps you'll be able to convince your significant other that it's worth buying a digital eBook reader if you can sell your Palm Pilot*.

[via jkOnTheRun]

*We wouldn't recommend replacing your Palm Pilot with an eBook reader. Might we recommend something in a nice Palm Treo flavor? Or perhaps an Apple iPhone, Samsung BlackJack, or even a used Dell Axim from eBay?

Palm was once king of the mobile landscape. The Palm Pilot made reality what a decade of electronic organizers and ill-fated Apple Newtons never could; A practical handheld computer to store the junk from your head. Once Palm established the market Microsoft stepped in with Windows CE, early versions of which were laughable in comparison to the Palm. Three name changes, infinite version numbers and the integration of the mobile phone saw Windows CE grow up into Windows Mobile, and take the lead. It's an age old story of Microsoft takeover by market-share and, now Palm is only steps away from being swallowed whole bought outright by one of a host of other industry players.

John Dvorak explains that either Nokia or Motorola are likely to drop the hammer on a buyout of Palm sometime soon, and at a price of around $20 a share. eWeek reports their could be as many as 4 bidders fighting behind the scenes, although speculation runs wild as to who the two not named Nokia or Motorola may be.