E Book Readers

[cisco2]

A good friend of mine has been talking up his e books a lot recently. Being an avid reader and a big fan of being able to buy books cheaper, download them free, or just take several with me in a convenient, compact, easy to use format, I'm looking into getting an e book reader for myself.

My initial forays into products available has led me away from Franklins Ebookman and towards RCAs REB1100.

Anyone use an ebook reader or have any recommendations?

[Stalemate]

On my PalmOS devices, I mostly used Adobe Reader.

Here are a few others and the platform they run on:

MobiPocket - PalmOS, Win 9x & NT, WinCE/PPC, EPOC, Series 60.
PalmReader - PalmOS, Win 9x & NT, MacOS9 & OSX
MS Reader - Win 9x & NT, WinCE/PPC
iSilo - Win 9x & NT, PalmOS
TomeRader - Win 9x & NT, PalmOS.

For about the same price, you could get a used or lower-end Palm and use that instead, giving you the option of also carrying some light games, and have a working PDA.

For dedicated eBook readers, follow this link: http://www.state.nh.us/nhsl/ebooks/readers.html

[cisco2]

Being a technically minded person and an avid reader, I'd think that E Readers would be a burgeoning market. Alas, that appears not to be the case. I'm having trouble finding products that aren't discontinued or that do support popular e reader software (Microsoft Reader primarily). My friend was lamenting the screen on his palm device as too small so I'm looking for a dedicated e reader that has a larger screen, good backlighting (so I won't wake up my better half and I can read without the bedside lamp on), and with which I'll be able to read a wide variety of books.

I would appear that Microsoft Reader is the format most protected books are offered in, yet most readers seem to have problems registering themselves with the software so they can unlock books.

Adept, you mention using Adobe Reader. Would you (or anyone else) say that focusing on Microsoft Reader is perhaps not that big an issue? I'm not a big fan of PDAs and I'd like something with a bigger screen because I think that a smaller screen will make e reading less enjoyable, any thoughts on screen size?

[silencio]

Blea. E Books suck. I can't read a book on a screen. I'm too used to scanning the screen which makes focusing on the words while getting lost in the story virtually impossible. Give me paper or an audio book read by someone who knows how to tell a story. If I want to hear Stephen Hawking I'll listen to the Cambridge Lectures.

I read in Discover at least 7 years ago about digital paper. No-one had perfected it, and apparently still hasn't, but I'd love the idea of a modular data book. It would look and feel close to paper and be completely programmable. Sweet.

[Stalemate]

...Adept, you mention using Adobe Reader. Would you (or anyone else) say that focusing on Microsoft Reader is perhaps not that big an issue? I'm not a big fan of PDAs and I'd like something with a bigger screen because I think that a smaller screen will make e reading less enjoyable, any thoughts on screen size?

What I used to do was this:

1. Evaluate feasability of transfer to file format recognized by PalmOS, if native format is not compatible (some will convert to HTML/XML or Windows Help file which can then be processed by PalmOS)

2. Use Acrobat to convert whatever doc into PDF if no other format option was available.


The screen size was never an issue for me, but it's clarity (i.e. resolution) was. That's why my Sony Clié became more of a glorified e-book reader than a PDA once I added a 128Mb memory stick to it.