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Other bits of its technology are still around in other places, too... the Newton book reader for Firefox is one pretty neat example.

... including LIT, Palm, RTF, HTML, anything. (IT doesn't have to support DRM tho. I won't be buying any books with DRM.) ...

Don't forget Newton books (as are freely available without DRM on Newton's Library) and Z-Machine works (as are freely available without DRM on the Interactive Fiction Archive). I definitely want at least these two formats in my dream e-book reader. A few other less common ones (like TADS, for example) would also be nice, but I'd personally settle for the ones you list plus PDF, Newton book, and Z-Machine.

you wind up with 2 inferior things in one. A bulky, annoying phone, and a small-screened pda.

True enough. I've yet to see a smart phone that handles the same sorts of tasks a PDA can handle as well as a PDA. Most of the smart phones I've seen so far are comparable more to organizers more than true PDAs.

It's interesting that you mention using PDAs as book readers. I also found that I use their book reading capabilities a lot. I use them not for just traditional free e-books, though, but also free interactive fiction titles. Interactive fiction is a different sort of thing when you're no longer bound to a desktop to "interact" with it. Exploring twisty little passages that are all alike is perhaps inherently more interesting when you're in a real maze of twisty little passages that are all alike, like the waiting room in some large complex...

Don't forget that there are not just libraries of book metadata online, there are libraries of complete books:

• Project Gutenberg
• Newton's Library
• Bartleby II
• Electronic Text Center at UVA Library
• Tech Books for Free
• etc.

While these libraries are by no means as extensive as something like Amazon, it's nice having the full text of the books themselves.

I've been reading Newton books lately. There are several good sources of free, un-DRM restricted titles, and it's an open format. There's a good source at Newton's Library. A Google search pulls up lots of others.

I think there's some truth to the parent post. A single PDA that merged the best features of both the Newton and the Palm could be really slick. While I'll assume that most people reading this are pretty familiar with the Palm and what it has to offer, I recognize that the Newton may be a bit more of a mystery. I blogged a bit about what the Newton has to offer in 2006 elsewhere and won't repeat it all here.

The Newton has actually been mentioned on various news sites a lot lately, due largely in part to the recent Worldwide Newton Conference but also because of recent advances like the Einstein project and the Newton book reader for Firefox.

I'm personally hoping that maybe some of its innovative user interface ideas get carried over into other projects. Obviously Apple's current Ink tablet handwriting recognition system is a direct port from the Newton. Less obviously perhaps is that its Dock removal animation is, too.

There were lots of new Newton-related technology at the show. It's a pity it's not covered anywhere.

One little thing I worked on was a Newton book reader extension for Firefox that can read Newton books from within Firefox on Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, WinXP, etc. It's now in its second public version.

The reason that people still work with Newtons is simple -- Newtons still do things that nothing else on the market seem capable of doing. There are some really good, solid ideas in that OS.

Plus Newton books continue to get released.

Newton's Library also has a good collection of free e-books in the original e-book format: the Newton book. Newton book readers are built-in to a handful of hardware devices and are available (if one looks hard enough) for multiple platforms via add-on software. It looks like most of the eReader free books are available all the time for free from Newton's Library.

Newton's Library also has a good collection of free e-books in the original e-book format: the Newton book. Newton book readers are built-in to a handful of hardware devices and are available (if one looks hard enough) for multiple platforms via add-on software. It looks like most of the eReader free books are available all the time for free from Newton's Library.

It's good to hear about the Einstein Emulator. I wonder what happened to the GNUton project; it seemed to be working in the same direction and as far as I know actually got a bootable system running through the magic of Python. Granted, there's been no status update since 2000, but I've certainly seen free software projects go dormant longer.

Recently Newton's Library has gone live again; I'm one of the volunteer librarians. If anyone is interested in helping out, let me know. The Newton MessagePad is a great device for reading e-books, and the potential of new hardware certainly can't hurt.

Something like a Newton with a real hand-held optimized OS, a free software development system, the ability to handle all popular e-book formats (including Newton books, Open E-Books, Palm DOCbooks, etc.), numerous available apps, 802.11g, Bluetooth, 10/100 ethernet, FAX capabilities, and the capability to handle virtual machines for Java, Z-Machine, and Glulx.

Then just squeeze it all down to fit into a Palm-sized case.

Just a day or two after mentioning it, it seems that Newton's Library has returned with around 200 books that can be freely downloaded in the Newton book format.

It's also quite easy to convert plain text to the superior Newton book format; converters to do so are available here and there. There are also utilities out there to pull plain text back out of Newton books; locally Saugus.net uses such a utility to incorporate the text of Newton books into the site's search engine.

There are also still hundreds (actually probably over a thousand) Newton books freely available on the Internet. These days though they're somewhat scattered waiting for the return of Newton's Library (some of the original site can still be found on the Internet Archive) and other similar sites.