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On the State of Today's eBook Readers?
ashkar asks: "With the constantly expanding selection of eBooks available today, I have been wishing for a dedicated reader more and more. Novels, computer reference books, man pages, and more could be readily available, but after searching around, I've realized that the market hasn't progressed much in the last few years. The popular readers either use proprietary formats or are too bulky. An ideal would be able to read HTML, PDF, ASCII, and any other eBook formats widely used. I have thought about getting a PDA, but I don't need the extra features they provide at a higher cost. Has anybody found a good solution to this, and if not, are there any companies out there working on providing such a solution?" AS PCs become smaller, and assuming eBook readers don't mature and become popular in their own right, how long will it be before we see the PC (in it's portable form) as the primary "e-reading" device?
Maybe it's just me but I am still waiting for the thermal/electric re-writable digital paper. I don't like reading large volumes on a screen. Show me the digital paper and I could be interested. Till then, I am still reading the old fashioned way.
You'll have that sometimes...
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PDA's give you the ability to read most, if not all book formats. If price is the only reason to avoid them, then I would suggest searching EBay for an older model. :-)
Heres the current EBay listing for Palms IIIc (a nice unit i've used for this in the past.) Currently there are many that are 90$ and less for the 8mb color units.
All in all, these days my iBook is my preferred reading device for most kinds of text. The main exception would be PDFs that are page images of print books, where the text can't be reflowed, especially when the original is in multi-column layout. But before too long (or maybe they exist already?) it should be standard for notebook computers to have screens that can snap out and be reoriented from landscape to portrait mode; that will make reading "legacy" e-text more comfortable.
bookwarez. Tons of titles available. Can read on a PDA (even an old, used, feature free one), laptop, print to hardcopy, etc.
Even better, you can send them to text-to-speech and braille displays for the blind. This is what I do for my wife (deaf/blind) if I can't find a title in the libraries. Now, just to be fair, I'll buy a copy of the book. I just figure my dl'ing a warez version is excercising fair use rights (fair use meaning I could buy the book, scan it, OCR it, and then let her read it, but why not take advantage of the work of someone else?)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
then ebook readers will be the platform of choice in over 50% of 'reading experiences' in the developed world.
First problem is connectivity. EBook readers, like all network appliances, need internet connectivity. But who has internet connectivity now? Tech-savy people, or people who have friends or family who are tech-savy. Such people don't by network appliances, they buy computers or PDAs, and run the equivalent software application. Until the day comes when connecting to the internet is as easy as buying a cell phone, network appliances, including EBook readers, have no hope.
The second problem is all this damned IP hoarding. The media monopolies are very reluctant to let any of their content appear in a digital format. Too easy to make an exact copy. So nervously release one or two titles in this format or that, and even the people who can read the format don't buy it, because it's about the same price as the dead-tree version.
You mentioned that the Gemstar has a proprietary format. I'm not completely certain, but I believe it uses the same format as the Rocket e-Book, which preceded it.
Althout the Rocket book format is proprietary, it's not as limiting as you might think, since the proprietary format is basically just an HTML variant compressed in a certain way (Zipped, but with some proprietary headers) and you can download software from Gemstar that converts text and HTML into the format (it will even do a recursive web-suck and turn the result into a book for you). Further, people have reverse-engineered the format and built tools (Linux and Windows) which will allow you to do pretty much anything you like with the format, assembling and disassembling books. Well you can only disassemble them if they aren't encrypted.
If they are, well, there's even some solutions to that, but they require disassembling and probably destroying your device to dig out the encryption keys. After you buy a replacement book, though, you can continue purchasing books that were encrypted for the old device, then decrypt them and use them on the new one, or take apart the file and convert to HTML or whatever.
For technical books, I find the only real disadvantage of the Gemstar/Rocket books is that a lot of stuff comes in PDF format, as you mentioned.
For fiction, lots of stuff is available on bn.com or powells.com. I just bought Ellen Ullman's "The Bug" in Rocketbook format, yesterday. Lately I've been reading a lot of stuff from Baen.com, because they sell their books in unencrypted RocketBook format. I liked a lot of their authors anyway, but thanks to the combination of their support for my favorite way of reading and their great prices, most of my book money has been going to them for the last several months.
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Well, for those who are still in school, or recently graduated, or just happen to have a TI-89, 92+, or V200 laying around, they make for excellent reading in most light and have around a meg of memory if you don't clutter them with games and whatnot (a grayscale version of Street Fighter 2 is available...and Sonic the Hedgehog) The ebook reader is available from the TICT web site, they also have a converter to convert ASCII text to they're (compressed) ebook format...
Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
What I found to be fairly usable is a precursor of current tablet - PCs, the SonicBlue ProGear. Original came in Linux and Win98, but can you can also use W2k or XP. 10" 1024x768 color touchscreen, 1x USB, Wireless, Runs ~4h on a charge.
While it's no longer in production you can stell get new units for QUITE reasonable prices. Have a look at mira2go.
IF you consider getting one of these: you definitely want a 128M version with 6-cell battery, regardless of operating system; these will cost ~$800. it's also worth checking on ebay for good deals on these.
For use as an ebook reader or as a webpad, CPU speed is adequate - but don't consider doing computationaly expensive stuff, you'd be disapointed.
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It's very sad. The Rocket eBook device itself got a lot of things right. I can't enjoy reading from a PDA screen, but I can and do enjoy reading all sort of things, including very long 19th-century novels from Project Gutenberg, on my Rocket.
.HTML files on your PC, UPLOAD them to their Website, and IT converts it on the server to .RB format which you can download over a phone line with your REB1100. Or something like that. I haven't tried it.
.HTML, only on a specific Rocket-defined "subset" of HTML 3.2. And it has various problems there. Which I've figured out ways of working around (I have a collection of .mpw scripts to convert Project Gutenberg text into .html that's acceptable to the Mac version of RocketWriter, which is even buggier than the PC version). This supporting software isn't being maintained very well. Indeed, the Mac version hasn't been maintained at all since the last version was released in the year 2000.
The original Rocket had two ways of working. You downloaded purchased material to your PC or Mac, then downloaded from the PC or Mac into the Rocket. Or, using the included "RocketWriter" software, which was a little buggy but functional, you could convert straight ASCII text or HTML, either residing on your PC/Mac hard drive OR _directly from a Web URL,_ into RB format. This latter way of operating was referred to as "personal content."
Unfortunately, Nuvomedia was acquired by Gemstar which then went through a series of nutty changes in policy. The brilliant businessman, Henry Yuen, who brought Gemstar to the great success it enjoys today (insert ironic smiley here) was totally opposed to supporting "personal content" at all. Gemstar stopped including RocketWriter with the software bundle (although you could and still can download it from the Web). At one point, they encouraged people to download a sort of Trojan Horse firmware upgrade that stopped the device from accepting "personal content" altogether. They reversed that in a later firmware upgrade.
They then produced revised models, the RCA and Gemstar-branded ones, which were intended for purchased content only. They connect only a phone line, and only for the purpose of downloading purchased content.
Recently, they restored a "personal content" capability in which you take
By the way, the number of bookselling websites from which you can download "mainstream" material has shrunk from over a dozen down to exactly one--Powell's. A lot of small indie publishers, mostly of "genre" titles, have purchasable material--at very fair prices--but I'm sorry to say I personally haven't liked much of what I've found there.
It's been reported in the trade press that Gemstar is thinking about discontinuing their eBook division, which should make things even worse. I wonder what will happen to the server on which your "personal bookshelf" of purchased material resides?
Did I mention that the RocketWriter software is buggy? It doesn't work on full
In short: great devices, what a pity that the marketers couldn't figure out what to do with them.
By all means, if you can get a used Rocket eBook (NOT a REB1100) at a good price and just want to try playing around with what is a decent, well-designed, dedicated eBook reader, go for it.
People tell me that the REB1200, which is actually a completely different design, is much better than the 1100, and I _think_ that _perhaps_ it allows personal content.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I have an Intermec 6651 Handheld PC. It runs Windows CE 3.0 (HPC2000, same OS as the Jornada 720), and it's great for ebooks. Its keyboard folds around behind the screen, turning it into a tablet. This combined with Mobipocket reader makes a great ebook reader. I just flip the screen around, and touch the left or right side with my thumbs or finger to "turn pages".
The screen is awesome, 800x480x16bit active matrix. Very bright (but of course useless in the sun).
Google it for more info... I've seen them on eBay for $350 or so...
sudo eat my shorts
I use a Palm IIIxe with Weasel Reader. I like it a lot, more than a physical book in fact! (which I had not expected) It's nice not having to hold a book open to a particular page, or to need an external light source (backlit display = good). You can get an older Palm on eBay pretty cheaply (I'd recommend either getting a Palm with a built-in rechargable battery, or investing in some rechargable batteries of your own.
How long before PCs become the preferred e-book reader platform? It's already been years for some applications.
Aircraft mechanics have been using wearable PCs for years for this sort of thing. The military has been using hardened PCs (laptops and palmtops) for years for electronic reference materials (and other uses).
I think they still have a long way to go, but tablet PCs are a move in the right direction. Not exactly the best e-book format, but better than PDAs.
Slightly O/T, but this brings up a serious problem I have with eBooks. I have them, my friends have them, people I don't know have them. Every single one of us files these books in distinctly different directory trees.
How can we assure that file xxyz on my system is the same as xxyz on my buddies'? Dewey just isn't going to cut it here, any RFCs for eBook identifications?