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?

Comments

Maybe it's just me but...

[tha_mink]

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.

warez

[gmhowell]

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?)