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

I'm a disillusioned Rocket eBook owner.

[dpbsmith]

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.

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 .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.

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 .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.

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.