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Best PDA To Read e-Texts On?
GabrielStrange writes "I've been thinking for a while now that I'd like to own some sort of portable device on which I could read e-Texts. This device should be able to read both simple text files (i.e. Project Gutenberg e-Texts) and more complex formats, like Plucker, Acrobat or Microsoft Reader. It should have a fairly high-res display with a backlight that would be easy on the eyes... but doesn't particularly need to be a color display. I'd like it to work with at least one (if not both) of the machines on my desktop, which run Linux 2.6 and MacOS X Panther... And to use a USB port. And I'd like it to have a built in, rechargeable battery, because I already have enough devices to worry about batteries for.
And, of course, I don't want to pay very much for it. Anyone got any recommendations for such a device? It's proving to be almost impossible to even obtain an actual list of devices that have these features."
You can probably pick up a used iBook for under $500. I can't imagine wanting to read large volumes of text on any PDA.
TODO: Something witty here...
zaurusis what you are looking for.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Plus you'll have a lot more control over font sizes, orientation, etc with Linux. Even simply using a web browser would make for excellent reading at that resolution, and you could whip up some scripts to format whatever texts you like for HTML in no time at all.
(Posted via proxy -- I wish Slashdot would unban my home IP subnet. When will Slashdot be done beta testing their IP subnet-based karma system? Not all of us work at VA and have our own subnet.)
I use a Toshiba e805 (same as the e800 but with some image software thrown in). It has 128MB of built in memory and both a SDIO and CF expansion slot (along with built in 802.11b) so you can load it up on storage or (as I did) add bluetooth to access the web via a cell phone. Its got a very nice 480x640 screen that is perfect for reading text on (its larger then most PDAs) with a 2MB ATI graphics accelerator. Granted you need to install some third party software to get the default mode to be anything other then 200x320, but once setup right its very slick. If you poke around you can also find 480x640 skins for many apps such as PocketPlayer, MS Media Player, PocketDV and others.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
While I'm sure I'll be mocked (since Palm OS isn't Linux), my T3 is great for ebooks.
:-)
+ Palm Reader is all good, and plenty of other choices.
+ Large library available (http://www.palmdigitalmedia.com/)
+ Small device, great resolution (320 x 480, potrait or landscape).
+ Lots of other software
- Anti-aliasing is mediocre at best. Resoltion does make up for it somewhat...
- T3 battery life is very mediocre. Perhaps a Clie instead, if this is a concern.
- Not cheap.
Cheers - James
Ha... nice try, but no such device exists. You can only have 2 of the 3 items... Take your pick of:
1) Good resolution
2) internal battery
3) low price
The Zaurus series is pretty much a geek's wet dream. Being open source, you can pretty much get any readers you would like, they use rechargable Li-Ion batteries, USB, and you can even connect them via TCP/IP over the USB port...meaning essentially if the OS works with USB you shouldn't have much in the way of trouble.
I read Red Badge of Courage and a couple others on my SL-5500 during downtime at work, and it was fine for me--and my vision is pretty far from 20/20 (though it is fine with glasses). The 5500s can be gotten pretty cheap these days, though I imagine the new 6000 series with the 640x480 screen would be wonderful....*drools*.
Just my 0.02$
http://www.eink.com/news/releases/pr70.html ... Whenever it's available!
I've used my Tungsten for the last 12 books I've read. With an SD card, you can fit all you like and the screen legibility is great, although it may be that I'm just used to it. I know some people have issues with it.
You may not think color is important, but the change I made from b&w to color (Palm IIIxe to TT) improved legibility incredibly. The increased resolution was also a great factor.
I couldn't fail to disagree with you less.
I would strongly suggest finding an older used Sony Clie. I'm using a Clie S300 model. It's B&W with a 160x160 screen. Admittedly, this is low res by current PDA standards, but the text is still very readable.
The best aspect of this model is that the contrast on the screen is superb and excellent for reading. I previously used a Palm Vx for the same tasks, but comparing the screens is like comparing night and day. Even with the backlight on, the Clie's battery (internal LiIon) lasts for several hours.
As for reading software... I'm a little biased. I'm the author of Weasel Reader. It runs on Palm OS and is under the GPL. I wrote it specifically for reading Project Gutenberg texts, but you can read any text file. See http://gutenpalm.sf.net for more info.
Elrond, Duke of URL
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"-Sam&Max
I actually use Palm Reader because the selection of books available in that format is large, even though it's proprietary. (It's about day's work with debuffer to crack the encryption BTW, though it's more than my life's worth to actually say whether or not I've done it.)
Palm Reader has a great built in reference mode. I have the entire unabridged Webster on it - fantastic!
I've configured the side button (usually to activate the voice recorder) to launch the reader so if I'm waiting in line at Safeway it's about 1 second to go from boredom to reading a good book.
On the down side - you can read for a few hours, but don't expect to read all night without a recharge.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I would definetly recommend the Tapwave Zodiac, the orientation of the device, and the size of the screen make it perfect for ebooks.
Even _with_ the battery requirements, the GameBoy Advance SP can be set up to read eBooks. The only problem is the screen is a little smaller than some people may like. Nevertheless...
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
I read tons of Gutenberg e-texts on my Sony Clie SJ 22. Good res, great backlight, cheap, etc. etc,
Jog dial is very handy for reading e-books.
I use makedocw and cspotrun to create and read files.
I've had a Sony Clié SJ-30 for a year and a half, and I love it! It is an excellent size for my hand and pocket, it has a nice, bright 320x320 color display, a jogwheel for scrolling through pages, and a memory stick slot for plenty of storage.
I use Weasel Reader for reading Gutenberg Etexts, Mobipocket Reader for reading etexts from Baen books, as well as Plucker for web clippings. I also carry along Ultralingua dictionaries so I can look up words when reading French language Gutenberg etexts (ahoy, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea!)
My Sony makes a fantastic e-book reader.. I probably use it for that function as much as for anything else. At 320x320, the screen is easy to read, the high-res fonts are very comfortable, and the backlight is great. It fits easily into my pocket, and I carry it wherever I go. It's USB based, and I sync documents to it from my Red Hat 9 Linux system without problems.
Honestly, any modern Palm OS based device should have USB and a good 320x320 screen, and any of them that you look at should make a good EReader. The Sony's may still be particularly good with their jogwheel, however.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
I don't prefer it to a book but do like it better than my desktop's 17" LCD for lengthly reading. Having it in hand makes the experience more book-like. (Every try taking a 17" monitor to bed? Don't answer that.)
Technically the IBM Workpad Z50 and Vadem Clio (Sharp Mobilon Tripad) are PDAs, but they're clamshell notebook style. The Clio/Tripad has a flip-over screen that turns it into a tablet, but otherwise the specs are quite similar: 131MHz vr141 MIPS CPU, 16 or 32 meg internal storage, CF slot, PCMCIA slot, RS232 port, internal modem.
You'll have to put up with the lack of a USB port, but RS232 works well for small transfers, and flipping CF cards is fast when you want to move a lot of data.
Both the z50 and the Clio/Tripad have big screens with excellent contrast. They share great battery life, about 8 hours on the stock battery if you're not running a power-hungry PCMCIA card. (wireless) Optional double-capacity battery packs are available for the z50 that really do achieve 16 hours. Both can run the hpcmips port of NetBSD quite capably, but for reading text you might as well keep the stock WinCE.
Personally, I'd use the Clio because of the flippable screen. Holding it by the hinge side is very comfortable, and the touchscreen allows easy page-turning even while in tablet mode. The z50 is stuck in a clamshell shape and uses a pointing nipple.
Did I mention that both can be had on eBay for under $200?
I have a Palm Tungsten T. The screen is fine for indoors, but not good outdoors.
The Palm Tungsten T2 is pretty much the same PDA, but has a "transflective" screen that is better than the screen on the T, both indoors and outdoors.
Both are 320x320, and you can get very nice text on it for your ebook. I use it with Linux, no problem hotsyncing with the USB (I use J-Pilot).
You can also use SD or MMC cards for storing your ebooks; you can get a lot of reading material on one of those, and you can just use any USB card reader/writer to write the ebooks onto it.
If you check eBay, you can get a T2 for $250 or so. You can get a T for less than that.
The T3 has the advantage of a screen that is 480x320 when you have it fully open. It has a 400 MHz processor, so it's fast... but the battery life sucks.
You can get a device from Palm called the "Power To Go", which is just a lithium ion battery sled. You dock the Palm in the sled and the Palm draws power from it. You can fully recharge a drained Palm at least twice on a fully charged sled, or run the Palm from the sled to get very long run times. With one of these you could fly to Japan and read continuously, without running out of power.
If you can stand a pixelated reading font, an old Handspring Visor makes a decent reader. It runs just forever on two AAA cells. That's what I have used for reading novels on a plane to Japan. But you specified a high-resolution screen for smooth fonts, so the older 160x160 greyscale devices are out.
If you had to pick just one to buy, I'd say the T2. If you want the cheapest one, get a used T from eBay.
Be sure to get a quality leather case to protect it. I use the EB flip case, the one that uses magnets to hold it closed.
By the way, I read more novels as ebooks on my Palm than I read as paper, these days. And I have even started reading Slashdot on my Tungsten (using a PalmModem).
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I recently bought an HP iPaq 4150 for the specific purpose of reading ebooks. I got sick of having to shell out AU$20 for a new paperback every week (I buy a lot of books) only to have them fall apart a few weeks later (or for my friends to pinch them, savage them, or lose them).
.txt files. The first thing I tried to open was The Iliad (800k), and Word bombed out. You can of course dump it on a proper version of Word and export it to Reader format with the press of a button, but if you're regularly reading large .doc files, then that might be a problem.
The first thing I did was grab some Gutenburg books and have a read, then I bought Neuromancer from Amazon.com (after a lengthy technical battle - if your Temporary Internet Files in IE is full, you'll download your ebook only to have it not actually get installed. Repeat 4 times in confusion, then get told by Amazon that you've already downloaded it so you can't download it again. Punch monitor in frustration screaming about why this is so goddamn hard. Fortunately the Amazon guys believed my story and re-issued the book, cleared my Temporary Internet Files, downloaded again, and then it worked. But I digress).
The quality of the screen on the 4150 is great. I've only used Microsoft Reader to try and read books so far, and it works - that's about all you can say for a text reader, I guess.
I have a few minor complaints about Reader. First and foremost, there's quite a bit of whitespace around the edges of the page. This means that there isn't as much text on the page, increasing the number of pages per book - meaning you'll be turning pages pretty regularly. There's no option to shrink text (despite 10 years of staring at screens my eyes still surprisingly work ok) so you'll be doing quite a lot of page flipping to get through any decent amount of books.
There's no auto page-flipping function. I'm lazy, I'd like to just hold the thing and have it turn pages for me. One of the main reasons I got it was so I could just lie in bed reading at night and try to relax so I can get to sleep; if it was flipping pages for me that'd be handy!
A non-Reader complaint that I feel is a little relevant is that Pocket Word can't open large
I haven't tried Adobe Acrobat yet (in fact I don't even know if there's a version for this device) so can't comment on that.
My only other comment is that I've been a bit disappointed with the range of available ebooks - I was hoping it would make my book-buying easier to get a lot of titles that my local bookstores don't stock (.. and have a 3-4 week order time from the US), but sadly quite a number of publishers don't make ebook versions available yet.
Once you have your device, check out the Baen ebooks. I buy these. They are all science fiction and fantasy.
Here are some free ones to get you started:
http://www.baen.com/library/defaultTitles.htm
And you can buy more here:
http://www.webscription.net/
No DRM. Just ebooks. They are trusting you not to be a pirate, and charging a fair price, and for that I reward them by buying stuff and recommending them.
Let me say that again. No DRM! No serial numbers, no registration, no limit on the number of cards you can copy it to. No DRM.
Even the ones they want you to pay for have a few chapters online for free. This is to give you a taste of the book, hook you in and make you want to finish reading it. If the book is a collection of stories, often one or more complete stories will be available for free reading.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Its funny you posted this. I've just delved into this for the first time with the old Handspring Visor I've been toting around. I paid $100 for it when it was new, but I just picked one up at a yard sale for $15. (Both 8MB) I used the Weasel reader, so I don't have to pay anything for that. (Although it doesn't like my version of ZLib. Throws a warning message but continues all right.) I've been reading Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow and I got a copy of Free Cultre by Lessig. The Visor has a backlight that lets me read without waking up the Mrs. Its been a lot of fun for me because this is the first time I've really applied open source software. I've *read* about it all over the place, but this was the first time I ever really found a *personal* benefit. I've seen Tiger Direct advertising old Palms for $45. Doesn't seem to take much to get into the OSS EBook thing.
More than a few. Just about any PDA would work. On the low end, the $99 Palm Zires have 8MB and a rechargeable battery. It's low-res, 160x160, so I'd suggest the next step up.
I'd really suggest something with at least a 320x240 screen like a low end PocketPC or a mid range Palm like the Tungsten E. Should be under $200. On my PocketPC I've used the uBook and Vade Mecum (port of Plucker) readers. Storage is never a problem with the price of SD cards these days.
the clie is one of the few pda's that have the thumb scroller on the side, making it easy to read books on it, i paid $50 for my clie peg-300 :) it uses usb sync, batteries last about a long time if you dont use the backlight too much, and is rechargable.
also, i use the weasel book reader, it reads palmdoc, and the format it uses (ztext) is smaller and better than palmdoc
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gutenpalm/
i have a page on my website about my pda if youre interested
www.tenacious.us/projects/pda/
Whatever you get, make sure the reader program you use has some kind of autoscroll feature. Its way better than having to keep hitting a button to get to the next page.
If you get a Zaurus, check out OpieReader at http://www.timwentford.uklinux.net/
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I read ebooks on a Palm IIIxe some time ago, and it worked beautifully. I recently had the chance to play with a Tungsten E, and while the screen itself was much, much nicer, the batter will be something of a problem. If it's possible to underclock, that may help somewhat, but even with the brightness turned all the way down and only using the reading software, the battery dropped to about half charge after only a couple of hours of reading. Charging up is quick, but still this is an issue for someone who really wants a portable solution.
The OP needs to realize that high resolution screens are a huge drain on the batter, as is a continuous backlight. The Zire may be a better option for reading books, since I suspect you'll get more hours out of it (though I haven't seen any real numbers on the Zire yet.)
I've been reading 'Shogun' on my Jornada cover to cover (if you can say that in this case), and it was okay, while not perfect. The perfect reading devices these days nevertheless are of course tablet PCs, although the slashdot crowd does not seem to subscribe to that. If you get a slate like the Fujitsu Stylistic or a Motion, then they are portable and lightweight enough, they got real screens from 10 inches onward, do in fact run all the reading apps you might ever need, sport reasonably sized hard discs and will, if you so desire, run linux with only minimal discomfort. Original poster of article didn't name price limits, but if that's a problem, try to get a good deal on a refurb or via eBay, obviously. Worked for me, works great, I hardly ever need to leave my machine alone now, reclining chair, terace, uni, bed (yes indeed), bathtub. Better strike out the bathtub, though...
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
Skip the Zaurus, you won't be able to get readers for the locked formats. I presume the many other flaws I found with my Zaurus have been smoothed over since then, but it just doesn't matter if you can't get a decent reader.
You're pretty much left with PocketPC and Palm devices. I'm not a fan of the PPC devices because they have poor battery life and a difficult to use interface and cost more than anything else, but since you can get all of the maintream readers for them they may be worth a look. I can't say I like their screens that much but they're a lot better than a low-end Palm.
My personal choice, the one I've read dozens of books on, is a Clie PEG-NR70 (the flip-screen dragonball one). I don't believe this, or even its follow-on PEG-NX70 with the ARM chip, is still available but its big, sharp screen is the best I've seen on a palmtop. Sony has really done a knock-down job on screen quality.
If I were to buy one right now, and I'm thinking about it because my NR70 has been beat to death, I'd probably get PEG-TH55. It seems to have the same screen, or at least a similar one, but I like the form factor better than the NR70.
Palm's Tungsten T3 is very interesting, and I really like the way it collapses, but fails for me because there's no lid to keep you from smashing the screen -- you have to get one of those awful bulky armor cases.
As always YMMV, but as I said I've been exceptionally pleased with the Sony device. At $400 it's not cheap, but at least it's not a dedicated ebook :-).
About ebook readers: I haven't used Microsoft's reader at all so I have no comment about it. Adobe's palmtop ebook reader is total junk, the least usable most irritating ebook reader I've ever seen. It paginates strangely despite forcing you to spend a long time "formatting for your device" and has the worst DRM of any of them. Mobipocket is my favorite reader in terms of interface, but its DRM is mildly restrictive, allowing only 4 devices for any locked ebook. The PalmReader offers the best DRM flexibility (it's key is your credit card number; you probably don't want to give that away) and a clean, usable interface. When I am reading locked books I opt for Palm format whenever possible for DRM flexibility, but with unlocked books I prefer Mobipocket.
So far I've had excellent luck finding ebooks in Palm and Mobipocket formats. www.fictionwise.com has the greatest format flexibility of the ebook providers I've tried.
Enjoy,
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
I've been meaning to write a review of Weasel Reader for a while now so I just did. The original work in progress is at Weasel Reader review.
While there are many formats for eBooks and a few dedicated pieces of hardware on the market I've found that after trying out everything I could find I've settled on just a few choice technologies that I have gotten the most actual reading out of. In fact just one aspect of one piece of software in particular pretty much wraps it up for me: Autoscroll Mode: Screen Wrap as found in Weasel Reader. Every other text reader autoscroll I have come across forces the eyes to contantly move, often very unsmooth, much unlike a book with its clear sharp letters that stay firmly in place. I believe this common misfeature leads to far greater eye strain and a lower overall acceptance of eBooks because of it. The only possibly superior scroll mode I would like to see added would be a flash mode where words or phrases are flashed sequentially onto the same spot allowing you to read without moving your eyes at all, then you just have to remember to blink on the periods!
Weasel Reader will run on most any PalmOS device which gives you not only a wide range of PDA hardware to choose from but also desktop emulators should you really fall in love with the Weasel! Having a good selection allows you to choose a device that fits well in your hand, has an easy to read high contrast screen, and enough capacity to store a selection of books. I'm currently using a Handspring Visor Prism and keep a few dozen books on hand to read at night after the wife goes to bed with the lights out or in the queue at the grocers or any other place those nasty slowdowns in our fast paced moderns lives creep up.
All that said Weasel Reader can be a bit overwhelming to configure so I offer the following as suggestions to get the most out of this great piece of software:
* Options, Preferences:
** Check Skip Project Gutenberg license
** Show zTXT size in index
** Always remember position.
** Use Scroll/Bookmark Buttons
* Options, Display Preferences:
** Line Spacing -2
* Options, Scroll Preferences:
** Autoscroll Mode Screen Wrap
Once the above are set open up a book and you will see a status bar that has a return to menu arrow, percentage of the book complete, the time, battery indicator, and access to the bookmarks menu. Frankly, I don't care about any of that and as long as "Always remember position" is checked as listed above that is the only bookmark I need. Thankfully a simple tap anywhere on the left hand letter side of the silkscreen hides this menu leaving our screen chock full of text and only a slim progress bar at the bottom to give us an idea how far we are along in our read.
Now for the fun bit: Press the Address Book button and a dotted line begins decending the screen, a virtual page flip in progess pacing your reading. Too fast you say? Tap the down arrow a few times. Want it faster? Just tap up until you are zipping along. I find myself automatically adjusting the speed as I read and punching the Address Book button when I take a break to rest my eyes. Once out of the auto scroll mode the up and down buttons move up and down a page at a time but I find myself tapping the top or bottom half of the screen with my fingernail quite naturally.
Overall Weasel Reader is an excellent piece of software I've gotten many hours of enjoyment from. Enjoy!
I have two wonderful recommendations for you
First, the M100, which can be had on ebay for incredibly cheap. This is crappy little PDA that does just about everything you need. no this isn't a contradiciton.
It's slow, clunky, and has a low res screen. That screen is only good for showing text, and maybe a calendar.
This is where the catch comes in. That's all you need. The res is perfectly comfortable for reading books (I've read over 15 books on the M100) and the indiglo backlight is unoffensive to the eyes. You can also read the the LCD in bright sunlight, and two AAA batteries last about 3 months due to the low res LCD and lack of an "all-the-time" backlight
Second - the tungsten E. If you NEED new features like high-res (the icons do look prettier, but that's about it,) the ability to run ScummVM, and want to play MP3's, this little $200 workhorse is amazing. The USB interface and SD card make it great for carrying virually the whole gutenberg library with you. The tungsten E is hard to see in bright sunling, however, and the built in recharable battery runs out in a day or two of normal use.
If you're reading books, don't pay more that $200 for this, and get your hands on plucker.
-Eric Skiff
http://www.glitchnyc.com
Be very wary of the Zire series though, not all of them have backlights. Find a used Clié or M515 instead, for around the same price.