Slashdot Mirror
Seeking a Good eBook Reading Device?
Quimbly asks: "I'm an avid reader, and I find that downloading books is much more convenient that trying to get them from the bookstore or library. However, I'm tired of sitting in front of a monitor to do my reading. I'm looking for a hand-held device to do my reading on, and I'm hoping the community has some suggestions.
It seems to me that most PDAs have too small of a screen for convenient reading, and a notebook / tablet computer is too big and bulky for this simple task. So, I've been looking at a few devices designed specifically for eBook reading (e.g. the RCA REB1100, the eBookwise-1150, etc.). These look more promising, but I was disappointed to discover that the RCA device ONLY reads an encrypted, propriety eBook format, making it essentially useless. (Has anyone ever hacked one of these?) Similarly, I believe both of these devices have been discontinued by their manufacturers. I want a device that can read a variety of file formats, especially scanned, non-text PDFs. A large screen, long battery life, and good interface are other attributes I'm looking for."
I have a PDA that I used to read books on, and then an iPod that I used to read books on. Then I discovered book folds.
Print that sucker out. Our campus labs use Word which does two things I've never figured out how to replace on Linux:
1) Text editing on linux (as far as I can tell) only does things line by line. In Word I can treat the whole document as one big string which makes converting a Project Gutenburg text to a sensibly formatted document involve 3 find&replace commands. (newline to |, || to newline, | to space)
2) Book fold printing. I put the text at a <8pt font (i can read at 4pt), give it 0.2" margins, and set the page as a book fold of 12 pages. It prints out double sided and I simple fold every three pages together to create a physical book. The latest Harry Potter book cost me 35 pages which folded down into a neat little booklet I can fit in my interior coat pocket.
Direct away from face when opening.
The e-book readers that you can actually buy are always too large and heavy. Just punt and get the very cheapest Pocket PC you can find running Windows Mobile 2003 and has a QVGA screen. The web browser and MS Reader will use the full VGA 480x640 resolution with font smoothing turned on and you can rotate it into landscape mode. Curiously enough you will need to download a hack to keep the font smoothing turned on in landscape mode.
If you want to use Tome Reader or Adobe Acrobat Reader you can download the SVGA hack that forces the entire system into VGA mode (normally it's in QVGA which is pixel-quadrupled mode). I suspect at least Adobe will have a VGA-compatible reader soon. I know that AvantGo will not.
Total cost will be way cheaper than any dedicated e-book reader and you have the choice of Tome Reader, MS Reader, Adobe Acrobat Reader, HTML browser, eDoc, MS Word, and any other format you can think of.
You might also consider a PalmOS PDA, but in order to get on that is fast enough and has high enough resolution you will be way beyond the cost of a perfectly suited Pocket PC.
Kriston
Interesting topic! You might want to browse through Mobileread which is discussing the pro and con of e-books and e-book devices in every possible way.
also libraries are useful creatures, and utilizing them helps convince those who fund them to continue to do so.
.
. hmmm