Does Anyone Use an eBook Device?

Vulgrin the MAD asks: "I've been interested in ebook / datapads for a while. I can't wait to get rid of all of this paper I need to lug around. While the Palm Pilot is great, I'm also looking into ebook style devices like the Rocket Ebook. Has anyone used these devices and what are your thoughts on this technology? Do you think its in prime time yet, or should we let it get settled down some more? Also, how long do you think it'll be before 90% of all works are published electronically, along with paper? "

Ebooks are limited today.

[Kefaa]

About two(?) years ago Wired Magazine did a feature on the big three at the time. I have since lost the article but I believe it was Rocketbook, Softbook and Everybook (w/Color). (Least to most expensive, with Everybook looking more like a laptop than an ebook reader)

While I can swap books with my computer, it does not take long to use the 4 megs if you have books with graphics. Rumor has it several may be looking at expanding beyond 16 megs. The difficulty is going to be the price.

If you go to the rocketbook site you can download the reader, which gives you a Rocketbook, on PC GUI. It will show you what you are into visually. While rocketbooks do not support color, they do have a very nice reading level. So much so, I do not know that color would help (other than for graphics). They do feel like a paperback and "turning" pages is slick compared to scrolling.

All this being said, you still have a limited supply of materials. You will not be getting rid of most or your manuals or books in the near future, but it is getting better. Barnes and Nobles has an ebook center as do several others. You can also go to Rocketbook's free pages and download some interesting material.

I also wonder at what point PALM or Handspring will see this as just an "add on". Not as nice to read from as a Rocketbook, but do I really need a Palm and this? (Yes, but I would like the answer to be no. Of course, I would like my laptop to weigh eight ounces and boot to one of three operating systems as needed)

Suggestion to the Ebook vendors...Add more memory and some palm functionality. If I am going to carry one, I prefer the Ebook.

Suggestions to PIM Makers ... Add more memory and look at Ebook's size, shape, and feel. We grow tired of writing in a two inch square and reading in a size 10 font, 3 inches wide.

Suggestion to reader... At least try the rocketbook and Glassbook readers. Its not the same as having a Rocket unit, but it does a fair comparison of the software.

PalmIII and Isilo

[mikegi]

I use my Palm III and iSilo (reader software available from iSilo.com) to read news and books (from Project Gutenberg) while on the bus. I also use it to store bus and train timetables.

Speech synthesizer as ebook reader

[ric_dk]

I use a speech synthesizer to "read" ebooks. This way I can read my ebooks while cycling, doing my laundry, playing worms, ... Anything that doesn't require too much concentration.

I use the "Road Runner" speech synthesizer from http://www.ostrichsoftware.com. It is the size of an MP3 player and can hold approx. 2 MB of text.
The transfer software is unfortunately windows/dos only and buggy as usual, and they have no plan of a linux port so far because "only 4 people has asked for it". But the "Road Runner" itself has an excellent userinterface and works very well.

The speech quality of speech synthesizers doesn't seem to have improved significantly over the last 10 years (I used the amiga speech device, a tape recorder and a walkman 10 years ago), but your brain can adjust to it in 2-3 hours, and then you can begin to increase the speed (Road Runner is adjustable from 150 to 600 words/minute).

Using a speech synthesizer i "read" 20-30 times as many books as before, so getting new ebooks has become a real pain. Fortunately Baen books (http://www.baen.com) has started selling ebooks at $10 for a batch of 4-5 books. They are distributed as html which I then convert to text.

I'm a bit puzzled why an ebook reader has to look and work like an ordinary book. IIRC there has been some experiments with reading text by displaying one word at the time in the middle of the screen, which gave an increase in reading speed by a factor of 2-4.
Combining that way of reading with a speech synthesizer would let you "read" with a combination of eyes and ears.
My guess is that this would let you read faster and concentrate better than with any other reading technology.

/ric

My opthamologist recommends squint-free reading

[jhritz]

I have been monitoring the eBook/datapad market as well and I have money for the first company that does it right. First and fore most, high contrast screens with great resolution are needed to make eBooks useful for reading long documents. Font choices and methods of displaying characters on the screen (like ClearType) can help this, but there is no competition between a RocketBook screen and a 2400 dpi typesetter. If someone could fix this problem, I'd probably buy one then. But...

Then, they need to be cheap. Now they are several hundred dollars, have relatively little storage and require a computer (with the exception of the SoftBook) to download books from. As cheap as a gameboy would help, but ultimately they need to be cheaper than CD jewel boxes or floppy disks so you can have dozens of them laying around and would think nothing of handing one to a friend for a weekend. Think of eBooks as physical manifestations of your file system directories. High capacity removable media that has its own display. Xerox continues their efforts to develop digital paper, but that's another thread.

Next, the tired razor and blades strategy used by (NuvoMedia, Audible, Audio Highway, etc.) which requires you to buy books only from one eBook vendor needs to give way to a business model that rewards people who use digital media by charging realistic prices that reflect the reduced distribution and near non-existent duplication costs. Instead pricing reflects the fact that the companies spend a lot of effort trying to ensure that their intellectual property rights are guaranteed even if it means that the customer loses their entire investment if the reader is lost or destroyed or the company folds.

Finally, few books are available in electronic format. I'm mystified that despite the fact that most books are written and edited electronically, they are not all available in digital format and can go "out-of-print".

As a postscript, in spite of no clear leader in this arena, Gemstar has purchased both the Rocket and Softbook products. The Everybook is still in development. It will be interesting to see what happens when the first crop of Transmeta Crusoe-powered webslates begin to hit the market.

Qvadis Reader for PalmPilot

[SlashX]

I'm an avid fan of reading books on the PalmPilot - it's not a dedicated e-book reader, but so far it's more convenient than any other device - easy to pocket, and thousands of available e-books.

Check out Qvadis [qvadis.com] for a huge collection of free e-books for the Palm, and other interesting features. My favorite PalmPilot e-book software is Qvadis Express Reader Pro [qvadis.com], a combination PC editor-viewer and Palm viewer.

No Fair Use? No Sale.

[Detritus]

I would love to have books available in digital format. If you saw the piles of books in my home, you would understand why. That said, I refuse to buy any product that tracks book purchases by user, locks the book to a single computer, or prevents the user from giving or lending the book to someone else. I should be able to buy an electronic book anonymously and do anything with it that I could do with a paper book.

I haven't seen an electronic book system that meets my requirements. The trend seems to be to push "intellectual property control" at the expense of everything else.

Got One, Its Neat, But it's Closed

[Crutcher]

This is a "Ready-for-Prime-Time" Technology (Rocket's eBook), run by a "Not-Quite-Ready" company. I own one, that I bought from a friend, but it is not an open protocol, and I can't use it unless I use their sync software on platforms they support, which should not be an issue for the purchased books, because the encryption is internall (each eBook has it's own key).

They work fine for reading material though.
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"Elegant, Commented, On Time; Pick any Two"