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Books Media Hardware

On the State of Today's eBook Readers? 24

Posted by Cliff from the still-not-catching-on-are-they dept.
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?
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On the State of Today's eBook Readers? More

On the State of Today's eBook Readers?

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  • 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.

  • PDA (Score:3, Informative)

    by eric256 ( 625188 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @04:17PM (#6206118)
    PDA's give you the ability to read most, if not all book formats. If price is the only reason to avoid them, then I would suggest searching EBay for an older model.
    Heres the current EBay listing [ebay.com] for Palms IIIc (a nice unit i've used for this in the past.) Currently there are many that are 90$ and less for the 8mb color units. :-)

    • Re:PDA (Score:4, Informative)

      by RevAaron ( 125240 ) <revaaron AT hotmail DOT com> on Sunday June 15, 2003 @05:55PM (#6206674) Homepage
      You can get brand new, very functional PDAs for around $200 now a days. The Dell Axim PocketPC X5 is such a model- and unlike the POS device, can read MS LIT format, which the majority of for-sale ebooks are offered in (along with the Adobe EBook format- which isn't readable on *any* PDA).

      I've read ebooks on my PDA for a while- starting on my Newton MP2100 and now my Jornada 720. The J720 runs vanilla Windows CE rather than PocketPC, and MS is dumb enough to have no MS LIT reader for their own platform. So, to read purchased ebooks, I use CLIT to convert from .LIT to HTML on my work windoze machine. (the J720 is my only windows machine at home) Works like a charm, and could get you reading LIT-format books on pretty much any device.

      You can also get various ebook-specific devices for cheap. At OfficeMax the otherday, I saw a FranklinBook man or something like it- it has a big screen and was on sale for $50. It can be used for playing MP3s and a bunch of PDA stuffs, but I imagine there aren't many apps out for it- but it is good for reading books. And since you can give it HTML, you can always just convert those LIT format books and pass it on...
      • Franklin Ebook Models [franklin.com] for the google impaired.

      • The adobe ebook format is readable on PalmOS, using Adobe Reader 6 on the desktop and Adobe Reader for Palm 3.0.
      • Thanks for the information about CLIT. It's a great program. Too bad I tripped the 'naughty' alarm when I did a Google search for it at work... I have to agree that a WinCE based ebook reader is about the best option and that $199 deal from Dell makes it almost irresistable. The screen on a WinCE or color PalmOS PDA is much better for text (black on white instead of almost-black on grey) and it's hard to find a color PalmOS that is less expensive than the $199 Dell WinCE product. There seems to be a gr

    • Re:PDA (Score:1)

      by R2.0 ( 532027 )
      I second that emotion. I've been scarfing down the Baen Free Library on my Palm III (That's right, 2 MB, B&W screen, uphill BOTH ways). I use the MobiPocket reader (free).

      You can change the font size to where it's quite easy to read, and it's actually *easier* to read at night with the backlit screen.

  • Funny, my iBook thinks it already qualifies... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Creosote ( 33182 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @04:58PM (#6206348) Homepage
    I recently got a new bottom-of-the-line 12-inch iBook (800Mhz, upgraded to 640MB memory) to serve as a kind of compromise between a PDA, an e-book reader, and a portable desktop computer. It handles all of those tasks admirably. Palm's Macintosh version [palmdigitalmedia.com] of the Palm reader produces wonderfully legible text.

    All in all, these days my iBook is my preferred reading device for most kinds of text. The main exception would be PDFs that are page images of print books, where the text can't be reflowed, especially when the original is in multi-column layout. But before too long (or maybe they exist already?) it should be standard for notebook computers to have screens that can snap out and be reoriented from landscape to portrait mode; that will make reading "legacy" e-text more comfortable.

  • warez (Score:2, Insightful)

    by gmhowell ( 26755 )
    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
    • Lasting 4 weeks on a single charge
    • Displaying 65536 colours with a black white contrast of at least 10.0
    • Remaining within the weight and dimensions of an A format paperback book of 250 pages.
    • Passing the bed, beach, bath test - i.e. rolled on and slept on for 8 straight hours every night for 10 years without breaking; withstanding dust and sand ingress for 10 years without breaking; remaining waterproof for 10 years without fault.
    • Cost to the consumer not exceeding £30/$50.

    then ebook readers

  • Not yet (Score:2)

    by fm6 ( 162816 )
    EBook readers have two major problems. They haven't any hope of commercial success until these problems go away.

    First problem is connectivity. EBook readers, like all network appliances, need internet connectivity. But who has internet connectivity now? Tech-savy people, or people who have friends or family who are tech-savy. Such people don't by network appliances, they buy computers or PDAs, and run the equivalent software application. Until the day comes when connecting to the internet is as easy as bu

  • Proprietary doesn't necessarily mean unusable (Score:4, Informative)

    by swillden ( 191260 ) * <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Sunday June 15, 2003 @06:22PM (#6206893) Journal

    You mentioned that the Gemstar has a proprietary format. I'm not completely certain, but I believe it uses the same format as the Rocket e-Book, which preceded it.

    Althout the Rocket book format is proprietary, it's not as limiting as you might think, since the proprietary format is basically just an HTML variant compressed in a certain way (Zipped, but with some proprietary headers) and you can download software from Gemstar that converts text and HTML into the format (it will even do a recursive web-suck and turn the result into a book for you). Further, people have reverse-engineered the format and built tools (Linux and Windows) which will allow you to do pretty much anything you like with the format, assembling and disassembling books. Well you can only disassemble them if they aren't encrypted.

    If they are, well, there's even some solutions to that, but they require disassembling and probably destroying your device to dig out the encryption keys. After you buy a replacement book, though, you can continue purchasing books that were encrypted for the old device, then decrypt them and use them on the new one, or take apart the file and convert to HTML or whatever.

    For technical books, I find the only real disadvantage of the Gemstar/Rocket books is that a lot of stuff comes in PDF format, as you mentioned.

    For fiction, lots of stuff is available on bn.com or powells.com. I just bought Ellen Ullman's "The Bug" in Rocketbook format, yesterday. Lately I've been reading a lot of stuff from Baen.com, because they sell their books in unencrypted RocketBook format. I liked a lot of their authors anyway, but thanks to the combination of their support for my favorite way of reading and their great prices, most of my book money has been going to them for the last several months.

    • Lately I've been reading a lot of stuff from Baen.com, because they sell their books in unencrypted RocketBook format

      Yes, the support for diverse formats at bean is really great - rocketbook, html, ms-reader, RTF, mobibook (Readers for Palm, WinCE, Psion). if you don't find a format you can use there you must have a REALLY weird setup.

      If you haven't done so: check out the aa href="http://www.baen.com/library/">free library with a nice selection of SF/fantasy titles available for free download - no enc

  • Well, for those who are still in school, or recently graduated, or just happen to have a TI-89, 92+, or V200 laying around, they make for excellent reading in most light and have around a meg of memory if you don't clutter them with games and whatnot (a grayscale version of Street Fighter 2 is available...and Sonic the Hedgehog) The ebook reader is available from the TICT [slashdot.org] web site, they also have a converter to convert ASCII text to they're (compressed) ebook format...
  • Regarding PDAs: The sad fact is that it's an absolute PITA to read long text on the stamp-sized displays provided by these devices.

    What I found to be fairly usable is a precursor of current tablet - PCs, the SonicBlue ProGear. Original came in Linux and Win98, but can you can also use W2k or XP. 10" 1024x768 color touchscreen, 1x USB, Wireless, Runs ~4h on a charge.

    While it's no longer in production you can stell get new units for QUITE reasonable prices. Have a look at mira2go [slashdot.org].

    IF you consider getting

  • I'm a disillusioned Rocket eBook owner. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Monday June 16, 2003 @12:39PM (#6213593) Homepage
    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.
  • I have an Intermec 6651 [intermec.com] Handheld PC. It runs Windows CE 3.0 (HPC2000, same OS as the Jornada 720), and it's great for ebooks. Its keyboard folds around behind the screen, turning it into a tablet. This combined with Mobipocket reader [mobipocket.com] makes a great ebook reader. I just flip the screen around, and touch the left or right side with my thumbs or finger to "turn pages".

    The screen is awesome, 800x480x16bit active matrix. Very bright (but of course useless in the sun).

    Google it for more info... I've seen th
  • I use a Palm IIIxe with Weasel Reader [sourceforge.net]. I like it a lot, more than a physical book in fact! (which I had not expected) It's nice not having to hold a book open to a particular page, or to need an external light source (backlit display = good). You can get an older Palm on eBay pretty cheaply (I'd recommend either getting a Palm with a built-in rechargable battery, or investing in some rechargable batteries of your own.
    • I'll second this, except I use a Handspring Visor Edge instead of an old Palm. Works great and with a little ingenuity it's not too hard to convert the Baen eBooks from the Mobipocket .prc format to ztxt (you just lose some of the formatting and the cover graphic, you gain a lot of space).

  • How long before PCs become the preferred e-book reader platform? It's already been years for some applications.

    Aircraft mechanics have been using wearable PCs for years for this sort of thing. The military has been using hardened PCs (laptops and palmtops) for years for electronic reference materials (and other uses).

    I think they still have a long way to go, but tablet PCs are a move in the right direction. Not exactly the best e-book format, but better than PDAs.

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