Best PDA To Read e-Texts On? 390
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."
look down a few posts (Score:4, Informative)
It was mentioned just a few articles back :) (Score:4, Informative)
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.)
Just mentioned on /. today... (Score:4, Informative)
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$
Why not a PDA? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Older Sony Clie models + Weasel Reader (Score:5, Informative)
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.
I love my Tungsten T|3 (Score:5, Informative)
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 [sourceforge.net] 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.
handspring visor edge (Score:2, Informative)
lots of reader software available(not sure about microsoft reader for a palm)
it's got a usb cradle for syncing/charging
fairly long battery life(no week long hikes in the mountains tho)
the screen is easy on the eyes, at least for me, and this tends for by subjective.
cheap on e-bay.
if you back off the cheap requirement get a newer palm based device, they are worth it. and some of then even play mp3s while you read
Sony CLie SJ22 (Score:5, Informative)
Jog dial is very handy for reading e-books.
I use makedocw and cspotrun to create and read files.
Sony CLIE w/ iSilo (Score:3, Informative)
check out this article as well http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000391.php for other nice clie's for ebook reading.
In comparison the TJ-37 has a somewhat irregular screen.
Love my Sony Clié - 320x320, color, memory st (Score:5, Informative)
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 [sourceforge.net] for reading Gutenberg Etexts, Mobipocket Reader [mobipocket.com] for reading etexts from Baen [baen.com] books, as well as Plucker for web clippings. I also carry along Ultralingua [ultralingua.net] 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.
Re:Tungsten T3! (Score:3, Informative)
color
much brighter
better resolution
better battery life
built in wifi
the list goes on.
Re:iBook (Score:5, Informative)
The biggest disadvantage is the loss of formatting. It's not a big deal for fiction, but technical manuals (especially with diagrams) are a no-go.
Zaurus SL5600 (Score:2, Informative)
Once you get the WiFi card for it, you can just ftp your files over to it or whatever you want to do.
Palm Tungsten T, T2, T3 (Score:5, Informative)
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
iPaq 4150 Pseudo Review (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Apple Newton or Toshiba E series (Score:2, Informative)
However, I've since moved to an e310 because of the price and the features. It's still one of the least expensive in it's class and it works extremely well for reading. I take novels with me everywhere I go now.
Tungsten E (Score:3, Informative)
About a month ago, I replaced it with a Palm Tungsten E, and it is just amazing for ebooks. The colour 320x320 screen gives very crisp easy to read text in any lighting conditions. The Tungsten also has 32 meg to store books, the 8 meg on the Visor was too limiting.
The only drawback is that the Tungsten has a built in battery that's only good for 1-2 days, so if it runs out of power of I forget to charge it, I can't use it until I get back to the computer to recharge it. The visor takes AAA's and I have a few sets of NiMH one that last about 2 weeks. By carrying a spare set, I never ran out of power, and I always had 1 set in the charger.
I read about 2 novels/week on these PDAs. Jason
ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
Baen ebooks (Score:5, Informative)
Here are some free ones to get you started:
http://www.baen.com/library/defaultTitles.htm [baen.com]
And you can buy more here:
http://www.webscription.net/ [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
franklin ebookman (Score:2, Informative)
search ebay [ebay.com], you can pick up one new with warrenty for under 50 USD last I checked.
Don't get a secondhand one, becuase if its got a fault (looses memory after you change batteries, requiring re-sync) you'll want to send it back under warrenty (franklin provide a *new* unit to replace faulty ones).
Re:No such thing? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:aging sony clie (Score:3, Informative)
Screw them (Score:3, Informative)
Just because it's in electronic format doesn't mean it has to stay. Print them out in the library while your at it.
Create those E-Books! (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.pgdp.net
USFJoseph
Re:iBook (Score:2, Informative)
Try Opie Reader. Its a powerfull ebook reader that can handle lots of formats. Press the round button on the Z and the text smoothly auto scrolls and you can change the speed.
http://www.timwentford.uklinux.net/
Re:iBook (Score:3, Informative)
My vote also goes for the Sony Clie SJ-20 (or SJ-30 if you want color.)
These also have the advantage of very good battery life on rechargable, user-replacable batteries. I get about a week of use on a single charge with mine.
Can't say if it works with MacOS but I've been using mine with Linux since the first day. I don't think I've ever synced it to a Windows box.
Tablet PCs (Score:5, Informative)
I've been doing this for years... (Score:5, Informative)
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,
Re:iBook (Score:4, Informative)
That's why most ebook readers on portable devices these days have autoscroll. I particularly like CSpotRun on my Visor for ebooks - it's also *gasp!* open-source, and reads the widespread DOC format.
Re:look down a few posts (Score:5, Informative)
The 860's (and 750 and 760, for that matter) screen is native 640x480, and is truely remarkable to look at. If he doesn't want to drop $850 on the SL-C860, the 760 is almost identical and a few hundred cheaper. Even the 750's screen is a wonder. The SL-6000 [slashdot.org] mentioned earlier today looks promising, but I'd pay the extra for the clamshell 860 over it any day.
The new Toshibas with the 640x480 screens look promising, however, since I have not used one, I cannot make a fair judgement. Also, since the Zaurus runs Linux, free software abounds. The PDF reader is quite nice, but don't go porting all of your protected ebooks over, we all know what happens when you mess with ebook protection! [slashdot.org]
iPaq, Mac OS X, ~15 books and counting (Score:2, Informative)
However, what I have done is read about 15+ full novels (both Gutenberg, as well as various Stephenson, Orson Scott Card, Doctorow, Niven, Orwell, etc) I find the display large enough, and in fact I think I read faster on the screen since the smaller than a page viewing area allows me to scan faster. Not only that, but I could read whenever possible, on the bus, in a line, walking down the street. No more wasted moments.
I also use this on a Mac running 10.3 using PocketMac Pro and sync wireless via bluetooth. It's been flawless so far. I can drop plain text documents on there, or pre-formatted lit files and even pdfs (though I find the latter too large in size compared to the former). The *best* solution I have found is to take whatever document you want (Gutenberg text, webpage), drop it into MS Word on a Windoze box with the free Reader extension (http://www.microsoft.com/reader/developers/downl
Lastly, while reading on my iPaq I can make bookmarks, highlight passages and have these show up in the MS reader on a computer or peruse through on my iPaq for favored sections.
Handera 330! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:iBook (Score:3, Informative)
Weasel Reader review (Score:5, Informative)
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!
Re:Tungsten E and M100 (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Tablet PCs (Score:5, Informative)
There's no fan. It's silent other than the occasional clicking of the hard drive. Battery life has never been a problem for me either. I just put my tablet in it's dock this morning. The battery is at 100% and the battery life remaining is 3.5 hours. My battery may be losing some of it's capacity. I remember that number being 3:45 at some point.
I've done some e-book reading on my tablet, especially when Microsoft gave away several books per week last summer. For the most part, it was fine. No worry about bookmarks, you can take notes directly on the text, easy searching capabilities, etc.
The negatives:
Sitting in bed at night is great, but if you want to read outdoors it might kind of tough. You also have to look directly at the screen to avoid glare (not an issue in a dark room). Motion's latest model has a 'view from any angle' screen that is supposed to be very nice.
I have no problem carrying my tablet to meetings at work. It's not that heavy at all. But I do find that it can suddenly seem to get heavier when you're trying to balance it on you chest to read while laying down. It's not that bad, but obviously a paperback book (or even a hardcover) can be easier to hold for long periods of time.
That's about it though as far as negatives involved with reading e-texts on a TabletPC. I've never been able to read a long book on a PDA. The tablet's screen size, quality display and Microsoft Reader make it a very pleasant experience IMO.
Pick two of the three... (Score:2, Informative)
Over the last 5 years, I've used a Palm IIIxe, a low-res b/w Clie s360, and most recently, a Zaurus 5600. Of all of them, I'd pick the s360 as the best device for ebook reading.
The palm was fine on battery life, and replaceale batteries meant you could grab a set anywhere, with NiMH AAA's doing the bulk of the work for me. The s360's battery life was still good, but not as good as the palm. Zaurus battery life, on the 5600, (which has a larger battery than the 5500), is probably 5-6 hours straight with the backlight on a low setting, and several days worth if you only use it a few hours a day.
Pros
Cons
To deal with
Overall, the Jog Dial on the Clies get's them my vote for the best. I've also used my wife's high-res color Clie SJ-22 on occasion, and it seems ok, but small for my hands. For strictly ebook purposes, I'd suggest an older Clie, either low res, or high res b/w. For a general PDA, the Zaurus is great, and the lack of a Jog Dial isn't that big of a deal.
Re:No such thing? (Score:2, Informative)
Best software I ever tried for reading is Weasel Reader, hands down. Mentioned further down.. look into it. zLib compression halves the size of your book, and on-the-fly decompression is very fast. And it's open source. It also lets you rotate your text into landscape or reverse-landscape - very convenient reading format.
Files are generated from text using a small linux program called makeztxt. I've built scripts around it to clean up, edit and compress all of my text files, and keep them organized. All of this is doable on OS X as well.
Get a memory card. Yeah, I know it's not cheap. Get one that matches your digital camera so it can serve double duty. Put all your books on that - you'll hate having to sync new books on (slow) and having to go back to your computer to get another one when you finish. Especially if you accidentally hard-reset. At the airport. :) Keep your whole library with you. Have a selection.
Don't get a non-backlit screen unless you have to. Color isn't necessary, but non-backlit screens are very hard to read in twilight conditions, even when you turn on the 'glowing text'-type lighting.
Resolution doesn't matter. You can read the letters just fine in 160x160, and the higher-res screens _seem_ to have less real estate - thus, smaller letters. The backlit screens are definitely smaller. 'Course, it's easier to see a small letter on a luminescent background than a larger letter on a gray background. Then again, backlights chew battery mercilessly.
Re:Handera 330! (Score:3, Informative)
The battery form factor is fantastic. Use cheap NiMh's, and if they die while on the road, get a set of alkalines, use them for a month, and just throw them away and go back to the rechargables.
It also has some a very nice "backup to compact flash" feature built into the ROMS, so you can back it up to compact flash, let the batteries die, and bring it back to exactly where you left it in less then 15 seconds after you slap in a new set.
It also has built in support for several 802.11 compact flash wireless cards, though that asks a lot of the batteries.
You can also power the thing through the palm universal connector (12v), which makes it a lot more flexible as something like a GPS tool (how I use it on my motorcycle).
Definately the most under appreciated palm ever built.
Sharp Zaurus (Score:3, Informative)
Then, install these apps:
The device itself runs on Linux with Trolltech's QT/Embedded, and ships that way from the factory. Although there are not yet any Linux tools to sync with the newest ROM versions (MacOS X tools may exist), there are these workarounds available:
- You can install a VNC server on the PDA to help you with data entry, and use rsync to back it up. (This is my preferred method.)
- You can re-flash the unit with any of the numerous custom ROMs out there. Check out OpenZaurus [openzaurus.org], which is a Free Software fork of the QTopia environment that comes with it. TrollTech's free QTopia Desktop is available for Linux and can sync with that, as can several other tools like KitchenSync. Or, you can check out PDAXROM [pdaxrom.org] (formerly Cacko) for a true X11-based environment.
The device does use a USB port, and can do USB Ethernet to communicate with your desktop. I prefer to use a 802.11b CF card, though. Depending on your model, it comes with either the high-power or standard battery built in. Unlike many other PDAs, the battery is user-replacable if you remove the back cover (which is held in place by a lock switch). This is a nice feature; you can have spare batteries on hand if you will be away from AC for a long time.The one requirement of yours that it will fail is price. Depending on the unit, expect to pay at least $600 (some of the higher-end ones go for that much on ebay). But this unit is much more capable than $600 units from Palm, Sony, or HP/whatever. It really does behave similarly to a laptop, given that it runs a *real* OS. A quick scan of the Zaurus Software Index [killefiz.de] will reveal all sorts of programs, and you can easily compile others (yes, you can run gcc on the Zaurus itself, too). If you look at it in that light, it's good deal.
Wizard's Bane by Rick Cook (Score:3, Informative)
It's a fun, Computer Geek Oriented Fantasy Novel, which is the start of a fun series.
Re:Try the 1910 for basic stuff & e-books (Score:3, Informative)
I was tempted by a 22xx (both cf and sd slots built in) but went for the extra features of the 5550. The 19xx is really sweet too, it fit nicely into a shirt pocket which the others wouldn't.
Not only can you get Acrobat reader for the Pocket PC, you can also get palmreader, which I prefer.
Acrobat reader is a pain, I don't like it much on a desktop but the format sucks on a qvga device - you either have to scroll sideways a lot or have microscopic (I pixel per char) text quite often. Not all pdfs are that bad but it's too much under the control of the person who made the file. Very few files look ok.
Microsoft reader is OK for legibility, but as the grandparent poster noted there'e a lot of white space and it's a bit of a mess from a usability point of view. Reasonable number of free books though, and it's fine on a windows desktop.
As I said I prefer the palmreader. Readable and no whitespace, can't remember if it autoscrolls. There's also lots of free books for this too.
I also found an encoder to turn ascii files (with optional formatting) into palm docs which is very useful with the Guttenberg texts. It can have some weird side-effects though - some books have every 'br' missing which can prove a bit disorientating until you mentally put them back. I presume these are control sequences in the raw ascii, I didn't encode these myself.
Oh and before I get flamed, I'm in the UK and wanted a Zaurus in October. If I hadn't bought the iPaq I'd still be waiting, Sharp have really not shown much interest in selling here. My next PDA might be linux based, as I'd prefer, if anyone wants to sell me one. And yes I know I can now probably put linux on the iPaq but I'm a bit wary of ending up with a silver paperweight.
Re:Palm m125 + SD card (Score:1, Informative)
The m125 comes with a USB cradle, but it does NOT charge your batteries inside the unit.
Speaking of rechargable batteries, nickel metal-hydride AAAs work very well, _if_ you install Battery Panel, which will adjust the internal voltages for different battery types. Also, it's likely you will need to insert a thin piece of cardboard behind the battery contacts on the _left_ side of the battery compartment (as viewed from the back of the unit). This will allow your rechargables to make proper contact. There is something weird about the stem length on rechargable AAAs that is different from Alkaline AAAs, and the m125 seems to be designed to make it difficult for rechargables to work right. A thin piece of cardboard as described above (like from a manila folder) does the trick.
I use the Invert Hack to make it _much_ easier to read at night (it inverts the backlight).
Plucker works very well as a reader, and its autoscroll feature works quite nicely. For reading pure text, Weasel Reader may have a slightly better-looking autoscroll, but Plucker can read _so_ much more stuff (including HTML docs). You can even hook up the autoscroll speed controls to the buttons on the Palm, so that you don't ever have to touch the screen while you're reading. With a 64MB SD card, you can store way more books than you can read in a year (and then some).
Again, the Palm m125 doesn't work well for reading textbooks, however, because of graphics limitations (160x160 screen with 4 shades of gray). Plucker will attempt to convert graphics for you, but unless they're pretty simple, they are hard to decipher.