Kevin's Watch

Obviously most of us must be some kind of book nut or other. Im sure there was a poll on here once about who uses what (paper books or the electronic kind?) but i cant seem to find it. So i would like to know, in the line of reading books the electronic way, who uses what? Handheld, PDA, Notebook/Laptop. What do you use, does it work for you? How many books can you store on it, what file formats are we looking at and do they come in different.... well do you get dinky ones and ones that can take more of a beating?

I'd like to know.

I have a Dell Axim X50, and it's really cool. Before that I had a Palm V that gave me a lot of trouble.

I do not have one myself, but a lot of the people I work with have them. Most of them have downloaded an immense data base from the global rph website to them...so in answer to the question -- I would think you could fit a few books, at least, into your average handheld...well, maybe not huge textbooks, but normal sized novels.

I've never liked reading electronic books. Call me old fashioned.

Damelon wrote:I've never liked reading electronic books. Call me old fashioned.

Same here. There's something about reading it off a screen that just makes it harder for me to stay interested.

Partly it's that screens still have a pretty awful resolution. The average PDA screen has a resolution of something like 100 dots per inch. Books are normally typeset at 2540 dpi or higher. Also, PDA screens don't have nearly as much contrast as black ink and white paper. It's just less fatiguing to the eye to read a real book.

This will improve, but I for one don't foresee ever giving up printed books. A book doesn't need batteries. I can lend it to my friends without lending them my whole library. If I spill my tea on it, I damage some pages, but at least I don't destroy an expensive piece of equipment. And if I lose it, as sometimes happens, well, I've only lost one book.


That said, I do sometimes read books in PDF format (when I can get them). I do that at a plain old-fashioned desktop computer, because that's where my Internet connexion is. I don't have a PDA, and my laptop is so old that it hasn't got wireless access. Still, I find it very useful for the sort of books in which I want to look up specific bits of text. The search function is one thing that a paper book just can't give you.

I prefer it the old-fashioned way!
Great points, VF.

Hey, thanks for the replies. I still love reading from "real" books and like to own my own originals, but for practicality and accessability, i'd still like to look into PDA's and such.

VF, you have many points i share.

dlbpharmd wrote:I have a Dell Axim X50, and it's really cool. Before that I had a Palm V that gave me a lot of trouble.

I used to have a Palm Vx that was sweet as. All of the Vs had trouble with digitizer drift, but if you set the 'welcome' program to one of the buttons it was no trouble to recalibrate.

I read a number of books on the Vx using the excellent eBook reader ReadThemAll, which is only about 9k and has a nice adjustable autoscroll feature. I've since upgraded to the Palm Tungsten T2, which looks very cool as it is not only small and made of shiny metal, but also slides open to reveal the writing area with a satisfying 'chunk'. It's a great little gadget and as it has an SD slot can be used to play MP3s and videos. I read The Man Who Fought Alone on it, and am reading Elizabeth Moon's Speed of Dark currently. It's not quite as good for reading as the Vx was though, as the backlit screen is harder on the eyes and also makes a perceptible buzzing sound which can be annoying if you're reading in a quite place. All this is perfectly tolerable however, as I can play Lemmings on it, whenever I want.

I am completely new to handhelds, do they come standard with an "e-book reader"? What file formats do they read, can you put on different readers and if so, what formats are better to dl from places like mIRC? pdf, lit, txt, doc... etc?

Neither of mine came with a reader included. ReadThemAll is freeware, and if you buy an ebook from Palm they bundle PalmReader with it. You'll have to put up with them trying to sell you PalmReader Pro though.