TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

E-book gizmos I’ve known: The Rothman version

By David Rothman

Real men read e-books only on desktops.

Some e-book pioneers felt that way. I, on the other hand, believed that desktops weren’t right—well, not unless you owned a really comfortable chair.

A tablet or handheld would have been better for my back. But resolution questions and others arose with handhelds.

So while I sampled e-books on obscure brands of IBM PC clones and looked ahead to the future and ideally a TeleRead approach, I didn’t really get serious about E for my personal enjoyment until the arrival of the Dell Axim and similar machines.

I still have trouble understanding how brave souls could live with the resolution of the early Palms or at least the nonbacklighted variety.  I myself tried and quickly spurned a Franklin Bookman, shown in the photo (mine perhaps was a different model).

Other TeleBloggers’ gizmo memories

Those are a few of my thought in response to Pond’s question about my own e-book gizmos and why I chose them. Memories fuzz up. But here are a few more impressions of the Dell—I still own my old Axim, perhaps five years old—and other gadgets now that other TeleBloggers have been writing about their own devices of yore.

See Paul Biba’s memories here; Chris Meadows’, here; Ficbot’s here. Am I leaving out anyone?

My own reasons for choosing various gadgets? They’re a mix of my needs, my budget, and my interest in seeing how e-book technology is evolving. Given my druthers, I might well have ordered a Sony PRS-700 by now because of the backlighting, despite the contrast issue (photo). But instead I’m reading off the  iPod Touch for reasons I’ll explain.

The Dell and others

And now The List–of 15 machines:

Dell Axim PDA: Addictive. I used it on everything from Doc Savage novels to Richard Harding Davis and Dickens. For encrypted books I suffered the moody Microsoft Reader; for others I used Tiny Reader, which could handle ASCII. I still own the Axim despite its fondness for skipping ahead a few pages if I’m not careful with that button on the side.

Sony Clie, PEG-SJ-22 PDA: Smaller screen but much smoother characters than the Dell. And I loved the jog wheel for changing pages. I picked up my little Clie for just over $100 at a sale and later loaned it to a friend. The prime draw of the SJ-22 was Mobipocket, which still has the best interface of all the commercial readers I’ve used, but is obnoxiously proprietary. Perhaps because Amazon owns Mobi but wants to push Kindles, the company so far won’t even release a version for the iPhone.

Cybook Gen 1: Ten-inch screen, 800X600 resolution, around 35 ounces, easy to hold, primitive PDF capabilities but Mobipocket centered.  On the positive, the Gen 1 it includes uBook built in.

Gemstar 1150: I remember this one for its ruggedness. I dropped it on a concrete driveway and it survived for a rereading of Great Expectations–and a lot more. I sold it just to raise money for other machines. Of course the screen res wasn’t so great, and I needed to convert books into the 1150’s proprietary format.

eBookwise 1150: I bought it to be able to read DRMed books from Fictionwise but luckily had second thoughts about that. The only two titles I bought, an Anne Roiphe memoir and David Plotz’s wonderful and quirk book on artificial insemination, are inaccessible to me. Not Fictionwise’s fault. The Pendergrast brothers go with DRM only because publishers and others force them to.

RCA  REB 1200 (photo):  Color version of the old Gemstar. Res could have been better, and I experienced the usual frustrations of a proprietary format.

Sony PEG-NX60 PDA: The screen was bigger than the PEG-SJ-22s, and the NX-60, too, had a wonderful jog wheel. I still own it. But guess what. I’ve had trouble using it with the more recent versions of Mobi. DRM strikes again. Too bad. I could use this one for library books.

Palm TX PDA: Like Paul, I’m a believer. The screen was big, and the TX did justice to eReader, Mobi and Palm Fiction Reader. Too bad that Palm won’t be selling TXes anymore—perhaps partly due to completion from the iPhone/iPod Touch. Frustratingly, Palm could have turned the TX into a good dedicated e-reader.

Nokia N770: I still use mine from time to time. The screen is about the size of the TX’s, and it runs FBReader beautifully. Ergonomics are great for reading if you tinker with the software settings for the button set. Of course the 770 can’t run Mobipocket or eReader, at least not without a Palm emulator.

Sony PRS-500: This one I bought for $99 at a Tiger Direct Fourth of July sale. I enjoyed the compactness but screen contrast left much to be desired, and of course Sony’s BBeB format limited my reading of modern books.

Sony PRS-505: Better screen contrast, and ePub capabilities helped. I sold it to raise money for other hardware; I hated to let it go.

DT Research Web Tablet: Nice with uBook. But thanks to DRM, Mobi was a real hassle to use on it.

Cybook Gen 3: Slim, light E Ink machine, with a wonderful “embolden” mode that can bold the characters to improve the perceived contrast and make them more readable. The page changing control, however, leaves much to be desired.

OLPC XO-1 laptop/tablet: I lost interest when OLPC didn’t show sufficient interest in child-adapting FBReader or otherwise coming up with a better reading sytem than the ones users were stuck with. I may care more about OLPC’s forthcoming machine, would could be more e-book friendly.

iPod Touch: I bought it because it was cheaper than the PRS-700 and I wanted to keep up with all the exciting new apps such as Stanza, eReader and Bookshelf. More importantly, I enjoy reading off it when I’m in the mood for a small screen. Talk about portability!