On Sun, 12 Sep 2010 22:24:02 +0100
Philip Stubbs <philip@???> wrote:
> I would be interested in peoples thoughts on ereaders.
>
> Ever since I first read about eink displays, I have been fascinated.
> Recently, the price has dropped to a point where I am seriously
> tempted, but I have a problem.
>
> The two that interest me the most are the Kindle from Amazon, and the
> new Sony PRS-350 due out soon. They both have the ability to display
> PDF's but only the Sony will work with industry standard ePub format,
> avoiding the lock in to Amazon with the Kindle. This would be great,
> except I have tried to run Sony's library software and Adobe's digital
> editions, and failed as they are only supported on Windows and Mac.
For me the problem has been proprietary formats for ebook readers. I
have used fbreader on my main system to read ebooks downloaded
from Baen Books in mobi format but reading books on a computer doesn't
really appeal so an ebook reader would be an improvement.
I own several hundreds of Pbooks and have no intention of giving
up buying more but have realised that proper books have a disadvantage,
they have to be held with two hands and pages turned manually.
This is not really an problem except when ones hands aren't fully
usable. I have been suffering from a condition known as trigger-finger
for some time and so far have gone through 3 minor opps to correct the
condition in both thumbs and a little finger plus a cortizone injection
in another finger.
This condition has made it painful at times for me to handle books
and I have been warned that I could be getting arthritis in the joints
which could affect my ability to handle proper books even more.
So being able to use an ebook reader could be a solution, I have even
thought that adapting something like an anglepoise lamp to hold the
reader in position should be possible if things got really bad.
I haven't handled a kindle but waterstones stock the sony readers and I
have played with those briefly, enough to realise that the eink
displays are superior to my computer screens for the task they do.
With amazon bringing the price down and presumably making their full
range of books available in the UK, the kindle has to be considered as
an option.
There are several other makes of readers, and I have seen one
alternative to the sony range in waterstones, but for now the sony
range is the best I have seen and if their prices drop as well then I
could be in the market for one.
Having a separate device for reading books fits my philosophy of
having devices that do specific jobs rather than multi-purpose devices
like these new-fangled phone thingies, (my basic mobile phone is still
switched off more than it is on)
> If I can get over my dislike of being tied to Amazon, the Kindle would
> work great as I understand that it does not need any sort of library
> software on the computer to make purchases.
I had the feeling that you had to download from their shop direct into
the reader rather than via a PC but probably have this wrong.
> What I really want is for the book publishers to get over themselves
> and remove DRM as the music industry has.
> The really stupid thing is that I will probably not purchase much
> content anyhow. There is more than enough PDF's and other content out
> there that will fill my needs.
I doubt I'll be buying many ebooks either as there is enough free
material available and as I said I don't expect to stop buying proper
books any time soon.
>
> After all that, the short question is, does anybody use an ereader and
> if so, who have you got on using it with Linux?
> P.S. I already know about Calibre :-)
I didn't so one of the first things I did after this thread started was
to 'aptitude install' it and add my small collection of ebooks to its
library.
I also used the built in reader and found it OK. Since fbreader is
currently broken (two days ago anyway) in Debian Sid I needed a usable
reader anyway.
The fact that calibre can convert between formats is potentially very
useful. On principal I wouldn't buy any drm encumbered ebooks so am
not likely to have any problems using calibre.
--
John Lewis
using Debian sid
