Anybody want to answer this one?
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Ebook Reading device?
Date: Wed, 08 Jun 2005 21:11:35 +0100
From: Robert Sutherland <robsuth(a)robsuth.plus.com>
To: webmaster(a)gutenberg.org
Being now in retirement I lately became interested in E-books and was
delighted - amazed, more like! - to discover Project Gutenberg. However, I
have been very puzzled by the apparent absence of a simple portable device
designed for reading downloaded e.books. All my searches on the internet
and my inquiries of the trade have failed to trace one. I wonder if you can
put me on track of one?
The trade just assume that a lap-top or a PDA would be quite adequate, but
neither is really suitable. I use a lap-top mostly but they are far bigger
than is required, and are far from being as portable as I am sure a
specific device could be. I have not found a PDA with a large enough screen
to provide comfortable reading - indeed, even to take the kind of
line-length used in PG, or if they do it would excessively reduce the print
size, which begins to matter as one gets older. To anyone making any
considerable use of e.books a specific device designed for the purpose
would be a distinct asset.
As far as I see from the internet, there used to be a few such devices
available but they seem to have been dedicated to special file formats used
exclusively by firms producing e.books for sale: the indications seem to be
that their efforts to establish monopolies mostly failed and their devices
ceased to be available in the market. Some at least were exclusive to USA
anyway, which would not have helped someone like myself resident in UK.
I raised this matter with one of the main UK computing magazines but they
came back only with the standard view that a PDA would do, which of course
it would not, being designed for quite different purposes. I have also
enquired of several of the main computing retailers, none of whom has shown
the slightest interest.
I feel quite surprised that nothing specific is available - have I missed
something in my researches? If I have, I'd be very grateful if you could
point me in the right direction; but if I have not, then could PG perhaps
set a spark to some manufacturer's imagination?
I thought that perhaps a modern DVD portable player might be the answer -
some very cheap models are becoming available - but from the specifications
I have seen and the advice given by retailers they are unlikely to be able
to take .txt, .rtf or .pdf files. If they did, one could simply put the
e.books onto CD or DVD as data files - although slightly bigger than
Captain Picard uses when at leisure in his quarters, a portable DVD player
would be much more convenient to use than a laptop. I am currently trying
to ascertain whether it might be possible to charge an existing model with
a program to make it compatible? One just needs .txt, .rtf and .pdf.
Yours sincerely,
Robert Sutherland
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