"Sunday's NYT Book Review will carry an upbeat article on e-books, complete
with mention of the New York Public Library's impressive 3,000-title
efforts...."

Good news.

 

But, as has been pointed out often, nobody really wants to sit at the computer or take the computer to bed in order to read a book.

 

Nobody is going to provide book-size ebook readers for very long unless doing so becomes financially feasible.

 

So if you don't want to read on a computer or on a PDA, I would appreciate it if anybody who can afford it would go to either eBookWise.com or FictionWise.com and spend at least $20 a month. If you don't have an ebook reader you can download Microsoft Reader to your desktop free; however, if you purchase the 1150 you will have a highly acceptable tool you can use for many years.

 

By buying all the remaining 1150s and making them available dirt cheap; transforming over 7500 ebooks, mostly proprietary, into the right format for the 1150; hiring software engineers to fix perceived problems; and hiring hardware engineers to make improved readers, FictionWise has stuck its neck so far out it looks like a giraffe. Now we need to feed that giraffe.

 

As to my complaints about the 1150, I was mistaken on most of them. Some of the changes from Rocket are definitely an improvement. For example, so far I have zorched TWO Rocket powercords because the location of the cord port is such that the cord is often bent at a right angle. The 1150's cord port is at the top, which obviates that problem. It is possible to insert bookmarks (I was just plain wrong on that earlier). It is also possible to handwrite your notes to yourself as you're reading.

 

I have only two remaining objections: First, of course, is the limited ability to use personal material; that is being worked on right now, and will be fixed as soon as possible by allowing direct USB downloading from your computer. The other, which I hadn't noticed earlier, is that there is no dictionary capability. I use that extensively in the Rocket, both English dictionary and language-to-language dictionaries. I do not know whether there is any intention of adding that.

 

I won't update again until the USB problem is remedied. But on second thought, if you have it to spare, spend $50 a month at Fictionwise and/or eBookwise. Unfortunately, $20 is my limit and I don't always have that. But I think that the combination of free ebooks from us and many other sources, and commercial ebooks, is going to be a long-range win for all of us.

 

Anne

PS--Yes, you can read at the beach if you keep your 1150 inside a ziplock plastic bag, though I wouldn't do it because the possibility of somebody stealing it or walking on it is too high. As for underwater . . . If you're underwater watch the fishies instead of reading a book. I still wouldn't read it in the bathtub, but then I never read in the bathtub anyway since I dropped a rather expensive library book into the water. AW