On 8 Jun 2005, at 22:29, Marcello Perathoner wrote:

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?

[snip]

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?

I am afraid you haven't missed much. There are a few devices that have been developed specifically for reading ebooks, notably the Sony Librie (<http://www.sony.jp/products/Consumer/LIBRIE/>) and the Ebookwise 1150 (<http://www.ebookwise.com/servlet/mw?t=book&bi=27007&si=43>). But as you noted:

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.

However, since you don't mind asking Project Gutenberg, which produces very raw and unadorned ebooks, you probably do not mind having to put in some extra work. Both the Librie and the Ebookwise can handle other formats once you have made a conversion step.

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.

A Play Station Portable may approach what you are looking for; I am not sure how well developed interfaces for DVD portables are. There used to be a small computer somewhere halfway between a PDA and a notebook that sounded promising, with wireless ethernet, sub 1-kg weight, 7 inch screen (VGA), and 11 hours of battery life. It was called the Psion Netbook, and it was pretty much stillborn. But the folks at The Register liked it (<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/09/09/i_have_seen_the_future/>) and to me it always sounded like a good ebook reading device. Psion followed it up with the Netbook Pro, which is way too heavy. If I were you, I would focus on the device first, and only then look if there is conversion software available. -- branko collin collin@xs4all.nl