It is of comfort to see that there are many of us in this boat. I was waiting for the release of the Que Pro Reader (http://que.com), it is a bit costly for the size of storage. The unit is the size of a legal pad and it is able to flex w/shatter proof display. My wife has a netbook from HP and if it were just the “top”/display then it would be of a format that is more desirable for reading like a book. I’ll keep checking back to see what you find. Check out the Que and let me know your thoughts on it. The Ipad size is good but then we are back to eye strain again. I have a technical library that I wish to have at my finger tips on the go.

Regards,

JCB

http://mybebook.com/6-inch-ereaders/c14/p25/bebook-neo-ereader/product_info.html

They say there it “Supports the most popular eBook formats such as: EPUB*, PDF*, TXT, HTML, RTF, MOBI, CHM, PDB, JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF (*including Adobe DRM, compatible with Adobe Digital Editions)”

The thing is, it boots up INSTANTLY, and automatically opens my book to the very page I had left it on (provided I didn’t power it all the way off – but if you know how the power button on the PSP works you’ll know that I only need to power all the way off to change the battery). No pointer/keyboard needed, I just press the rudder button to change pages. The ebook is small and handy but not as small as my PSP. I can curl up on my side in bed and read my PSP comfortably, It will fit in my inside coat pocket. It really is a fantastic ebook reader. And it can read any format I care to download. The real kicker though is that I can get about 12 hours out of a battery for my PSP (when reading, games use juice but I don’t even use it for games anymore) and the batteries are small and inexpensive, so I have 4 batteries. That means I can read for 48 hours on my PSP without charging anything, whereas I can read for about 6 hours on my netbook, which is terribly inadequate when you are on the road as much as I am.

The key is that you need to invest a bit of time in getting your PSP set up with custom firmware and then installing Bookr which is a free PDF reader for the PSP. It won’t work on newer PSPs with the newer firmware. You have to downgrade your firmware (unless you want to spend a lot of time and risk ruining your PSP, better to just pay some punk who knows what he’s doing to downgrade it for you).

Once you have bookr you can read .txt, .html, and .pdf. PDF is by far the most readable format though so I convert all my books to PDF format. The worst is when they are already in PDF format though because they probably aren’t setup for the PSP screen size and you must either have TINY text or LOTS of scrolling (not happening). I say PDF is the worst because getting things out of PDF format so that they can be properly reformatted to fit nicely on the PSP screen is troublesome. I use Amber Lit’s PDF conversion tools and that works fairly well to convert PDF to HTML.

Amber Lit also has a very nice .lit converter. So what I generally do is take my PDF or LIT file and convert to HTML. Then I import that into Open Office where I have set up a perfect template along with some nice macros to help fix line spacing, font sizes, extra page breaks and what not. So I run the macros, skim the file to make sure they didn’t miss any bad formatting issues, then export as PDF. Now I have a PDF with the exact dimensions of the PSP screen (set up to read in portrait orientation), with text that is in a comfortable font at a comfortable size. Each page fits perfectly on the screen and in Bookr a tap of the rudder changes pages (no scrolling needed).

It sounds like a a hassle but once you get a solid template and some nice macros set up, and you get the Amber Lit conversion tools, it is a pretty quick process. I only spend an hour two every couple weeks to convert a dozen or so books to my custom PSP PDF format.

@Paul, I would like to see you whip your laptop out to read a chapter or two of a new novel on a crowded Hong Kong bus…

Yes, I also have access to lots and lots of PDF ebooks. And none of the ebook readers out there could read a PDF file like a Netbook.

My search for the best PDF ebook reader is over, for now!

Happy New Year!
Thanks for the article.

I am not sure why all of a sudden it is getting so much attention. I have half a dozen email in addition to all these comments.

I do agree that e-ink is much better for reading a book, I don’t happen to agree with the refresh rates causing eye damage. I think perhaps you are confusing old tube type (CRT) with todays modern LCD display.

Yes, I did find out that in direct sunlight the screen does become hard to read, but I am not a “reading an ebook in the park” kind of guy. I spend most of my time indoors or in a moving vehicle of one kind or another.

If reading text on a normal LCD monitor were going to cause eye damage, I think the world would be full of people with eye damage because millions of people spend all day working in front of their monitors. Yes, reading text on them too.

Prices on ebook readers have come down since I wrote this in 2008, but the prices still seem rather high for a display that looks like a 19080’s gameboy and they only do one thing….

I suppose with the ultra advance black and white ink you wouldn’t want to play games or browse the web, but maybe they could at least let you read your email.

There is a reason why netbooks are the fasting growing computer market right now. They certainly are outselling ebooks. Probably because when people spend $300 they want to be able to do more than just read text.

If you read a lot of ebooks and you like to read outside in the sun, and you only want your device to read books, then you should buy a dedicated ebook reader such as Sony’s or Amazon’s Kindle.

Happy New Year everyone… It’s 2010 now! woo hoo

The reason people use ebook readers (I have a Sony myself) is for that e-ink technology. I also have a netbook, and trying to use it brings tears into my eyes. I was hoping for a review of the sony vs. the kindle vs. the new nook, but I suppose this article is a bit older.

The Sony PRS-505 can handle PDFs now, but with limitations, too. It’s good for PDFs with text, but not so much for books with color and photos. Thanks for the thoughts, though! Maybe I should try to give the netbook another shot.

I wish I had bought Ectaco Chinese eBook reader M218B which has WiFi and can read aloud the book for you and it can display Chinese besides English, http://electronics.pricegrabber.com/dictionaries-readers/Ectaco-Chinese-eBook-reader-M218B/m76935946.html.

Electronic Ink on the other hand doesn’t blink, it’s not continually refreshed and your eye can focus on it without going into microspasms just as easily as it can focus on regular ink. Netbooks are great and useful tools, but if you read a lot of books in Electronic form.. You NEED some sort of E-INK reader. Otherwise you WILL end up with headaches/eyestrain and possibly eye damage.

I am also looking at using Adobe Digital Edition for all the PDFs I have.

I think the netbook is the way to go until the Ebook readers get serious with color screens, and web browsing. There is a couple of tablets coming out in the next couple of months, but the lastest price I found was over $500. I figure my netbook will last me until those prices come down.