Give It A Credible Ebook Reader And You'll Sell A Ton.

[Clad]

Just download them from http://www.gutenberg.org already. It's both simple and legal, what more could you ask ?

Only 75+ years old books, but that's still enough interesting stuff to read for a lifetime.

Alexandre Dumas rocks !

 

[DeadlyDad]

You can also get lots from the Baen Free Library. That, plus my Palm VIIx, has given me many a pleasant hour, whether I'm in bed, on the bus, or just waiting for a 300MB download to finish.

 

[Karel Jansens]

You scan your books? I just download them in plain text from search results on isohunt.

I own a lot of junky scifi that is surprisingly hard to find in electronic form.

You can also get lots from the Baen Free Library. That, plus my Palm VIIx, has given me many a pleasant hour, whether I'm in bed, on the bus, or just waiting for a 300MB download to finish.



Jim Baen was god!

(Come to think of it, that's the kind of sentence he'd have appreciated B) )

 

[cowai]

i also heard that if you stare at a screen for too long, your eyes will go square!

XOMG!!!!! IS DHAT DHA TROOTH!!!!!!!!11!!?

 

[prairiefire]

it's fact.

 

[Amon_Re]

Hear me out...

While they're both niche interests I'm guessing there are probably as many people reading ebooks as there are playing emulated videogames. If you check out http://www.teleread.org/blog/ you'll find a substantial community of people looking for the perfect ebook reader. If you can include an ebook reader with a long battery life, that allows annotations, has a built in dictionary, and reads a variety of ebook standards it ticks most of the boxes they're looking for. Going against you is the size of the screen but the Palm TX is another favoured ebook reader so it's not the end of the world.

Since you're going with linux perhaps you could port Fbreader to it.

Anyway, just saying.



What's the use of an "eBook" reader? I never fully understood the appeal of this, can someone enlighten me as to why i'd want to use an eBook reader?

 

[Karel Jansens]

What's the use of an "eBook" reader? I never fully understood the appeal of this, can someone enlighten me as to why i'd want to use an eBook reader?

For one, you can have 1,000 books in your pocket -- and read them.
Drawback is the lower resolution of screens compared to paper, but this 4.3" 800x480 has a resolution of over 200 dpi (the Nokia N800's slightly smaller screen is even better), which makes for a very palatable reading experience. Also, reading in bed with a backlit device tends to be rather good for your relation with your significant other. :rolleyes:

e-Ink screens have similar resolutions and much better battery efficiency, but they don't have backlights (yet?) and the slow refresh rates can be slightly annoying. And of course, a dedicated e-Ink reader really suxx at playing games...

 

[sephiroth111]

Since you're going with linux perhaps you could port Fbreader to it.
This is only a matter of recompilation. And maybe not even that, considering there is a debian ARM package for it.Fbreader requires an X server AND a GUI toolkit : Qt, GTK or Qtopia. We already have X for GP2x thanks to Orkie and ParkyDR. But Qt and GTK are almost impossible to cross-compile, I've been trying for all day ! :angry:
It's nearly done for wxWidgets, I'll try Qtopia soon. Anyway, X+GUI+Fbreader = lots of power required ! :gp2x

try checking out the openmoko GTK+ toolkit, it was made awhile ago and hopefully should be stable enough for every day use

http://www.openmoko.com

somehow QT takes a lot more processing power, and it's apparently filled with bloat.

 

[sephiroth111]

But the Pandora would make a far better comic book reader than the Kindle, which probably can barely legibly display those low quality black and white strips from the newspaper.

actually i've used sony's model. that E-reader. it's pretty badass, and i want one personally.

 

[teggun]

that E-reader. it's pretty badass

 

[dadioflex]

Sounds great I think 800x480 would be enough for that, being able to scroll down you may see about half an A4 style page at once, you think?

EDIT: I just realised I'm kinda hijacking the thread here in a way.. sorry about that dadioflex. I wont mention it any more

No problem, I'd like a comic book reader too but I suspect the screen will be too small to read the speech bubbles.

As for why you'd ever want an e-book reader.... some people get it and some don't. I currently use a Palm TX with Palmfiction reading software that lets me set an automatic scroll speed so I can mount it on the front of my cross-trainer while I'm exercising. Makes the time fly by. I lost 40 pounds since the summer ended and I put a big proportion of that down to being able to stick at the exercise because it was relatively "painless" for me. (I've since put about half of that back on over Xmas but I'll start back being healthy next week...)

Since the auto-scrolling is so important for me the current crop of passive screen dedicated e-book readers are more or less dead to me. They can't scroll text. I also think they're too big. Too much of a push to make them feel and look like books, which is understandable, but misses the point that you can't just slip them into a pocket. The biggest e-book market in the world right now is in Japan and it's almost exclusively on mobile phones.

As for the damaging effects of staring at a screen for too long. It's probably true, but don't forget that before screens it was books that were blamed for ruining people's eyesight. Getting back to the TX, I turn the brightness down to minimum and read grey text off a black background to minimize the glare. I'm so used to it now that most web-pages seem far too bright on my computer screen. I actually find myself high-lighting black on white text to make it more pleasant to read. But some people will tell you that reading white text off a dark background is a sin. Each to their own.

And finally, why I like e-books - have you ever tried to read a really big hardback in bed? It's like wrestling with a sack full of bricks. Well it's awkward anyway. I have the collected Thomas Covenant stories in two softback volumes at about 1500 pages each. They're just not pleasant to read. Actually no matter how you read them they're not pleasant but that's another story.

Incidentally, I have FBReader on my eeepc and don't see a way to get it to autoscroll. Any other Linux ereaders out there?

 

[Karel Jansens]

Incidentally, I have FBReader on my eeepc and don't see a way to get it to autoscroll. Any other Linux ereaders out there?

Autoscrolling is on FBreader's todo list. Keep an eye out for new versions.

 

[dadioflex]

Incidentally, I have FBReader on my eeepc and don't see a way to get it to autoscroll. Any other Linux ereaders out there?

Autoscrolling is on FBreader's todo list. Keep an eye out for new versions.


Ah thanks for letting me know. That's excellent news!