My Journey into ebooks-land

[jumpuphigh]

I just posted in my journal the journey I took from not wanting a reader to shivering in anticipation of it arriving via FedEx.  I saw quite a few readers in the process and I give my opinion on them.

ereaders ho!

Comments

[tameiki]

Thanks to babaca, she's the one who sold me on ebook readers. One of the main things that sold me on Sony's is that, if I remember correctly, it's the only one that will take WORD documents as well as just about all the other formats. One downside, which doesn't bother me at all, is that the formatting in PDF goes a little wonky as you increase font size.

The added benefit, too, is the ability to be able to use external memory to increase the amount of ebooks you can have with you at one time. *grins*

All in all, I've now gotten no less than five people around me to change their minds about what a wonderful thing ebook readers are :)

[jumpuphigh]

I'm already starting to think about using SD cards to organize my library. Do I want to read SF/Fan today while at the dog park? Grab that card and go.

[tameiki]

SD cards are the best. They make it so easy to just drag and drop everything you want to read and take it all with you :)

[elf]

Sonys take RTFs, not DOCs. (They advertise that they take DOCs. What they mean is "our software will convert DOC files to formats our devices can read." Which Calibre can do for a lot more filetypes than Sony's proprietary software.) And Sony ereaders don't show the pictures on RTF files.

The Jinke brands (EZReader in the US; different names in other countries) and I think Netronix take DOCs in addition to RTFs, and they show the pictures. (There's other issues, price being high among them, and they don't offer touchscreen devices. But I really like the EZReader Pocket Pro.) And they natively support HTML so it doesn't need converting.

Many of the "small" brands offer a lot more filetype support than the "big" readers that are pushing connection to their ebook store much more than ability to load your own content.

[tameiki]

Actually, I believe they do take .doc format as I've dragged and dropped WORD documents saved as WORD docs without converting into any other format onto my SD card and it reads them very well :)

[elf]

My PRS-505 doesn't read .doc; I've often gotten frustrated loading files to it and forgetting to save them as .rtf. It's great that the newer models have changed that!

I hadn't known. Their adverts have always said they read .doc; they meant "just throw them in our handy interface program, and when you export to your reader, it'll be ready for you!" Of course, it would be .lrf at first and now .epub, so you couldn't easily go in and fix things if you wanted too.

[tameiki]

How strange that your PRS 505 doesn't read .doc when my PRS 500 does. So does the PRS 600, 700 and Pocket edition. Well, mine do anyway. When there is a file saved as .doc, the only bad thing is that, when you're looking at the title, the words:

MICROSOFT WORD

always comes in front of the title so title and author get cut off. Don't know how to change that in the file, but otherwise, the .docs work very well.

Their adverts have always said they read .doc; they meant "just throw them in our handy interface program, and when you export to your reader, it'll be ready for you!"

Maybe that's why your PRS 505 won't take .doc files? I just take out my SD card and drag and drop the .docs I want then replace the memory card. I have no idea how to go about using their "handy interface program"... maybe being technically challenged is a good thing. XD

[elf]

I don't use their program, and almost never use Calibre. I use Windows to drag-and-drop files into my SD card. It reads rtf, but not doc; I've been caught out on the train, going to open a file I *know* I loaded, and then realizing I must not have grabbed the rtf version. (RTFs show up as whatever I've put in the Properties field for title, or by filename if I've left it blank.)

Huh. Firmware weirdness, I suppose.