Ebook Reading Simplified
By Phillip Gwinn
I am an avid reader of just about anything. The price of paperbacks is going through the roof. Does anyone remember the days when a hardback was ten bucks and a paperback a buck or so? That was in the 80’s. In the 90’s prices started inching up. Now, in the new millennium, book prices are through the roof. Today, we are going to look at ebooks and how to get into them on the cheap.
I made the plunge. I bought a refurbished Palm M500 on EBAY for Twenty bucks plus shipping/handling. The M500 is circa Y2k+1 or 2. It is not the cutting edge of PDA’s. But, at $20.00 all I was looking for was an eReader device. I have to say that I am very happily surprised.
The thing that really made Palm the primo handheld initially was the ability to actually write with a stylus and convert that to editable text. That is done with the Grafiti program. It turns out that alot of folks didn’t like it. I do. It took about a minute to get the concept and about ten minutes of practice to get it down cold. I’m still exploring the possibilities and will post more on it at another time.
Back to reading. Most all of the eBook formats can be loaded onto a palm. I chose the native Palm Reader since it is designed specifically for the handheld. You can find more about it at the palm one website. Another big format is Adobe’s PDF. They (Adobe) make a reader for palm. It is so cool. Between those two I will be reading for ages.
A really cool feature is that while reading you can power down the unit. When you power back up, it opens to the page you powered down on. OR, you can bookmark the page and switch to another application and come back later.
I looked at current dedicated eBook readers such as the Sony, Franklin, and Kindle. All seem to be great devices, but I am a cheapskate. Maybe in a few years when prices drop…..
Finally, if you have an ebook in text form, there is a free website where you can upload the text and it will convert it to palm doc format and download it to your computer.
Like I said, this is not the cutting edge PDA. But, my life is no longer structured by daily, weekly, monthly, and recurring events. I don’t do meetings either. So the PDA portion for me is a nice-to-have as opposed to need-to-have.
I hope this is useful information. Let me know.
Thank you for reading. I am so glad that this isn’t dying in the wilderness. My name is Phil BTW and I am a techno junkie. Worse, I am a junkie who is also cheap. So, I am always on the alert for ways to work technology and economy into my life. Check me out at http://techno-junkie.blogspot.com and please leave a comment so we can socialize.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Phillip_Gwinn
http://EzineArticles.com/?Ebook-Reading-Simplified&id=1086016
