PDF reader?
- Thread starter LordOpie
- Start date
For reading books, you mean?
Your limit is mostly going to be screen size. If you don't want to spend some bucks, you're going to end up with a small screen. You can buy an inexpensive PDA (even a used one) for not much money and you'll be able to read PDF files off of it... but you'll have to read them off a saltine.
I took books and short stories to class on an old Palm Pilot I had... It worked fine. Like I said, though, small screen.
You could look for a portable DVD player with PDF support. If you want to take the long way around, virtually all portable DVD players support JPG, and you could just export your PDF as a JPG file.
It's very uncomfortable to read off of a backlit screen for more than very short periods. The PDA I had was one of the old style Palm Pilots with the grayscale screen that was not backlit. Unfortunately, if you want to persue something like that in a larger size, you're looking at dedicated portable book appliances which are extremely expensive (example).
Maybe look for an old Windows CE palmtop computer on eBay?
Your limit is mostly going to be screen size. If you don't want to spend some bucks, you're going to end up with a small screen. You can buy an inexpensive PDA (even a used one) for not much money and you'll be able to read PDF files off of it... but you'll have to read them off a saltine.
I took books and short stories to class on an old Palm Pilot I had... It worked fine. Like I said, though, small screen.
You could look for a portable DVD player with PDF support. If you want to take the long way around, virtually all portable DVD players support JPG, and you could just export your PDF as a JPG file.
It's very uncomfortable to read off of a backlit screen for more than very short periods. The PDA I had was one of the old style Palm Pilots with the grayscale screen that was not backlit. Unfortunately, if you want to persue something like that in a larger size, you're looking at dedicated portable book appliances which are extremely expensive (example).
Maybe look for an old Windows CE palmtop computer on eBay?
There are a few companies offering eBook platforms soon/now:
http://www.engadget.com/search/?q=ebook
They don't seem that cheap though...
I don't think they will succeed in the US (Franklin and others didn't in the past).
http://www.engadget.com/search/?q=ebook
They don't seem that cheap though...
I don't think they will succeed in the US (Franklin and others didn't in the past).
very good to know!
Cool, that's what I'll look for if I get one.
The impetus for this was... I left a library book on an airplane this weekend
It'll probably cost me $15-20, so no big deal, but the other factor was, I took two books with me that were from authors I hadn't read yet, they both sucked. So I had nothing substantive to read all weekend. I figured a eBook reader could hold dozens of books?I'm dl'ing a torrent that has 1400 BOOKS in it with the likes of Asimov to Zelazny. So I figure there's gotta be dozens I haven't read that would be good.
But I don't want to pay $400+ for a dedicated reader like the ones in Syd's link
Well... I should have clarified. You may find it to be uncomfortable to read off backlit screens for long periods of time. If you can read comfortably on your computer monitor, then you might have no trouble with other backlit screens. I can read off computer monitors quite easily but I can't sink into a book because I feel the need to glance away a lot and it's always slightly uncomfortable for me.
This is coming from someone who loves to read, by the way, and really wanted to be able to read free eBooks so it's not like I didn't give it a fair shot. It's just so much easier to read paper. I'd like to see some of these ePaper book readers, but they're way too much money right now.
The palmtop computers will be backlit, of course, but that may be your best compromise between a tiny little PDA, and an expensive eBook reader or portable media player.
How many books it will hold will vary greatly depending on internal storage. If whatever you get supports USB drives or flash memory, of course, you're golden and are only limited by the number/size of the flash drives.
This is coming from someone who loves to read, by the way, and really wanted to be able to read free eBooks so it's not like I didn't give it a fair shot. It's just so much easier to read paper. I'd like to see some of these ePaper book readers, but they're way too much money right now.
The palmtop computers will be backlit, of course, but that may be your best compromise between a tiny little PDA, and an expensive eBook reader or portable media player.
How many books it will hold will vary greatly depending on internal storage. If whatever you get supports USB drives or flash memory, of course, you're golden and are only limited by the number/size of the flash drives.
I remember there was a fad were they had a few automatic speed readers programs that flashed one word at a time and it was quite easy for the average person to use it - 2000 wpm was easy after only minutes. Too bad that never caught on. I used it when I was in HS and information retention was fine with that reader on material I was tested on. They were going to expand it to other programs on the computer like email, etc but it never took off.
Ugh, I would frickin' hate that for reading for pleasure.