[clue-talk] ereaders

[Dennis J Perkins]

I decided to buy an ereader.  I chose Sony over the Kindle.  I was able
to use it on my trip to Salt Lake City, and it is convenient.

I haven't bought any ebooks yet.  I will at some point, but Baen Books
has a few free sf books, and there are public domain books too.

I have a few comments about the ereaders after using mine.

Some PDFs don't rescale well.  Embedded images might not be visible.
The Sony has five different font sizes, and some PDF's rescale, others
don't.

The ereader looks like a USB storage device, so I have copied books to
it using Linux.  Sony's ereader loading program is Windows only, and it
is slightly buggy.  There is a Linux alternative called Calibre.  I
haven't tried it yet, but it looks good.  Maybe Calibre can reformat
PDFs to a format appropriate to the Sony and Kindle.

I do wonder what affect ereaders will ultimately have on bookstores.
Fiction books seem to be the most appropriate books for ereaders due to
the screen size.  Larger books might not always reformat well.

Will bookstores provide ebooks as an alternative to paper books?  Will
they provide readers to let people browse?  If ereaders become
mainstream, will most bookstores disappear like music and movie stores?
I hope not.  I like to browse thru a book before buying.

Some people tout ebooks as a way to save trees.  True, but you don't
need to recharge a book in order to read it.  Books might eventually
fall apart, but they don't suddenly fail.  Browsing is not as
convenient.