PDA vs. Ebook Reader

[jim1595]

I've slowly grown tired of the eyestrain and headaches related to reading my ebooks on my monitor, so i've decided to make the leap over to an ebook reader of some sort. As i don't know anyone who owns an ebook reader i was wondering if anyone had some suggestions as to what i should shop for. From my preliminary investigation, i've noticed that ebook readers just seem to be a specialized pda (i.e. stylus, touchscreen, layout and look), so i began to wonder if they were even worth buying judging from the much lower price of the various older pdas on the market today...

Now, my main question is whether there are any "killer" features that an ebook reader posesses that cannot be duplicated on a pda and if there are any recommenations you might have as to a specific brand and model. I'll be reading mostly .pdf files and i don't have a ton of money to spend (< $100) so you can rule out the flashy new models. Your time and opinions will be well appreciated, thank you.

[killingspree]

afaik ebook readers have much larger displays than PDAs, but with your budget i doubt that you'll get anything, which is better for your eyes than your monitor.
still i haven't done any comparisons prizewise lately, especially not on the low budget ones, sorry.

regards
steVe

[midi]

I don't think Pocket PC's can read encrypted Adobe ebooks (they can view normal pdf's without DRM, however). That being said, every ebook I've every been interested in has been available in Pocket PC Ms Reader format which is far superior anyway (ClearType==subpixel rendering, looks flat out amazing).

It may sound odd, but I think more ebooks are sold for Pocket PCs than for ebook readers, they are just a bigger market. I wonder if we could get numbers off amazon.com somehow, since they usually have both Adobe and Ms Reader versions. Anyway, most ebook readers I've seen have god awful screens (they are like palms, you get cheapness and battery life at the expensive of user experience and looking good).

[jim1595]

Interesting suggestions, i've pretty much ruled out any palm OS based PDA as they all seem to contain that box on the bottom that pretty much cuts the screen in half. I've been looking a bit at the pocket pc's mentioned as well as several ebook readers and come up with several possibilties...

Pocket PCs - Casio Cassiopeia PV-S400Plus Pocket Viewer (although maybe i'd be able to snatch up an older ipaq or toshiba if i'm lucky) - if anyone has any information on this pda i'd be very interested to hear it... it seems to be the lowest price pocket pc out there--whether that's good or bad i'm not sure yet although i'm curious as to the quality of the screen as well as the funtionality of the OS (casio os).

Ebook Readers - Franklin Ebookman or RCA REB1100 (The Franklin Rocket Ebook (EB-500) could be a steal if you find it somewhere now) - I do agree that the large screen is a plus but i was dissapointed to learn that a pdf file must be converted to html or txt before loading onto the reader.

One big question that arose during my search is about pictures as a lot of the ebooks i'd like to read contain schematic drawings and examples... Are they left out or can they be read? The comment about the larger market for the Pocket PC's over the ebook readers makes sense to me as i don't think the market has truely accepted such an expensive, single-function product when there are much cheaper, multi-function products that exist.

Anyway, thanks again for the time, and i hope this helps anyone else out there with similar questions.

[Apfelstruhdl]

I have an rocket ebook pro.

and it is definetly better than any other pda.

it is very easy to get your pdfs in the rocket format...

[jim1595]

Any idea on where to get one of those old Rocket Ebook Pro's and how many hurdles do you need to go through to change them to that proprietary format? Is it a simple program or something more tedious like the other readers seem to use? Also, how do the converted pdf's look? are they relatively similar to the source?

Currently, I'm leaning toward either the Franklin Ebookman 901 or the Casio PVS400 but i'm open to any alternatives i may have overlooked...

[Apfelstruhdl]

i've got a plugin for acrobat. it lets you directly convert pdf to html or txt or whatever.

and the ebook software can import all html and txt documents.

you can even get rid of the page numbers by cropping the pdf before using the plugin.

the plugin is called gemini (i have version 4) it is NOT free. ;p


here is a link to THE ebook page with a very good forum (ger)

http://der.nachtwaechter.net/

but it is very hard to get one. maybe some of the internet stores have some left or try ebay, but they are much to expensive there