eBooks

I have been thinking about buying an eBook reader for several years, but only now are there some reasonable choices available. I am considering two possibilities, the Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook Color. The Kindle is light with a long battery life but at first glance appears to be tied to the Amazon store with its proprietary format. The Nook Color is only a little more expensive, a similar size but heavier with a shorter battery life. It can display books and magazines in full colour and has some of the other capabilities of devices such as the ePad but at a lot lower price.

I would be interested in any comments on these or other readers, particularly on where to buy them from the Philippines.

In my research I have found a free programme called Calibre, described as an eBook manager. You tell it the device you are using, download an eBook in an unsupported format and it will automatically convert it to one you can read. Take a look at the demo video here http://calibre-ebook.com/. It will also do other interesting things as well.

Colin

[GregW]

Colin I like the Sony E-Reader although the Nook Color is also quite nice.  I will probably buy one soon.  I agree with what you say about Kindle and Amazon.  I buy from Google Books and Kindle is not compatible with that anyway.  What I really like about Google Books is I can read them on my pc, on a compatible e-reader and also on my android phone.  My pages are always bookmarked so I can pick up where I left off no matter what I device I am using.  Life is good.

Here is the Sony web page for the E-Reader if you want to check it out.

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=8198552921644523779&XID=O:sony%20eReader:dg_read_gglsrch:Rea_Rea_freeship#/heroPocketReader

I bought a CD of Ebay with 15,000 e-books on, cost about $10. The only problem was the youngest book was older than me.  Some interesting old classics there.

There are millions of free downloads on-line, and converters are freely available too. I use my mini laptop to read them, like a Kindle, just clumsier.

[dylanaz]

I have no source for those and wish I did... locally...

I have been eyeing the local cdrking and found this.. very tempted on my last few visits there:


Reads the folloing format of ebooks: TXT, PDF, EPUB, FB2
Also suports:
Audio: MP3, WMA, OGG, APE, FLAC, AAC, WAV, AC3
Image: JPG, JPEG, BMP, GIF, support scale photo viewing, support lantern slide
Video: MKV, AVI, RM, RMVB, MP4, MOV, VOB, DAT, FLV, 3GP, Support H.264 code
Support: 720P video player
Flash: 2G
Card Reader: TF Card, up to 16GB




NOTE: Not nearly as good for ebook reading as the western products but this is a readily available local alternative if you have no other choice.

7\" version 4k

5\" version 3k pesos

Colin I like the Sony E-Reader although the Nook Color is also quite nice.  I will probably buy one soon.  I agree with what you say about Kindle and Amazon.  I buy from Google Books and Kindle is not compatible with that anyway.  What I really like about Google Books is I can read them on my pc, on a compatible e-reader and also on my android phone.  My pages are always bookmarked so I can pick up where I left off no matter what I device I am using.  Life is good.

Here is the Sony web page for the E-Reader if you want to check it out.

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=8198552921644523779&XID=O:sony%20eReader:dg_read_gglsrch:Rea_Rea_freeship#/heroPocketReader

Greg, the Sony E-Reader is monochrome like the Kindle and plain nook, all good if you do a lot of traveling and have no interest in colour books or magazines.

If you download the free Calibre programme, you seem to be able to convert any format to any other, I have only tried a .mobi to a .epub and that looked the same. This allows to to read the many millions of free downloads from the internet. It also has a built in e-reader which allows you to read any format on your PC, this could be a good option for newspapers and magazines, although I have not tried it yet. If you are happy with reading on your PC, then you don\'t need an independent eBook reader. I like to read in bed and I don\'t fancy taking my 19\" CRT monitor with me 

You can also download an android version of Calibre, and as the Nook Color has a base android operating system and Wi-Fi ability, it may be possible to work directly on that.

Colin

[starrt]

The \"free\" books that are available at most sites are books on which the copyright has expired.
This link explains it all:
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

I have the Kobo, which is available through Canadian book stores. The one advantage is that it is not the same format as the Kindle, so I can download and read most everything. It also allows PDF files to be installed and read.

Good luck in your search for a reader in the Philippines, but, worse case scenario, get somebody to buy it for you in North America or Europe and have them ship it to you.

The \"free\" books that are available at most sites are books on which the copyright has expired.
This link explains it all:
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

I have the Kobo, which is available through Canadian book stores. The one advantage is that it is not the same format as the Kindle, so I can download and read most everything. It also allows PDF files to be installed and read.

Good luck in your search for a reader in the Philippines, but, worse case scenario, get somebody to buy it for you in North America or Europe and have them ship it to you.

I tried to download the Jungle Book from the Gutenberg site but it failed 

The Kobo seems to rely on the epub format which is probably on of the most useful ones, but not supported by the Kindle.  I have used Calibre to convert to it from .lit, .mobi and .rtf, but it does not seem to like .doc files. MS Word will convert them to .rtf so I will try that later.

I am planning to try out www.pobox.ph to get a BN Nook Color from the US. Their minimum size is a total dimension of 43\" so I may add a few extra goodies to make best use of the $30 shipping.

Colin

[RUFUS]

Reading???...Bahhh
I\'ll wait for the movie...lol

Reading???...Bahhh
I\'ll wait for the movie...lol

Never as good as the book

Colin

[Oztravels]

The ipad makes a brilliant ereader. You have to install several readers though. (Kindle, Stanza etc).

I just downloaded 987 ebooks (Torrent  . that will keep us going for a while 

David

[coutts00]

I have about 5000 books to read, and use stanza for all of my reading these days, it can natively handle almost all of the formats without requiring a converter.

[dylanaz]

The ipad makes a brilliant ereader. You have to install several readers though. (Kindle, Stanza etc).

I just downloaded 987 ebooks (Torrent  . that will keep us going for a while 

David

987 books ! WOW !

May as well get the whole gutenberg offerings as well .. over 30 thousand or so... saved to your hard drive !

I just may have to take you up on that iPad suggestion of yours... sounds like a nifty little gadget you have there and it is VERY popular in the Philippines now that Apple has its own online store here...

Thanks for the reminder to buy that new one with built in camera scheduled to be released soon !

[Oztravels]

Apple store?? I had no idea they were online here! Thanks for that. The delivery policy will be interesting reading. I have been an apple nerd for years and years. jailbreaking iphones, apple tv ipad etc.....etc. Starting to get hard keeping up but its a good time waster. thanks for the heads up

Cheers

David (Bohol)

I have no source for those and wish I did... locally...

I have been eyeing the local cdrking and found this.. very tempted on my last few visits there:


Reads the folloing format of ebooks: TXT, PDF, EPUB, FB2
Also suports:
Audio: MP3, WMA, OGG, APE, FLAC, AAC, WAV, AC3
Image: JPG, JPEG, BMP, GIF, support scale photo viewing, support lantern slide
Video: MKV, AVI, RM, RMVB, MP4, MOV, VOB, DAT, FLV, 3GP, Support H.264 code
Support: 720P video player
Flash: 2G
Card Reader: TF Card, up to 16GB




NOTE: Not nearly as good for ebook reading as the western products but this is a readily available local alternative if you have no other choice.

7\" version 4k

5\" version 3k pesos

I was considering buying the CDR-King eBook reader until I read this review http://charles-tan.blogspot.com/2011/02/review-cd-r-king-sb-96-7-inches-tft.html. I seems that the EPUB format does not work, l have not seen anything in FB2 leaving only TXT and PDB. The PDB is only OK for simple text, not complex things with lots of illustrations. I can view complex magazines in PDB on Calibre so this seems to be another failing of this eReader. The music and photos seem to work well, so it is an inexpensive device if that is your interest, but it is not a good eBook reader.

The blog site above has a lot of interesting links to Philippine books and authors.

Colin

[dylanaz]

... I seems that the EPUB format does not work,...

I will add this to my TODO list. The article noted they had to actually run widows update to get it to sync with the pc...

Thats understandable being that windows can not recognize a device created after windows was created unless you run an update - but the author was annoyed by that.

After I saw that from the article writer - I think he just got stumped.... or so I HOPE !

I will take a memory card to CDRKing and test it out on a few epubs.... when.. I find  a CDRKING that does not have a 30 minute or longer waiting line ...