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Originally Posted by Kevin C. Tofel
I've made the switch from MS Reader to Palm Reader and have been happy ever since. Better activation that's still fair to the publisher and more functionality in the reader. I also haven't been disappointed in the selection of books....
KCT
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I tried the free Palm reader this week, installing it on my desktop and PPC. I used a multiformat ebook from Fictionwise to test the same title on both readers. I didn't like the way text was formatted on the Palm reader. Six to nine spaces for a tab indent! It made the text look like a jejune experiment in beat poetry, especially where there was a lot of dialogue. Free titles from Univ. of VA didn't indent at all, just skipped a line between paragraphs. Maybe this quirky text formatting doesn’t bug some people, but it bugged me. The supposedly better features, like theme settings didn't impress me. I didn't like the Palm reader. I was going to buy a title from Palm Media, just to try the DRM, but that text looked so bad on the titles I tried, I decided it wasn’t worth it. Maybe the version you pay for is better.
I tried the free Mobipocket a few months ago and was also disappointed. MS Reader makes for easier and better reading, IMHO, than other readers, and that is what really counts. The activations are a pain, true, but I've never had any real trouble. Anti-DCMA or anti-DRM (or even anti-Microsoft) isn't my weltanschauung. Sorry if that upsets some people, but I'm going to say what I think. It will take more then a few activations to get me to drop MS Reader for a different program.
I noticed last week the number of activations had been increased from six to eight and that the request for more activation was down. Now the whole activation server is down for maintenance too. I think, maybe, there is an another activation requirement coming soon to thwart that unnamable conversion utility.