[Menneisyys]

Originally Posted by xendula

If I need to do a lot of reading I usually just save everything into a lit-book. Other than that, html still seems to be the best option.

IMHO .LIT is the worst option because of many facts:

- no zoomable pics (as opposed to both uBook and, particularly, Mobipocket Reader)
- lame reader (no built-in landscape, long boot-up time with large libraries etc)
- HTML-based with a non-sophisticated, non-block-based unpacking algorithm (as opposed to both uBook and, particularly, Mobipocket Reader - the latter uses 4k blocks, so its memory consumtion is always very small, even with 100-200 MByte compressed HTML input)

Some 1.5 years ago I've written some stuff about E-book readers. The library I've developed is designed to work with Mobipocket's MWC, but the article itself has a lot of info on E-readers too. Check it out at http://menneisyys.freeweb.hu/mwc . Please note that the article hasn't been updated for 1.5 years ("fortunately", not much has been changed in the meantime, MS Reader-wise) and is a bit messy, but may still have some interesting info.

[Menneisyys]

Originally Posted by xendula

If I need to do a lot of reading I usually just save everything into a lit-book. Other than that, html still seems to be the best option.

IMHO .LIT is the worst option because of many facts:

- no zoomable pics (as opposed to both uBook and, particularly, Mobipocket Reader)
- lame reader (no built-in landscape, long boot-up time with large libraries etc)
- HTML-based with a non-sophisticated, non-block-based unpacking algorithm (as opposed to both uBook and, particularly, Mobipocket Reader - the latter uses 4k blocks, so its memory consumtion is always very small, even with 100-200 MByte compressed HTML input)

Some 1.5 years ago I've written some stuff about E-book readers. The library I've developed is designed to work with Mobipocket's MWC, but the article itself has a lot of info on E-readers too. Check it out at http://menneisyys.freeweb.hu/mwc . Please note that the article hasn't been updated for 1.5 years ("fortunately", not much has been changed in the meantime, MS Reader-wise) and is a bit messy, but may still have some interesting info.

[Menneisyys]

Originally Posted by xendula

Same here. PDFs don't even really seem to be made for screens, as the pages correspond paper pages rather than screen pages.

True for QVGA machines. On VGA machines, in Landscape and using fine-tuned manual zooming, most books I've tried are very well readable. Up to now, I've used RepliGo a lot but now that I have a decent VGA PDA (PL720), I barely convert anything to RepliGo.

Furthermore, I've managed to shave off quite a bit of the Acrobat Reader 2.0 memory consumption. Just remove all the 4 API files (they take 2.7Mbytes!) in the /plugin directory - it's very rarely that you would need them. Most PDF books don't use them at all.

[ChristopherTD]

FWIW, the latest version of MS Reader does have zoomable image support...

[Menneisyys]

Originally Posted by ChristopherTD

FWIW, the latest version of MS Reader does have zoomable image support...

Thanks, that's great news. Hope it's as good as that of Mobi, pic dragging-wise.

[hpf]

Originally Posted by Kurt Hunciker

I just spent an hour attempting to read an ebook I purchased from Fictionwise with Acroabt Reader for Pocket PC 2.0. All I can say is that, after a highly frustrating experience, I realized that it is impossilble.

...

Now, you can ask Fictionwise tech guys to give you the eBook in Mobipocket format... you are sure you will be able to read it on your PDA.

[Ketsugi]

My university lecturers like to release lecture notes in PDF format (especially my Japanese language notes), and being able to pull up the notes wirelessly on my Pocket PC is always great, even when I have my laptop sitting in my bag next to me.