05-22-2004, 09:30 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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eReader.com - The eBook Site Formerly Known As Peanut Press
http://www.ereader.com
The eBook site formerly known as Peanut Press, that then became Palm Digital Media, was purchased last fall by PalmGear. They have renamed the site eReader.com and have done a complete site redesign. The old Peanut Press and Palm Digital Media URLs still take you to the old site. I suspect they will be redirected at some point in the future to the new site.
Their ebook readers have been renamed eReader and eReader Pro. They are arguably the best readers available because they support Windows, Mac OS-X, Palm and - most importantly  - Pocket PC, they have one of the friendliest DRM methods that almost guarantees no theft is possible, protecting publishers and authors, yet users don't have to rely on complex activation schemes that can be a massive frustration when it doesn't go smoothly, and they claim to have the largest elibrary on the internet. Other than possible libraries that have thousands of old books out of copyright, I suspect they are right.
I have been a Peanut Press fan since 1999 when I first found the site and have purchased a number of books over the years. I highly recommend the site. Being able to read just about anywhere is a huge convenience and I can read for hours at night without bothering my wife by having to have a light on.
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05-22-2004, 10:29 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 120
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Wow, you found them even before I did! I've been on a crusade to replace decades and cubic meters of collected books with electronic versions, and Peanut Press just might do it for me. I started buying my books there in early 2000, and its amazing how a collection can build a few books a month for several years. The great thing is that they get new books too, and I have almost stopped buying any physical books at all. I get impatient with the bulk and also with having to turn a light on to read. I really have become comfortable with their style of DRM, as well, and because the books can be read on so many different systems, I am comfortable that my investment is pretty well protected (and the silverfish can't get to them either!)
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05-22-2004, 10:34 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 120
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Did I say that after corresponding with Microsoft for months in the early days, I decided Microsoft Reader was just not for me - I buy all of my books from Peanut Press/Palm/?? or Fictionwise or Baen Books, and I don't own any Secure Microsoft Reader books (although I read some .lit books that aren't encrypted - but only if I can't get the in the Palm Reader format).
One other thing - from my experience, the PP/Palm/eReader folks have provided excellent customer service, too.
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05-23-2004, 01:27 AM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 3,060
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I second Ed's praise of this site. Another thing that I really like about it is that they have fixes for situations like wanting to transfer eBooks to a new device or changing the DRM settings when you want to use a different credit card.
A really great selection of titles, too!
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05-23-2004, 04:26 AM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 169
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Now if they would just offer a mobile version of the site I would in heaven!
It is the only place I have purchased my books for the last couple of years. I won't even buy paper books anymore, to much bulk to carry around.
-Eric
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05-23-2004, 05:34 AM
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Sage
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 761
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MS Reader has at least one advantage: The MS Word add-in for creating your own e-books.
I also think the MS Reader looks a lot better and gives you the feel of reading a real book.
Of course, when it comes to DRM or price of e-books and availability of new books MS Reader is totally inferior.
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05-23-2004, 05:59 AM
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5000+ Posts? I Should OWN This Site!
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 5,616
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imho, MS Reader has another advantage: Annotations. I can see it being used in an academic setting on a Tablet PC (or even on a Pocket PC with considerably more "page-flipping") to replace hard-copy textbooks, all file-swapping-type and DRM issues aside.
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05-23-2004, 06:52 AM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 179
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I too echo Ed and Brad's comments. Good selection, easy DRM, great reader. Much better than M$ product.
I'm afraid that I don't agree with the comments that academia will adopt M$ format for their own stuff. M$ has not been very friendly to universities, although they think they have, and are not that well regarded IMHO.
Also, we have found that lit books are not very good at rapidly jumping to bookmarked sections and are slower to navigate to various sections of a book than PalmReader. Since the home-grown academic works that were mentioned will likely to be more in the nature of reference and study type material, rapid intra-book navigation will be more important.
One last point on this. Most academic centres that I have worked with are dual platform - so readers like PalmReader, iSilo do this quick reference stuff much better and for both platforms. Even PDF does the cross-platform stuff better (although I find it very obstructive for a bunch of other reasons). But lit is not advantageous here.
In general, though, I think that the academic market is irrelevant here. The big drivers in this market are easy publishing of popular material. Peanut and its successors have it right so far. M$ should be embarrassed yet again that small 3rd party company is doing this better than their major initiative in epublishing...but I guess that they're used to this from other areas.
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05-23-2004, 07:27 AM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 192
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Computer-relate eBooks?
Anyone know of any good sites with computer-related eBooks?
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05-23-2004, 01:39 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 84
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For reading unencoded stuff, I would highly recommend uBook reader. It's the nicest and most functional ebookreader I've ever seen. It cannot read encripted contenet, but for free stuff it's great:
Rendres: .PDB, .PRC, .TXT, .RTF and .HTML files book-like.
Displays: PRC, RTF and HTML images, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, .WMF (in RTF) or .BMP.
In additon if you just put your TXT,RTF,HTML file into a ZIP file, it can open it inside the ZIP. So it can produce quite SMALL files and still have a format which is open and can be easily manipulated.
Annotations, coverimages and other nice stuff is supported too.
Altough it's only for Windows/WM. But other than that, perfect. And it's free.
http://www.gowerpoint.com/
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Linear Mode
