Wednesday June 11, 2008 eeeBook Reader
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After deciding that the Amazon Kindle wasn't for me, and thinking that I could do the same thing with an Asus Eee PC, I've now had a chance to try it out. Apologies for the poor quality of the picture. My arms aren't long enough to take a better one. |
I install acroread, rather than use Evince as the latter still has problems with several PDF files I've tried. I put a sample book on my SD card, plugged it in and displayed the PDF file, rotating the document 90 degrees clockwise and putting it into full screen mode.
It works well. The Eee is only two pounds in weight (lighter than the hardback I'm currently reading). I can click on the left "mouse" button to get to the next page, so "reading' is not to unnatural. After a while you do start to hear the little fan but it's not that loud.
I'll also be able to do a similar thing with FBReader for some of my other eBooks that are not in PDF format.
I realize that I won't have quite the ease-of-download that the Kindle provides, but I'll sure be able to do a lot of other things with my Eee besides just reading eBooks.
If you are wondering what the book is, it's called 100 Simple Secrets of the Best Half of Life. The basic premise is "don't worry, be happy". It made a nice change from all the depressing AARP literature that's been filling up my mail box recently.
( Jun 11 2008, 09:14:40 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [6]
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You should check out the new Adobe Digital Editions (http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/). I thought it was pretty speedy and had a nice interface. It also has support for the new epub format. Of course, it's only available for Windows and Mac, so that might not help if you need something on Linux or Solaris...
Posted by Scott Hudson on June 11, 2008 at 03:31 PM PDT #
Probably a "weird suggestion": if you want, there is the document viewer of KDE 4, Okular, that can do a nice job as PDF and various eBook formats reader, with some nice features like annotating, etc.
Posted by pinotree on June 11, 2008 at 03:31 PM PDT #
Make sure you install the cpu frequency governor stuff, this helps to stop the cpu heating up and reduces the fan kicking in. It also helps with battery life. wiki.eeeuser.com has some details on that.
Posted by EbilPhish on June 12, 2008 at 12:30 AM PDT #
If you have PDF files that don't work with evince, please file a bug report and attach such files there.
Posted by carlosgc on June 12, 2008 at 12:42 AM PDT #
Scott: thanks. Unfortunately like you say, it's
just Windows and Mac.
pinotree: thanks. I had a quick look at the Okular
home page. I'm not sure what this gives me over
something like acroread (apart from it being
completely open source).
EbilPhish: thanks. I'll check that out. There are
still a few more things to fix up / tweak. I
haven't yet got the battery monitor working, or
the built-in microphone or the webcam. I'll add
this one to the list as well.
carlosgc: the problem here is that some of them
are not ones that I can just freely hand around.
I think a generic problem with evince is that if
the PDF file is large and contains images of scanned
text (as opposed to text), evince will render it
*very* slowly and consume huge amounts of memory
doing so. acroread doesn't seem to have that
problem.
Maybe there is such a test example somewhere
under Project Gutenberg.
Posted by Rich Burridge on June 12, 2008 at 04:53 AM PDT #
I find the Nokia Internet Tablets a lot better ebook readers than the Eee, same resolution, but lot lighter and smaller, and with few buttons (the zoom ones) more conveniently in reach for page flipping.
Of course, the "lot smaller" part also means people with bad eyesight need not apply.
Posted by Juhaz on June 12, 2008 at 05:44 AM PDT #