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Please don't flame me for posting to the wrong group, but I can't find one
which fits!

Any comments regarding ebook readers would be welcome. Anyone really
thrilled or p'd off with their current one?

I'm not particularly interested in Kindle or the like, which are controlled
by a retailer, but I am looking for one which will read a good range of
documents, .txt, .doc., .html, which I can load on straight from my PC (via
usb).

I have a Palm TX at the moment, which does the job adequately, but it's old
and cranky (like me!) and will soon need replacing.

The IRiver looks useful....what do you think?

Barb UK

On 2010-11-18, Barb <> wrote:
> Please don't flame me for posting to the wrong group, but I can't find one
> which fits!

Nothing is off topic in this group )

> Any comments regarding ebook readers would be welcome. Anyone really
> thrilled or p'd off with their current one?

I have a "BeBook" (the model now sold as BeBook One) and it certainly
works pretty well. But I find it gets less use than I thought it would; I
can't quite put my finger on why that is. Perhaps it's just a bit too big
and fragile to go in a pocket and I have too many 'real' books.

> I'm not particularly interested in Kindle or the like, which are controlled
> by a retailer, but I am looking for one which will read a good range of
> documents, .txt, .doc., .html, which I can load on straight from my PC (via
> usb).

The BeBook range aren't overtly tied to any particular supplier of
content, and I've never had to pay for a book - there are plenty of free
ones out there, not least from Project Gutenberg. In fact, getting 'out
of print' stuff is one of the big attractions of the ebook concept, for
me.

> I have a Palm TX at the moment, which does the job adequately, but it's old
> and cranky (like me!) and will soon need replacing.
>
> The IRiver looks useful....what do you think?
>
> Barb UK

Your present device is a "PDA"; iRiver devices are 'multimedia' players.
Neither is an ebook reader as such. If you don't mind a small backlit
display and short battery life, a smartphone might suit you. I can read
text surprisingly well on mine, although I haven't tried a 'book' as such
- just newspaper articles, email, SMS, and the like. A smartphone is
smaller and more portable than any ebook reader I've seen, and a lot more
versatile even than a PDA. (But the iPhone is 'tied' to Apple and Android
phones are very Googlish, and phones running Windows are, well, running
Windows, and Nokias are Nokia - it's hard to find a really 'independent'
smartphone, although those running Android come close).

Colour 'electronic ink/paper' devices may appear soon - currently they're
all 'shades of grey' only. There are gadgets on sale now as 'colour ebook
readers' but they use backlit displays and resemble a 'tablet computer'
(but with less 'power').

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~

Barb wrote:

> I'm not particularly interested in Kindle or the like, which are controlled
> by a retailer, but I am looking for one which will read a good range of
> documents, .txt, .doc., .html, which I can load on straight from my PC (via
> usb).

> The IRiver looks useful....what do you think?

The IRiver is in these tables comparing e-book readers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_e-book_readers


--
Mike Easter

Barb wrote:
> Please don't flame me for posting to the wrong group, but I can't
> find one which fits!
>
> Any comments regarding ebook readers would be welcome. Anyone really
> thrilled or p'd off with their current one?
>
> I'm not particularly interested in Kindle or the like, which are
> controlled by a retailer, but I am looking for one which will read a
> good range of documents, .txt, .doc., .html, which I can load on
> straight from my PC (via usb).
>
> I have a Palm TX at the moment, which does the job adequately, but
> it's old and cranky (like me!) and will soon need replacing.
>
> The IRiver looks useful....what do you think?

A similar conversation in another group.
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.m...een&q=kindlers

"Mike Easter" <> wrote in message
news:...
> Barb wrote:
>
>> I'm not particularly interested in Kindle or the like, which are
>> controlled by a retailer, but I am looking for one which will read a good
>> range of documents, .txt, .doc., .html, which I can load on straight from
>> my PC (via usb).
>
>> The IRiver looks useful....what do you think?
>
> The IRiver is in these tables comparing e-book readers
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_e-book_readers
>
>
> --
> Mike Easter



Thanks for this, Mike!