Mobilitysite - Latest Comments in Back on the Ebook Beat

Re: Back on the Ebook Beat

badersk — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:49:35 -0000

I have an extensive Bible Reference library with crosslinks that runs in iSilo and it would be nice to be able to use it in an e-reader device. Building it yourself would take months I would think. But I guess it wouldn't be too hard to convert each publication individually.

Re: Back on the Ebook Beat

Zealot — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:10:57 -0000

I agree that 99 dollars is the price point the devices need to hit to begin getting popular in the mainstream. I think they will hit that with some models by the end of 2010.

As for converting other formats for use on Ebook Readers, like Doogald says MobiPocket is a great converter into .mobi which many readers handle. I use Calibre or Stanza to make just about any format into EPUB (my format of choice these days). Also, remember that most readers handle PDFs as well, so you can convert Office docs to PDFs for reading.

Re: Back on the Ebook Beat

Doug Miller — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:57:24 -0000

Well, I can't solve the price issue, but the Kindle does support open .mobi files, and MobiPocket.com has a free download that lets you create MobiPocket formatted files pretty easily from your own text/photos/images/any combination. (Well, I haven't used t myself since 2002, but I imagine that it's easier to use than it was then, and I had no problems back then.) You can then copy them over to the Kindle over USB.

At least there is that.

Re: Back on the Ebook Beat

Mike Engel — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:33:05 -0000

Intersting stuff. I used Microsoft Reader for a few years and then stopped in favor of real books. I've just started using MS Reader again on my Windows Mobile 6.1 device in the last fwe weeks. Hard to shell out the dollars though since MS Reader is free altough it doesn't offer all the bells and whistles.

Re: Back on the Ebook Beat

badersk — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:06:02 -0000

i would love to own one of the e-ink readers but until they get below $100 and you can format your own files from any format I will not be buying one. I realize for some they are worth the price but I can't see where they warrant such a premium.

Re: Back on the Ebook Beat

Doug Miller — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:00:05 -0000

Well, as for the crippled lending features - at least there will be books that you can lend; at least the feature exists. It took a while to get the music industry to allow DRM free music sales, it may just take a while for the publishing industry to trust its buyers.

I tried text to speech with my Dad's Kindle over the summer, and it was pretty useless. It's probably ok for short text, but very unlistenable for pages of text. No emotional context, hard to distinguish which character is speaking in dialog, some mispronunciations - it's a cool feature, yes, but not a huge selling point for me.