Sorry I have not been posting much, I have been called away to attend to a family medical crisis and that means I'm living out of a suitcase and my laptop does not have the software on it to update this blog.

Now more than ever I am thankful I have switched to largely reading ebooks on my Palm TX. The portability of the Palm has been a great advantage while stuck waiting in hospital waiting rooms and for reading on the road.

I have set up a temporary web based blog which will act as a catchall for my thoughts while I'm gone. Everything Else Away Blog.

Well I did it. I retired my less than one year old Palm T5 and bought a Palm TX PDA to replace it. But the interesting thing is that what prompted me to buy the Palm TX was actually the Nokia 770 internet tablet I have been lusting after.

See I've always wanted a device that would let me read ebooks AND let me take a break from that and effortlessly connect to the internet and check news, and maybe email and some forums. The older Palm T5 had and external Wi-Fi card which works well but it is one extra thing to carry along with me and I was always afraid I would forget it in my pocket and wash it in the washing machine. The Palm TX has WiFi built in and connection to the internet is a breeze. Now I'm certain the Nokia is much better for browsing because it has much more power and a bigger screen. But several factors made me seriously consider the Palm TX instead of the Nokia 770.

1. The Palm runs my favorite ebook reader software: iSilo for unencrypted books and eReader for encyrpted. As far as I know there is no software for reading encrypted (DRM) ebooks on the Nokia 770.

2. DataViz Documents to Go, has a version that will read native PDF files for only a $30 upgrade. Beign able to read PDF files was one of the selling points of the Nokia, but in a pinch I can do it on the Palm.

3. Portability. This was a major consideration. I carry my PDA around with me everywhere. With a PDA I can take advantage of local wireless hot spots and check headlines or email. I also like having my ebook reading material with me on a PDA, and the more I use it the more I like it for ebook reading do to the portable form factor. The Nokia just is not something that I would carry around in addition to my PDA which has all my info on it. No point in carrying two gadgets when one will serve.

None of this means the Nokia 770 is a bad machine. In fact I may still buy one in the future but even if I do buy one it really cannot replace my PDA for carrying around with me, so I think I might stick with the Palm as a primary ebook device for some time to come.

Thinksecret reports a rumor that Apple will introduce a touch screen iPod with a 3.5 inch screen as soon as April. This leads me to wonder about this device for reading ebooks. You can already read ebooks on the current iPods, using their "Notes" feature (see this page at Manybooks.net and scroll down for a word on how), but a larger screen would certainly be welcome for ebook reading. Hopefully this rumor will turn out to be true. I would like a video iPod but I think I would really prefer to watch on something with a slightly larger screen, and if I could also read ebooks on it so much the better.

You hear a lot about how great E-Ink display is going to be but devices that actually have the E-Ink display are so rare that it is hard to find anything written by somebody who has actually used one.

David Rothman of Teleread writes:

On my Librie, since sold, indoor reading was impossible for me unless it took place near a sunlit window or under a strong lamp.

See that one sentence tells me a lot. I often read right before bed to unwind after a log day - the last thing I want is a bright reading lamp shining in my eyes. In addition most the the lamps in my home have lower wattage bulbs in them to save energy and they are fine for watching TV with but not so great for reading - except with my back-lit Palm PDA or my eBookwise 1150 I don't need to have high wattage bulbs in my lamps.

Teleread reports the ILiad ebook reader might carry a price tag of about US$785! That is a high price for even a wifi equipped dedicated ebook reader considering that for $600 I could buy both a WiFi equipped Palm TX PDA ($299), that would work just great for ebooks, and a new iPod ($299) that will play music and video. Can you guess what I would spend my money on?

Come to think about it - I'm a Mac user, but I would be more likely to buy a Windows tablet computer for $800 - 850, if I could find one before I paid that for just an ebook reader.

TUAW is reporting about new touch inputs patent by Apple for a tablet-like device. One of the comments in that post speculates about a tablet that you could slot an iPod into.

Is this just a screen for watching iPod video, or a device with it's own computing power? Will it just be for games and movies or will it have PDA-like abilities or even full OS X computing power?

One way or another it looks like Apple is considering bringing out some sort of tablet device. Will this present opportunities for ebooks? I suspect it will.

It looks like Apple is developing some sort of tablet device. Here is an article (with illustrations) describing a new patent by Apple for a tablet device for gaming and documents.

It's no secret that the biggest reason Apple switched to the Intel chip from IBM was better support, power and heat issues in portable devices. Now that that transition is on the way I think it is a matter of time before Apple moves beyond the notebook computer into other portable devices that are larger and more capable that an iPod.

The uses for a Apple tablet:

Games - this is well illustrated in the patent (above.)
Video - bigger screen than the iPod. Feature length movies?
Documents - (see below)

The iTunes store has proven that Apple is very good at content delivery. Why couldn't they do for periodicals, newspapers and ebooks what they are doing for music and TV shows now? If the tablet runs OS X then both PDF and eReader software both run on OS X just fine. Additionally, I can also see Apple perhaps, coming up with some sort of proprietary reader for things like newspapers.

This is an exciting development. I think it is just a matter of when Apple releases some sort of tablet not if.

Source: MacDailyNews

Robert Nagle has written an interesting essay on ebook pricing: Part I and Part II. Well worth a read.

There has been a lot of talk about the Sony ebook reader but not as much talk about the ebook store Sony will have to set up to sell DRM encrypted ebooks through. If you buy the Sony device and want to buy current ebooks you are going to be locked into buying from Sony.

To me this means the store and the reader are joined at the hip, and it makes the store almost as important as the reader hardware itself is. This means I personally will be very cautious about buying any device that has this sort of arrangement. Of course it has already been done. The folks at Fictionwise, rolled out their dedicated reader and ebook store eBookwise last year and it has been very good for me as a reader. But one of the big considerations before I bought the eBookwise 1150 reader was Fictionwise's good track record within the industry. They have stayed in business through the tough years after the Internet Bubble burst and have continued to expand. They know the ebook business.

Which leads me to take a wait and see attitude to buying a new reader. I think I am going to see what Fictionwise comes up with as a successor to the EB 1150 reader. I think they are almost going to have to come up with some device. All other things being equal, I would buy something that works with Fictionwise (or eBookwise) ebook stores before I bought anything from Sony or any other newcomer to the ebookseller field. That seems really important to me.

Do you want to know what newest ebooks have been added to the Manybooks.net free library? The Manybooks RSS feed will keep you updated with the newest ebooks added to the site so add it to your feed reader. Most of these are public domain classics that have just been digitized and all are free.

I love this RSS feed. Whenever I spot a book I want to remember, I just add it to my web based bookmarks. (I use MyJeeves, but Delicious or MyWeb2.0 would work too.) That way I can check them out later when I'm hunting for new reading material.