[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by defizr

Hi all. Just got a new Sony PRS-300. Given the range of formats that it can handle (Epub, PDF etc.) which is the optimal format for this machine? If I have a book in a non-optimal format is it worth converting it using Calibre?

I can only speak from my own experience with my own reader. I've found that PDF works best for me because I can format my ebooks specifically for my reader's screen.

I use StarOffice (the commercial version of OpenOffice.org) to generate my PDFs and it allows me to see on my computer exactly what my ebooks will look like on my reader. This includes fonts, margins, line spacing, and pictures. Once properly formatted, I can use StarOffice to generate a PDF for my reader and it will look on my reader exactly as I intended.

For me, the main disadvantages of PDFs are:

- They are designed for a specific screen size. If I purchase a new ebook reader with a different screen size, for best results I'd have to recreate my ebooks for the new screen size. Although some readers allow you to reflow the text, I've found what works best is to format the PDF for best reading at the default size.

- PDFs are much larger than other formats (with one ebook the PDF version was four times the size of the plain text file, and more than three times larger than the RTF version).

For me, the advantages of PDF outweight the above disadvantages.

I hope this helps.