Is any reader worth it?

[Tom2112]

OK, I've got to admit, that I have limited experience with most readers. I have an iPhone that I read on more than anything. I also own an Astak Mentor and as of tonight a Nook WiFi.

I'm stunned that every time I buy a dedicated reader that it is an enormous let down. The features just aren't there.

OK, I love my iPhone as a reader. But sometimes you just want a larger format, and the LCD screen can really give eye strain if you read a lot.

So, I really love the e-ink readers. The screens look great! Almost no eye strain reading them at all!

But... of the two I've owned, neither would read .LIT files. Neither handled the organization of titles very well. I mean, seriously, has anyone ever heard of FOLDERS for crying out loud? It's so simple, it's crazy that they don't implement it that way. Let the user put their content in folders, and show the folder structure in the reader. That way the USER is in control of how their collection is organized. (I know, that's just crazy!)

Why is it that my phone does a better job of handling the files? It reads every format that I've ever thrown at it. Stanza is a fabulous program, and it's FREE! Sure, the phone cost more than both the other readers, so I guess maybe I'm expecting too much from them.

Anyway.... I will try to stop my rant long enough to ask the collective for a recommendation. What reader can do this:

1. I have an extensive collection of .LIT files. (about 7gigabytes) I want to be able to read them. I don't want to convert them.
2. The reader should also handle EPUB, TXT, RTF, PDF, PDB, and DOC files.
3. If it handled MOBI and PRC files too that would be great, but not all that important.
4. It should have an EXTERNALLY accessible SD card slot capable of reading SDHC cards (those are the big ones like 4, 8, 16 and 32 gigabyte).
5. It should NOT have a proprietary cable to connect it to the USB of my PC. (Apple and Barnes and Noble should listen up here.) Why in the world would you make a your own connector when USB and microUSB are the STANDARD?!? (of course, I know the answer: to screw the consumer into buying expensive proprietary cables)
6. I don't care about playing audio books or voice synth reading of text. I don't care about color or grey scale. I don't care about touch screens. The reader could have them or not. It makes no difference to me.
7. WiFi is nice but not required. The USB and SD card interface is much more important.
8. This reader will end up going overseas for long periods of time. So cell-phone-like connections to some store in the sky are of no use to me.
9. I should be able to put my entire ebook collection on a single 16 gig SD card and put it in the reader, and still be able to find what I want to read - easily and quickly.
10. It should take normal sized SD cards rather than microSD, but if it has all the rest of my wish list, I could live with microSD as long as it is externally accessible.

Thanks for reading my rant. If you know if a reader that fits my demanding wish list, please let me know (even if it is a reader that simply requires me to "root" it, or change it's firmware, or otherwise hack it. I'm comfy with that.)

[GreenMonkey]

1) Almost no e-readers support LIT natively. It's an outdated format. Originally introduced during the 90s!! Think PocketPCs and Windows 98.

2) DOC files - I'm sure this would require Microsoft licensing, or at least extensive backwards engineering? Doubtful. And a modern doc supports all sorts of crazyness that isn't text or pictures. RTF? Tough to find (I think Sony Readers?). No e-reader is very great at PDF - it's not a reflowable format - only works well on a big screen. Think of it more like a photo of a page than the text itself (simplistic explanation).

4) I dunno why the hangup on external, can't help you too much here. E-readers have so much memory space for books (books are very small) you don't really even need the SD card slot. It's nice to have if you decide to do heavy mp3, pdf or audiobooks ...but hardly part of the core e-reader experience. 7GB of books is a lot of books to carry around. That's like what, 20,000 or something? Seriously?

5) The Nook, the Kindle, and I think the Sony readers all use standard Micro-B USB. It's the new upcoming standard in Europe, and is used in a lot of phones and such already here in the U.S. Personally I prefered Mini USB as it was easier to plug in...but at least it's a standard cable. You can buy them for like $1 at monoprice.com.

9) I think the Nook supports 16GB micro-SDHC. Not many portable devices still using full size SD. I think micro is more power efficient (and smaller...good on small devices).

The Kobo has an external slot, I believe, but the old Kobo only supported up to 4GB cards. A quick google search finds that the new Kobo *might* have support for up to 32GB SDHC cards...

This hang up on an external card slot seems a bit strange. You can always plug in via USB...and carrying around thousands upon thousands of books seems like a bit of overkill.

[iandix]

like Greenmonkey said .. .lit files are outdated. you would best getting a netbook or a tablet running windows, while you still can find software to read .lit files.

Nook does not have a proprietary cable it's just a standard Micro-B USB, I picked up a spare one at my local supermarket.

I have no idea why anyone would want to carry that many books on their reader, how much reading do you do. If you did two books a week that would still take you 192 years.

as for a system to catalogue your books on the nook... well yes, what they have now is pretty sad. B&N said they will address that issue with version 1.5 of their software. But I don't think it will be as good as softrooting your nook and running trook with calibre and calibre2opds. Using that set up will supply you with a system better than any other ereader.

[Zetmolm]

The Onyx Boox 60 / BeBook Neo meets all your requirements except .lit support. If you are sure you can do without Wifi and touchscreen, you could go for the much cheaper Onyx Book X60S / BeBook Club (available very soon). Also have a look at the PocketBook models, which do most of what you want.

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by Tom2112

OK, I've got to admit, that I have limited experience with most readers. I have an iPhone that I read on more than anything. I also own an Astak Mentor and as of tonight a Nook WiFi.

I'm stunned that every time I buy a dedicated reader that it is an enormous let down. The features just aren't there.

OK, I love my iPhone as a reader. But sometimes you just want a larger format, and the LCD screen can really give eye strain if you read a lot.

So, I really love the e-ink readers. The screens look great! Almost no eye strain reading them at all!

But... of the two I've owned, neither would read .LIT files. Neither handled the organization of titles very well. I mean, seriously, has anyone ever heard of FOLDERS for crying out loud? It's so simple, it's crazy that they don't implement it that way. Let the user put their content in folders, and show the folder structure in the reader. That way the USER is in control of how their collection is organized. (I know, that's just crazy!)

Why is it that my phone does a better job of handling the files? It reads every format that I've ever thrown at it. Stanza is a fabulous program, and it's FREE! Sure, the phone cost more than both the other readers, so I guess maybe I'm expecting too much from them.

Anyway.... I will try to stop my rant long enough to ask the collective for a recommendation. What reader can do this:

1. I have an extensive collection of .LIT files. (about 7gigabytes) I want to be able to read them. I don't want to convert them.
2. The reader should also handle EPUB, TXT, RTF, PDF, PDB, and DOC files.
3. If it handled MOBI and PRC files too that would be great, but not all that important.
4. It should have an EXTERNALLY accessible SD card slot capable of reading SDHC cards (those are the big ones like 4, 8, 16 and 32 gigabyte).
5. It should NOT have a proprietary cable to connect it to the USB of my PC. (Apple and Barnes and Noble should listen up here.) Why in the world would you make a your own connector when USB and microUSB are the STANDARD?!? (of course, I know the answer: to screw the consumer into buying expensive proprietary cables)
6. I don't care about playing audio books or voice synth reading of text. I don't care about color or grey scale. I don't care about touch screens. The reader could have them or not. It makes no difference to me.
7. WiFi is nice but not required. The USB and SD card interface is much more important.
8. This reader will end up going overseas for long periods of time. So cell-phone-like connections to some store in the sky are of no use to me.
9. I should be able to put my entire ebook collection on a single 16 gig SD card and put it in the reader, and still be able to find what I want to read - easily and quickly.
10. It should take normal sized SD cards rather than microSD, but if it has all the rest of my wish list, I could live with microSD as long as it is externally accessible.

Thanks for reading my rant. If you know if a reader that fits my demanding wish list, please let me know (even if it is a reader that simply requires me to "root" it, or change it's firmware, or otherwise hack it. I'm comfy with that.)

Get one of the Hanlin V3 clones.

They support SDHC (16GB works; I used one myself. Don't know about 32GB), LIT, EPUB, MOBI/PRC and standard Mini-USB. EPUB (ADE) DRM is supported. The LIT support isn't too hot, but it is there.

Seems to do everything you want. I used one of them (a BeBook One) before getting my current Kindle DXG.

[Latinandgreek]

Originally Posted by GreenMonkey

2) DOC files - I'm sure this would require Microsoft licensing, or at least extensive backwards engineering? Doubtful. And a modern doc supports all sorts of crazyness that isn't text or pictures. RTF? Tough to find (I think Sony Readers?). No e-reader is very great at PDF - it's not a reflowable format - only works well on a big screen. Think of it more like a photo of a page than the text itself (simplistic explanation).

Yes, Sony does read RTF. I use it quite a bit to read my own typed notes, etc. It's quite useful.

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by mbovenka

Get one of the Hanlin V3 clones.

They support SDHC (16GB works; I used one myself. Don't know about 32GB), LIT, EPUB, MOBI/PRC and standard Mini-USB. EPUB (ADE) DRM is supported. The LIT support isn't too hot, but it is there.

Seems to do everything you want. I used one of them (a BeBook One) before getting my current Kindle DXG.

Missed the DOC, but they do that too.

[theusualuser]

As mbovenka says, the Hanlin V3 clones are your best bet for meeting those standards. You might check out the Astak EZreader section of the forums. I believe it's a Hanlin V3 clone (I'm pretty new here, so don't trust me 100% on that, do the homework).

The other alternative (and one that would probably take a while but be worth it down the road) is to convert all the lit files (or at least do one at a time as you need them) with Calibre. I'm looking into a Jetbook Lite or an Aluratek Libre Pro since they seem to have nice firmware, but I've got a lot of .lit files, too. It's going to be a long road, but I'm just going to have to use Calibre to convert them all.

The Jetbook lite does quite a few of the things that you want. From their website:

* Support of Adobe DRM, ePub, Mobi, PRC, RTF, .txt, .pdf, .fb2, .jpg, .gif, .png, .bmp and html file formats
* Support of eReader (PDB) DRM format through Ereader.com and Fictionwise.com
* Pre-loaded with the top 100 favorite classic ebooks
* Perfect pocketable size
* Support for eBook contents in Albanian, Arabic, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Faeroese, Farsi, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Hebrew, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Vietnamese and other languages.
* Bidirectional cross-dictionaries between English, German, Spanish, Polish, and Russian
* Multilingual interface options
* Pre-loaded CIA World Factbook
* Bookmarks and auto page turn functionality
* Adjustable font type and size
* Screen rotation support for both portrait & landscape modes
* SD card slot (expandable up to 32GB)
* Batteries 4xAA (rechargeable batteries can be used as well)
* Free firmware updates available at www.jetbook.net

From what I've read, they work well with folders, so that they're somewhat easy to organize and quickly get to the books you want. I don't know if you care about the differences between a reflective lcd screen and an e-ink (the reflective lcd won't have that glitchy fade to black business when you turn pages and the page turns are basically instant, but the e-ink pearl is said to look a little bit nicer than the jetbook's screen) but it sounds like the jetbook is close to what you're looking for (well, minus .lit, .doc).

Just some food for thought.

[citac]

Originally Posted by mbovenka

Missed the DOC, but they do that too.

I can attest to that - I've opened several .doc and .lit files without any problems on my Astak EZ Reader, which is a Hanlin clone. I need to zoom in on the .doc but they're perfectly readable after that. It sometimes hangs up on opening one, but it helps if the files are smaller.

Yes, I forgot to add that they support folders and subfolders.

[Tom2112]

Thanks guys! I really appreciate the info.

It's interesting that the Astak EZ reader did LIT, but my Mentor didn't. But alas, my Mentor is broken anyway. It didn't survive its last trans-atlantic flight.

So I have an iPhone and a Nook and an iPad on the way. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm rolling in cash. I didn't pay for the iPhone or the iPad. They belong to my employer. But so far they seem to be the best readers, with the exception of the LCD screen vs. an e-ink. Perhaps I am expecting too much from the dedicated readers. It just seems crazy to me that a free iPhone app does a better job than any dedicated reader that I've tried.

Anyway, enough of my childish-stomp-my-foot-with-hand-on-hip rants.

I will try softrooting my nook and see if that can make me happy enough with it not to return it. If that doesn't work, I will return it and try one of the Hanlin readers.


Oh, and while I'm at it, as to the question of why would I want to carry around 7 gigabytes of ebooks? Because I can! My question is: why wouldn't you? Memory is cheap. Go large!

[viviena]

Originally Posted by Tom2112

Oh, and while I'm at it, as to the question of why would I want to carry around 7 gigabytes of ebooks? Because I can! My question is: why wouldn't you? Memory is cheap. Go large!

I understand this reason. Myself, I like to have my whole library on my device, slowly adding to it bit by bit. My concern is that whacking in a memory card with 7G's worth of content and expecting the device to process it all at once will make any ereader stutter and choke.

Honestly? I'm surprised you went with a Nook. It appears to be a good ereader in many respects, but its organisation of non-B&N content is very poor, and it's questionable whether it would be improved by the firmware update coming out soon. If you really want to keep so much content on your device, your priority should be a device that allows for good library management beyond the standard 'view by author/title', either via a folder-based system or by collections/tags.