I've been reading on Palm and Psion devices for about ten years now, but my latest device -- a Palm Tungsten|T3 -- seems to be on its last legs and I've been thinking about a possible replacement. I was hoping to get some ideas from the forum because the big name readers from Sony and Amazon don't seem to fit my use pattern.
I find that although I read lots of CBRs and web content on my laptop and desktop, I never read full length books on either them. I read novels on the Palm instead, usually to fill in little spaces of time.
The vast majority of books I read are text or HTML from Project Gutenberg, Black Mask, Baen etc. so being able to see the occasional illustration is nice, but I don't need or want full PDF-style page layout. As far as formats go, I have bought many books from Baen, but I have never paid for any content that is locked to a proprietary or DRM'ed format and likely never will.
The following is a list of the features I care about, roughly in descending order of importance:
Must have (deal breaker if missing):
- loads my own content
- pocketable --if I don't carry it with me, I won't have it to read from
- one-handed operation -- I read lots while standing on the bus or while eating etc.
- instant startup and shutdown -- no time to wait for boot and look for books if I want to read for a few secoonds while standing in line
- remember where you left off each book -- I read a few books at a time depending on mood
Nice to have (things I need to make reading convenient and/or enjoyable):
- useable with either hand
- layout (see below)
- easy search and navigation (eg jump to top/bottom/chapter/page)
- understands native HTML and text -- even better if RTF, PDF, chm etc included) -- but I'll settle for easy conversion
- can change orientation (assuming non-square screen)
- speedy page flipping
- editing -- to fix up typos in the sources
- backlight and colour
- wide enough to read CBRs without panning
- converged device (eg PDA, phone, mp3, general computing etc)
- web spidering
Regarding layout:
- it would be best if I could load my own fonts (at least fixed vs proportional, nice if serif vs sans) and choose what size to view my books in
- need fixed width font and no justification/line breaks (eg understand <pre> tag) for programming texts etc.
- can render tables
- being able to choose justification, line spacing, paragraph spacing, indentation and so on would be nice
Explicitly don't care:
- dictionary
- e-ink
- on-line stores
- wireless capability
- annotation, bookmarks or highlighting
- publishing meta-data
From what I can tell, the Sony isn't for me because you essentially "compile" a book into a PDF-like fixed format. I usually switch the font larger if I'm on the bus and switch it back when I can sit down.
The Kindle has multiple sizes of font, but you can't change the typeface. It also seems too big to me.
Right now, my Palm falls down on fonts and tables and the screen isn't quite wide enough. I'm willing to consider any device that does what I want; it doesn't need to be specifically an ebook reader.
Thanks in advance!