Well to chip in my two cents. I find Reading on a PDA to be fine. I use an Acer N311. I have mobipocket on it and I use mobi creator to convert my books to .prc. I use a black background and grey text color to make the reading easier on the eyes. Backlight issue- I have to agree that the backlight on some PDAs is too strong. In fact on my Acer n311 it is a bit stronger than I like. However, during the daytime and with enough light shining on the Acer it is not an issue. At night when I have low light I do have too much backlight from my Acer.
Solution: simple. I wear a pair of sunglasses.
I find reading Joyce, Poets, Proust and others on my PDA no problem. I have a 3.7 inch screen and find this quite sufficient to read ,most material as DMcCunney stated above. Granted when a SMALL eink Reader comes out I will be first in line to buy. I am waiting for the Erikson/Seiko ereader which seems to be the size of a Pocket PC.
I realize that many on this site like the larger Screen of the eink reader type as it is more like a real "book" experience. For me, though the digital age and the ebook call into question what a "REAL" ebook reading experience should be. I think many are happy reading literature, poetry and such on many types of devices from Notebooks, to PDAs and Mobile phones. Otherwise they should change the name of the site to:
Mobile E-ink Read
Quote:
Originally Posted by radleyp
Dennis, I find the backlight OK for limited periods (say, 45 minutes - 1 hour), but after that I begin to see reflections, just as I do when I look directly into a bright light, and I must stop for a few moments. No such problem with eink. Paragraph formatting is critical for certain writers (Proust, Joyce, Mann, even dialogue-heavy writers like the great Dickens) and simply cannot be appreciated on 3-4" screens: poetry is still more of a problem and I remember trying to read Billy Collins (in ereader, which I have owned since it was peanut reader) on my T/X before finally giving up. Yes, color would be better, but for me reading in black (grey?) and white in eink is better than ereader on a pda. I don't need push email, but I need the ability to send text messages and emails when I have something (short, to be sure) to communicate and am not at my desktop. I don't have the perfect device yet, however, and probably never will have, so like you I'll just keep waiting and looking.
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