Quote:
Originally Posted by robinson
How long would the battery last on an iPod touch for ebook reading if wi-fi is off and the backlight turned way down?
I'm used to recharging my Clies and Palm every day--and don't ever read more than a few hours in a given day...
Of course, there's little reason to change from a PDA that still does so much so well--and still ahead of the iPhone/IPTs in many aspects.
But, put a decent camera and speaker on the iPod Touch, and I'd probably buy one immediately.
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I read on a Tapwave Zodiac 2, which is a Palm OS unit running OS 5.21. It has a 320x480 screen, 128MB of RAM, and two SD slots, among other things.
Screen brightness is the big variable in battery life. I keep the screen brightness dialed down to about 10% (which is comfortable for reading indoors), and turn the backlight off entirely to read out of doors. I charge it every night. I have yet to have it run out on me in the middle of use, unless something happened to jam it on in my bag and I didn't notice.
With the available software I have installed, I can read converted HTML, Mobipocket, eReader, PDF, Word, RTF, and plain text documents. I have about 3,500 ebooks on it all told, spread over two 2GB SD cards, and occupying about 1.7GB of storage. The only real issue is remembering which content is in which format.
Serving as an ebook viewer is about half of the Zodiac's purpose in life. The other half is a mixture of PIM functions, reference library (in formats other than ebook), MP3 player, photo and video viewer, word processing and spreadsheet editing, programming platform, and games device. (With an SD Wifi card, I can also go on line, but usually don't.)
I have no interest in a smartphone, so the iPhone is out for me, and the Touch, while a lovely device in many ways, can't do all of the things I do with the Zodiac. (I have no interest in a built in camera, either. I already have a small digital camera that meets my needs.)
eInk devices are lovely, but the only one with a fraction of the capabilities I currently have is the iLiad, at a price about four times what I paid for the Zodiac.
Personally, I'm staying put.
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Dennis