[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Hi Dennis. Thanks for the sideloading info. And what about Kobo? I was researching ereaders and saw Kobo supports epub, pdf and mobi. If I want to see what my books look like in epub and mobi doesn't Kobo then make more sense than Nook?

Good question. I don't have a Kobo and haven't used one, so I don't have a good feel for it

The Kobo, like other dedicated readers, will have the code to display eBooks in ROM. The question is what code Kobo uses.

ePub and Mobipocket are both documented formats (though Amazon has made additions to the Mobipocket format that I don't believe are documented.)

Different people have written code to display those formats, based on the specs.

It's one reason I said the display of an ePub file you saw on a Nook vs FBReader or CoolReader wouldn't necessarily be identical. They all use different code. FBReader, for example, says it has limited support for Mobi files. In practice, this means it can't display Mobi files with DRM, because it can't decrypt them. I don't care, as I don't get books with DRM, and it's handled every Mobi file I've tossed at it.

(And if you have the right plugins installed, Calibre can remove DRM for you. They are not shipped with Calibre because simply possessing them is illegal in some places, but they are easy to find and install.)

I've heard good things about FBReader and coolreader, but I've been using Calibre's E-book Viewer and it reads both epub and mobi. Would there be any advantage to switch to FBReader or coolreader?

Not needing to invoke Calibre to to do so?

I make fairly extensive use of Calibre here, but using its built-in viewers is not one of them. I prefer to use FBReader or other app, simply because it's a lot faster to do so, and I don't have the overhead of Calibre while I do it. (And Calibre doesn't exist for Android, so it wouldn't be an option on the tablet.)

The books I'm reading live in more than one place. Calibre creates its own directory structure, and books added to it go in directories under the one it creates, but the ones I read have copies elsewhere as well for convenience. I could read them directly from Calibre's directory, but it's easier not to.

If you have a PC you want to read eBooks on, and you don't have Calibre, what do you use? It will depend on the book's format, but you'll need a third-party app.

So do all the ereaders nowadays have this wi-fi feature?

All? I doubt it. It's mainly useful on a dedicated reader as a way to download books. If you get your books in other ways, and sideload them to your reader, you don't need Wifi.

And really, how is wi-fi different than connecting to the internet?

Wifi is simply a way of connecting. In the old days, you connected via a dial up modem. Time passed, and broadband became more pervasive, so your connectivity is likely provided by a cable modem, DSL line, or satellite dish. Wifi is connection via radio. It's also possible to connect via a cell phone. The way TCP-IP works, you don't care. TCP-IP operates on network packets. The details of precisely how the packets get delivered to the network are handled at a lower level. What the Internet sees in establishing the connection to something else is the packets.

It's like the difference between making a phone call via a land line or a cell phone. Same call, different ways of placing it. (I have VOIP through my cable company, so my phone calls actually get placed through the Internet via TCP-IP, are encoded as TCP-IP packets when I place them, and are decodes into voice on the receiving end.)

I have a cable modem. My cable modem is connected to my wireless router. My desktop, notebook, netbook and tablet connect via ethernet cable to ports on the router. My SO's laptop and Nook tablet connect to the router via wifi. (My notebook and netbook could connect via wifi, but the cable connection is faster - 100mbps vs 54mbps.)

When I travel, the device I travel with connects via Wifi. (Some hotels still have ethernet ports, and I carry cables with me for those cases, but increasingly they assume you will connect with Wifi.)

I'm a regular guy. I had to google this rooting stuff. This kinda caught my eye:

Therefore, unless you are familiar with the complete rooting process, you should not involve in it or you may also lose the pre-installed configuration of the tablet/mobile.

The concept of rooting derives from Unix. On a Unix system, the administrative user is called root, and has full power to do anything system related. When you are running as root, you can shoot yourself in both feet if you aren't properly careful. Unix assumes you know what you are doing.

If you are a normal user, and need root privileges to do something, you use the su command. Su prompts for the root password, and if properly provided, lets you become root for the duration of the session.

Linux systems like Ubuntu create you as a standard user, and won't let you log on directly as root. Instead, your ID is added to a list of users allowed to su. When you do something that requires admin rights, you are prompted for your password, and then allowed to do what you need to do.

Android systems are Linux systems, and if you can get root access, you can do things the particular device won't permit out of the box. The process of doing so is called rooting.

It's a "Not recommended, and you better know what you're doing" operation. I'm a Unix/Linux admin among other things, and do know what I'm doing.

I bet you those Hannah Montana drives are worth a mint now.

Probably along the lines of the Jar-Jar Binks Pez dispenser. A friend bought one, simply to be able to prove down the road that such a thing existed.
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Dennis