Hello everyone, this is my first post. Well, I am excited about the Nokia 800 and I think I am going to get one. I am planning a long trip backpacking to many countries in the next year, and the weight of the guidebooks alone was going to be over 4 kilograms (and I travel light!). The Nokia 800 seemed like a great solution for many issues that I anticipated while traveling -- a reader for basic non-DRM'ed mobile e-reading, RSS feeds, secure internet access with good browsing experience, picture organizer, possibly GPS, casual multimedia, gaming, emails, etc. Skype also announced they are releasing software for the Nokia 800 in the first half of this year which is something else I was after, and there is already a non-Skype videophone solution for it.
Anyway, I searched everywhere for good e-book travel guides and there is very little out there. I researched how I might acquire travel guidebooks along the way and this is very hit and miss in non-English speaking countries. I even contacted one major publisher -- they said they are working on a solution (provided no details except to say will probably be DRM'ed) but it is not ready yet. Now I am planning to just purchase them all here in the US, scan them all in before my trip, and use the Nokia 800 for yet another task, as a guidebook reader
I have been reading a lot of posts here recently to try to get the hang of the workflow for converting a dense travel book to a set of HTML-embedded images and probably also an OCR'ed text, formats that seem appropriate for the Nokia 800. It will definitely take me some more time to get the hang of all that! But I thank those that have posted their experiences, especially Liviu. Until I read that information, I was not confident in the ability to read scanned books on the Nokia device.
I was initially excited about the Sony Reader. But it is too big for my special use while traveling overseas (issue of theft by attracting attention, size, weight, I just can't pocket it). I am also disappointed by the Sony Connect store content and their travel guidebook section is almost non-existent -- too bad, because travel content lends itself to DRM'ing since its useful lifespan is just 2-3 years and it is a true vertical market for e-books since book weight is a big issue for many travelers. Most of my reading nowadays is really on-line content, anyway, like the Wall Street Journal, forums, news, etc., so between that and non-DRM'ed books, I am hoping that the Nokia device can also meet my casual non-traveler reader needs, as well.
Travis