Quote:
Originally Posted by Ankh
E-book reading application running on Microsoft Windows PC is a "nascent" market?
The first version of Microsoft Reader for Windows PC was released in 2000. Surely, MS Reader qualifies as a mainstream ebook reading software?
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I'll posit that it's only mainstream if a significant number of people
do it.
Yes, Microsoft Reader has been around for almost ten years. But who actually uses it to read ebooks? The main reason most folks I know of get ebooks in MS Reader format is because it's dead easy to strip the DRM and put them into the format they
want to read them in.
A lot of folks simply aren't comfortable reading extensively on a PC screen. One reason dedicated readers are popular is the eInk screen.
While I think a PC reader for Kindle books is a good idea, I don't see it being many people's primary reader.
For instance, my primary reader is a Palm OS PDA, with eBooks in Plucker, MobiPocker, PDF, eReader, and a couple of other formats. Because FBReader handles Plucker and Mobipocket files (and ePub), most of my ebook library is also on my notebook which triple boots Wion2K and two flavors of Linux. My master repository is on my desktop PC, with software that will let me read any ebook I possess, but I almost never use it for that.
I see a similar acse for the PC Kindle app: an additional option for folks who are more likely to use a Kindle or an iPhone for daily reading.
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Dennis