An ebook reader for me

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by Margrete

Very few of my ebooks are DRM protected, a couple in Mobi-format and a couple in .lit format.

Ereader/palm is the format I get when buying books from ereader.com.

Some of your eReader files probably also have DRM (keyed to your Credit Card). I don't know what the legal situation on stripping DRM for personal use is on Norway, but the DRM can be stripped from MOBI and LIT and eReader ebooks. There are no EInk devices that support LIT DRM and none currently that support eReader DRM. However, both Foxit and Astak in the US have announced the intention to implement eReader on their EInk devices. The interesting thing about the Astak EZ Reader is that it is a Hanlin V3 that (like all V3s) currently comes with MOBI DRM support but which will be ditching this for eReader DRM support "soon". I doubt that buying from the US makes sense for you, but if you get a BeBook (or any Hanlin V3) the odds are very good that you will be able to download and use the EZ Reader firmware on the device. So you will have the option of either MOBI or eReader DRM (but not both).

[slayda]

Margrete, I have the EZ Reader (the USA version of the Hanlin V3). All the formats (without DRM) that you mentioned can be read on it once you reflash the firmware to OpenInkPot's firmware. (See the OpenInkPot sub-forum here on MobileRead, and the WIKI information on OpenInkPot. Also their website http://openinkpot.org/)

The nice thing about OpenInkPot is that the firmware is open and is continuously improving. The bad thing (which may not really be bad) is that it doesn't support any DRM ebook formats. However since your books are apparently without DRM that should be no problem.

Using OpenInkPot and leaving my reader on all the time, I get better battery life than using the Hanlin Firmware, or my Cybook Gen3 or my Sony PRS-500. In fact it seems better than the Sony even when I "turn it off". It's "off" mode is really just a "sleep" mode.

BTW, OpenInkPot can display your PowerPoint without having to convert to PDF.

I have been very pleased with OpenInkPot. It has been more stable than the EZ Reader's original firmware and has several very nice features, e.g. word search, deleting books directly from the reader, just to name two of my favorites.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by slayda

I have been very pleased with OpenInkPot. It has been more stable than the EZ Reader's original firmware and has several very nice features, e.g. word search, deleting books directly from the reader, just to name two of my favorites.

Does it support Mobi dictionary lookup? This seems to be a somewhat "elusive" feature - only the CyBook and the iRex devices support it, to the best of my knowledge, and it's such a useful thing to have!

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Does it support Mobi dictionary lookup? This seems to be a somewhat "elusive" feature - only the CyBook and the iRex devices support it, to the best of my knowledge, and it's such a useful thing to have!

OpenInkPot is for DRM-free formats only, so it does not support MOBI dictioneries (which tend to be DRMed). The very latest version does support "DICT" dictionaries in Cool Reader only, see New OpenInkpot snapshot released (now includes CoolReader), and there are plans to extend this to FBReader and (perhaps?) PDFs. So far, I have been unable to find any DICT dictionaries though, and at best these will be public domain dictionaries.

[Margrete]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

Some of your eReader files probably also have DRM (keyed to your Credit Card). I don't know what the legal situation on stripping DRM for personal use is on Norway, but the DRM can be stripped from MOBI and LIT and eReader ebooks. There are no EInk devices that support LIT DRM and none currently that support eReader DRM. However, both Foxit and Astak in the US have announced the intention to implement eReader on their EInk devices. The interesting thing about the Astak EZ Reader is that it is a Hanlin V3 that (like all V3s) currently comes with MOBI DRM support but which will be ditching this for eReader DRM support "soon". I doubt that buying from the US makes sense for you, but if you get a BeBook (or any Hanlin V3) the odds are very good that you will be able to download and use the EZ Reader firmware on the device. So you will have the option of either MOBI or eReader DRM (but not both).

I don't really know the legal situation myself on stripping DRM, but I'll check it out. I haven't thought about it. I just do it if I need to I didn't think about the ereader files being DRM, completly forgot about them being keyed to my creditcard.

Me buying from the US depends on the exchange rate. Sometimes it's cheaper even including the shipping costs.

[Margrete]

Originally Posted by slayda

Margrete, I have the EZ Reader (the USA version of the Hanlin V3). All the formats (without DRM) that you mentioned can be read on it once you reflash the firmware to OpenInkPot's firmware. (See the OpenInkPot sub-forum here on MobileRead, and the WIKI information on OpenInkPot. Also their website http://openinkpot.org/)

The nice thing about OpenInkPot is that the firmware is open and is continuously improving. The bad thing (which may not really be bad) is that it doesn't support any DRM ebook formats. However since your books are apparently without DRM that should be no problem.

Using OpenInkPot and leaving my reader on all the time, I get better battery life than using the Hanlin Firmware, or my Cybook Gen3 or my Sony PRS-500. In fact it seems better than the Sony even when I "turn it off". It's "off" mode is really just a "sleep" mode.

BTW, OpenInkPot can display your PowerPoint without having to convert to PDF.

I have been very pleased with OpenInkPot. It has been more stable than the EZ Reader's original firmware and has several very nice features, e.g. word search, deleting books directly from the reader, just to name two of my favorites.

OpenInkPot sound great, especially with it displaying my powerpoint slides. Can it be used on different readers?

[llasram]

I'm going to pipe in for the Sony Reader. The Sony Reader has in AdobeDE the most advanced renderer of any device on the market right now. If most of your books are in formats other than Mobipocket, then you'll get the highest quality results on the Reader. Especially if many of your books are in LIT format, which it is very easy to convert essentially flawlessly to EPUB.

If you care about formatting quality, avoid primarily-Mobipocket devices. There are several threads here discussing the quite severe limitations of the format.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by llasram

If you care about formatting quality, avoid primarily-Mobipocket devices. There are several threads here discussing the quite severe limitations of the format.

I must respectfully disagree. In practical terms the so-called "limitations" of the MobiPocket format are entirely irrevelent. The overwhelming majority of books do not use sophisticated formatting.

There are also a number of things that the supposedly "better" ePub format cannot do, the most notable of which is dictionary lookup. This is an extremely useful facility which MobiPocket supports (on some devices at least) very well.

[llasram]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I must respectfully disagree. In practical terms the so-called "limitations" of the MobiPocket format are entirely irrevelent. The overwhelming majority of books do not use sophisticated formatting.

And I must respectfully disagree with your disagreement. I recognize that you have made a significant investment in terms of your Mobipocket-format library, but one effect of that is the formatting of the books you see necessarily lives within Mobipocket's limitations. While writing Mobipocket support for Calibre, I gathered most of my test cases for clean formatting degradation from my corpus of commercially sold LIT format books. I don't consider such things as image floats, right margins on blocks of text, and non-left-flush hanging indents to be extraordinarily sophisticated.

A fair cop on the dictionary support, although that's not technically an aspect of the format itself; i.e. a device supporting multiple formats could allow lookup for all of them in a Mobi dictionary.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by llasram

I don't consider such things as image floats, right margins on blocks of text, and non-left-flush hanging indents to be extraordinarily sophisticated.

Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean by "non-left-flush hanging indents". You can specify either a left or a right indent of the first line of a paragraph by using the "width" attribute on a <p> tab.

eg: <p width="-10pt"> will give you a 10pt "hanging indent".

apologies if I've misunderstood you.

[llasram]

Ah, I meant that there's no way to have a left margin and a hanging indent. If you have a hanging indent then the text has to begin at the leftmost position on the page.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by llasram

Ah, I meant that there's no way to have a left margin and a hanging indent. If you have a hanging indent then the text has to begin at the leftmost position on the page.

Does it really? I thought that it simply moved leftwards into the standard page margin. I'll have to do some experiments and see .

[slayda]

Originally Posted by Margrete

OpenInkPot sound great, especially with it displaying my powerpoint slides. Can it be used on different readers?

I haven't kept up with other readers except I believe they are working on a version for the Cybook Gen3 but it's definitely not out yet. I think there has been some work on the Sony PRS-505. I know they are not working yetand may not work on the PRS-500.

The thing that has made the Hanlin V3s so easy for OpenInkPot is the 10 number keys available for programming. I don't know how they plan to handle things with other readers.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

OpenInkPot is for DRM-free formats only, so it does not support MOBI dictioneries (which tend to be DRMed). The very latest version does support "DICT" dictionaries in Cool Reader only, see New OpenInkpot snapshot released (now includes CoolReader), and there are plans to extend this to FBReader and (perhaps?) PDFs. So far, I have been unable to find any DICT dictionaries though, and at best these will be public domain dictionaries.

Strange that you cannot find any dictionaries. I use stardict with good dictionaries on my N810. Here are some dictionaries:

http://stardict.sourceforge.net/Dict...w.dict.org.php

I use five of these dictionaries and it has only happened once or twice that a word was not found that I could find in my Concise Oxford dictionary on my Cybook.

[llasram]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Does it really? I thought that it simply moved leftwards into the standard page margin. I'll have to do some experiments and see .

I meant the leftmost page margin, yes. But no further to to the right.