Best eBook reader for large number of titles?

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I find the Collections on my 505 quite usefl. I have 10 collections and it makes it a lot easier to find what I am looking for when I can't decide what it is I actually want to read.

I agree, the collections function (kind of like playlists on an mp3 player) on the Sony is quite useful. I'm up to about 40 collections for 500 books & it makes things a lot easier.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

I agree, the collections function (kind of like playlists on an mp3 player) on the Sony is quite useful. I'm up to about 40 collections for 500 books & it makes things a lot easier.

The iLiad supports proper folders and such. But for not having that, Collections is the next best thing. It at least givesus a much easier way to organize things. No longer do we have to rename books to have the series title in them. We can just put series into a collection and order them in reading order.And to organize 500 eBooks, I'd have to say that without collections, it would be a bit of a mess.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Interesting that you said Sony was workable when Kindle was Unsuitable. (And you have no interest in the Kindle) While Kindle doesn't have collections it does allow you to search. In addition you can have a small amount of books actually on the local Kindle memory with full access to your online library via Whispernet.
Also, Sony collections are just another single layer of organization, I never found it all that useful.

I'm not in the US, so the functions that make the Kindle interesting, including all Whispernet access, are simply unavailable.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I was under the impression that no DRM format was supported except a strange one called "Wolf" (?) that nobody's ever heard of. Apologies if this information is out of date! Although I realise that DRM is not liked by many people, it's still a consideration if one wishes to buy commercial eBooks.

What commercial eBook formats does the V3 support these days? It is indeed some time since I last looked at it.

Same as Sony then. And in the same way it supports lit format.

[HarryT]

Hardly "the same as Sony". Sony have a large eBook store selling BBeB-format books. If there are eBook stores selling "Wolf"-format books, I seem to have overlooked them!

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Hardly "the same as Sony". Sony have a large eBook store selling BBeB-format books. If there are eBook stores selling "Wolf"-format books, I seem to have overlooked them!

Walkbooks in Turkey has Wolf eBooks, some are for sale I believe but most are free downloads.

Dale

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I find the Collections on my 505 quite usefl. I have 10 collections and it makes it a lot easier to find what I am looking for when I can't decide what it is I actually want to read.

I guess because I never keep more than a dozen or so books on mine at one time is why I never bothered with collections.

BOb

[bjkel]

Ok, I was just browsing around this forum. I currently read ebooks on a Dell Axim which I like but would prefer a bigger screen.

I'm just a bit amazed that a device specifically bought for reading ebooks has a lack of a descent library sorting system.

I use Mobipocket on my Axim and one of the reasons I like that program so much is because I can sort my library how I want it. That is quite a main issue with me.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Hardly "the same as Sony". Sony have a large eBook store selling BBeB-format books. If there are eBook stores selling "Wolf"-format books, I seem to have overlooked them!

Well, if you do not want to be locked into a format that only works on one device then the situation is similar.

Also a lot of people on this forum have declared that they only buy lit format for the Sony and if this is a working and good approach you cannot really complain that the Hanlin is more limited.

If I was going to buy a reader now I would buy a Hanlin since they have released an SDK and they are not breaking the GPL as far as I know. Also they support directories.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

I currently read ebooks using TealDoc on a Palm T3. I have a large (3000+) collection of ebooks in text and PDB format.
Looking at the various ebook readers on the market, they all seem to use the same screen, so the choice comes down to extra features and the best interface.
I'm not in the US, so the wireless feature of the Kindle is worthless to me.
What I'm looking to be able to do it dump my entire collection to a large memory stick and carry it around at all times. Could someone advise how well the interfaces for the various ebook readers would cope with navigating such a large collection of books? With the Palm I can organise things by directory exactly as I wish, which is ideal.

I use a Palm OS device as well -- a Tapwave Zodiac 2. It has a 320x480 screen, 128MB of RAM, an ATI graphics chip with 2D acceleration, Yamaha stereo sound, Bluetooth, and two SD slots. One slot is SDIO and I can use wifi through a wifi SD card, but I generally don't.

I have about 3,500 ebooks on the device. The majority (about 3,200) are HTML files from Project Gutenberg, the Baen Free Library, and elsewhere, converted for use with Plucker, a free, open source offline HTML reader for Palm OS. I roll my own conversions because I want color image support. Plucker supports hyperlinks, embedded images, color, and (on OS5) custom fonts. I use the high compression option that uses a Palm port of zlib to provide gzip compatible compression. The Plucker files occupy about 1.5GB of a 2GB SD card.

I also have a number of files in Mobipocket format, created by posters here, as well as files in eReader, PDF, Palm DOC, zTxt, RTF, and ASCII text format.

PDFs I handle with the free, open source, PalmPDF application. For PalmDOC, zTxt (similar to PalmDOC, but using zlib for higher compression, plain ASCII text, and RTF files, I use a free, open source Palm viewer called PalmFiction.

The Zodiac has two SD slots, and I have a 2GB card in each. Plucker files live on the first card in the /Palm/Programs/Plucker directory. Mobipocket files live in /Palm/Ebooks and PDF files live in /PDFs on the second card. Other formats mostly live in /Documents on the second card.

I use categories in Plucker, and Readling Lists in Mobipocket to classify things, as those programs don't support navigating the folder structure on the card. Plucker looks for documents in /Palm/Launcher, /Palm/Ebooks, and /Palm/Programs/Plucker. Mobi looks in /Palm/eBooks. eReader looks in /Palm/Launcher and /Palm/Books. PalmPDF and PalmFiction can navigate the card, so documents for them can be placed where I desire, and I use sub-directories for classification.

Having to maintain five viewers to cover all the bases, and recall what books are in what format is a PITA, but until everyone decides to support a standard ebook format I'm stuck with it. Meanwhile, it works well.

I need color and the ability to do other things on the device besides view ebooks, so I'm not currently in the market for a dedicated reader.
______
Dennis