Nokia 770 or Reader, which one do you want?

[ascherjim]

Liviu: Am following your experiences and experimentation with great interest. I have just received my 1 gig memory card, but will hold off in trying it out until I familiarize myself with Linux a good deal more. (In fact, I'm an absolute beginner, but with some Windows capabilities, especially with a programmer wife at hand.) I've noted your problem with Colinex. I've just purchased Knoppix, which as you know is bootable from the DVD (or CD). Maybe this will work for me, without having to load a full Linux on a hard drive (preferably on another CPU). Anyway, keep up the reporting. Regards, Jim

[vranghel]

Hi everybody

Liviu, I was looking at the attached pic of the nokia, and i noticed that the text is in romanian. Also your name is romanian too.
I am originally from romania also.

I'd like to ask you where do you get romanian content(ebooks) from.

thanks!

[Liviu_5]

Hi,

I think it is a good idea to try Knoppix, I am inclining to go that route for Nokia that way.
Colinux is great because I use it to manipulate image files, pdf's, djvu's, in large numbers/size (I use a 1GB swap file since I have 1.5GB Ram on my xp and it works very nicely) and do microedits under xp. I use 5 monitors on my system so I can do lots of stuff simultaneously.
I used to use cygwin but it is limited. I use Colinux only in console mode (I installed an X server and I use it rarely since I have to launch cygwin, disable my firewall and connect to my pc like in a network) so the capability to use both it and Xp simultanoeusly is essential.
With Knoppix I plan to use my USB external hard drive as a main drive and some flash cards as secondary depending on what it will recognize from my hardware and hopefully I will be able to get root on Nokia.
For the moment I use the 1Gb card just as is, I put my books on it, add to Fbreader library as needed and I really enjoy it.

Liviu

Originally Posted by ascherjim

Liviu: Am following your experiences and experimentation with great interest. I have just received my 1 gig memory card, but will hold off in trying it out until I familiarize myself with Linux a good deal more. (In fact, I'm an absolute beginner, but with some Windows capabilities, especially with a programmer wife at hand.) I've noted your problem with Colinex. I've just purchased Knoppix, which as you know is bootable from the DVD (or CD). Maybe this will work for me, without having to load a full Linux on a hard drive (preferably on another CPU). Anyway, keep up the reporting. Regards, Jim

[Liviu_5]

Hi,

Yes, I am originally from Romania, though I have lived (almost) all my adult life here (I came here when I was 21 in 1990 to do my Ph.D. in math, but I moved away from academia for many years).
These days I tend to read mostly in English but there are some books (Ioan Dan, Radu Tudoran, Vintila Corbul, a lot of Dumas) that are available only in romanian or french from various sources (Abe books, romanian gift shop, Amazon.fr, relatives in Romania..) and I tend to scan/ocr my print copies (there are free romanian or french modules for various ocr software and they work as well as for english).
There are also online forums like the yahoo group cartionline, or the Romania based forum romaniainedit.3xforum.ro, but you have to decide for yourself whether to use such.
Also here in the NYC area there is a Romanian cultural center with a very extensive library that I used to borrow from a lot when I worked in the city.


Liviu

Originally Posted by vranghel

Hi everybody

Liviu, I was looking at the attached pic of the nokia, and i noticed that the text is in romanian. Also your name is romanian too.
I am originally from romania also.

I'd like to ask you where do you get romanian content(ebooks) from.

thanks!

[kenstuart]

Originally Posted by Liviu_5

Personally I am very interested in spreading the ebooks message and from my interaction with people live and online, I found that a big obstacle is the technical aspect. People do not like reading long texts on pc/latops, at least not in pdf/html/word (scrolling is very unnatural in reading books, as is reading landscape unless you do it double page and then you need good reading software) and unfortunately right now we are in the "Tower of Babel" age with all formats, devices ... in the ebook world.

Microsoft Reader is a free product on pc/laptops that has none of the limitations you describe. It shows a single page equivalent to a book page, and hitting the space bar causes the next page to display.

Furthermore, some of the same people who say that they prefer paper books to reading on a PC, nevertheless can be found for hours in front of their PC, reading emails from friends, Forum discussions like this one, news sites, chat room messages, etc. No one says " Gee, I wish those Forum discussions were delivered on paper. "

The difference is just what people are used to. It's like DVRs and Broadband - you have to use it, in order to realize how useful it is.

PS Of course, MS Reader cannot be used on Nokia 770, but I was responding to the more general comment quoted above.

[Liviu_5]

Hi,

As it happens on my PC I like MsReader as much as any other software that I use to read books (uBook, Gemstar viewer, Adobe, Moby, Firefox), and on my tablet in portrait full screen mode it is my favourite reading software since you can move pages pressing with your finger at the bottom which comes very naturally to me. My point is that it is hard to read long fiction books in front of the PC and even on a tablet/laptop. Sure, I spend my workday and a considerable part of time before and after, in front of 5 pc screens, I read news, blogs, occasionally even short fiction, contribute in a forum or 2 and so on, but all these activities do not require more than superficial involvement with what I do, can be done in parallel and so on.

For me reading novels which has been my primary mode of relaxation for 30 years and more, requires involvement with the text, moderate privacy and reasonable comfort and I found that very hard to achieve standing on a chair in front of the PC, and even in bed with the relatively bulky tablet on my knees. I read on the go on Nokia, but that is just to fill unproductive time, while on my PC I try all the time to fill my unproductive time reading books and do not succeed.

Personally I think that on a PC it is intrinsically hard to maintain concentration and read from the same document for a longish time whether from an ebook, a forum note, a newspaper article, an official report, and novels by and large are not suited for "chunking".

I happily read books on Ebookwise, on Nokia and on paper, and magazines online or on my devices (I have only electronic subscriptions these days at about 6 magazines both fiction and nonfiction, and including rereads I probably got to 100 novels read as ebooks), and I read news and contribute to forums exclusively online, being very happy to have all these choices.

And of course anything you can read with MsReader you can convert to opf and read on Nokia with FbReader, and with one more Librarian conversion from opf to imp, you can read on Ebookwise too.

Liviu

Originally Posted by kenstuart

Microsoft Reader is a free product on pc/laptops that has none of the limitations you describe. It shows a single page equivalent to a book page, and hitting the space bar causes the next page to display.

Furthermore, some of the same people who say that they prefer paper books to reading on a PC, nevertheless can be found for hours in front of their PC, reading emails from friends, Forum discussions like this one, news sites, chat room messages, etc. No one says " Gee, I wish those Forum discussions were delivered on paper. "

The difference is just what people are used to. It's like DVRs and Broadband - you have to use it, in order to realize how useful it is.

PS Of course, MS Reader cannot be used on Nokia 770, but I was responding to the more general comment quoted above.

[dugbug]

Its not the size of the display that makes the sony appealing (over the nokia), its the technology. Sony's is e-ink based, not an LCD.

-d

[loralyn]

I have purchased 3 handheld devices to use as ebook readers: The Nokia 770, ebookwise 1150, and the Cowon A2 PMP. Much to my dismay, I am unable to download any of the Adobe pdf or Mobipocket ebooks from my local library on to any of them. Library ebooks are encrypted which does not prevent me from reading them on my WinXP PC or my Mac, but I can’t take them out of the office. Does anyone have any suggestions (other than to just give it up)? Is there a handheld device that will work with encrypted Adobe PDF or Mobipocket ebooks? Or, is there a software program which will make them readable on a handheld?

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by loralyn

I have purchased 3 handheld devices to use as ebook readers: The Nokia 770, ebookwise 1150, and the Cowon A2 PMP. Much to my dismay, I am unable to download any of the Adobe pdf or Mobipocket ebooks from my local library on to any of them. Library ebooks are encrypted which does not prevent me from reading them on my WinXP PC or my Mac, but I can’t take them out of the office. Does anyone have any suggestions (other than to just give it up)? Is there a handheld device that will work with encrypted Adobe PDF or Mobipocket ebooks? Or, is there a software program which will make them readable on a handheld?

For encrypted Mobipocket books you can use the Cybook v3 from Bookeen or the iLiad from iRex. They're both e-ink devices.

[JSWolf]

There is a version of Mobipocket for the Nokia 7710. I don't know if it would work on your Nokia 770.

[wallcraft]

The Nokia 770 (and N800/N810) are Linux-based, and they don't support any encrypted e-book formats. Nokia cell phones don't run Linux, and many support MobiPocket e-books - for a list see The Mobipocket Reader for Symbian OS.

[loralyn]

[QUOTE=wallcraft;110481]The Nokia 770 (and N800/N810) are Linux-based, and they don't support any encrypted e-book formats.

Thanks for the straightforward answer. Now I can finally stop trying to make my Nokia 770 into a reader of ebooks from my local library.

I know there are plenty of excellent free non-encrypted ebooks sites. Although I love to read a great variety of materials, I prefer reading books relating to current events and politics (as sick as that is). Guess I will purchase a Palm Lifedrive or a Palm TX.

I really appreciate all the support I received from this site. Thanks to you all.