Lonely Planets on ebook readers

[rakis]

Hi all,

I just posted in the Hanlin forum as well, and figured I should expand my horizons to include a couple more readers...

I was just wondering if anybody has tried out the "buy by chapter" Lonely Planet PDFs (found here ) on a Sony Reader? I'm going to do quite a bit of traveling in the coming months, and one of these devices would be a godsend compared to carrying 20 guidebooks around. Thanks so much for you input!

Thanks,
-Ray

[DixieGal]

I haven't had any luck with using travel books in eformat. Please let us know how it works out for you.

[RCR]

Originally Posted by rakis

Hi all,

I was just wondering if anybody has tried out the "buy by chapter" Lonely Planet PDFs (found here ) on a Sony Reader? I'm going to do quite a bit of traveling in the coming months, and one of these devices would be a godsend compared to carrying 20 guidebooks around. Thanks so much for you input!

Thanks,
-Ray

Someone asked about Lonely Planet PDFs on the Sony a while ago. This was my response then -

I just downloaded the freebie "Getting Started.pdf" of the Lonely Planet - Philippines and put it on my Sony. (I have the real book to compare with the ebook).

I had no problems zooming to a very readable size. Maybe it is the bits you have to pay for that are locked.

Although the freebie was readable on my Sony, illustrations were badly mangled. Maps appeared greyish with their place names stripped off and appearing uselessly in a list separate from the map. Sidebars and boxes also appeared in a muddled fashion. This is no doubt because of the poor way the Sony handles pdf's.

On my normal computer screen the pdf was identical to the real book. Maps were clear and easy to read, and zoomable of course. So I guess if you were carrying your laptop on your travels, it would be handy to have the ebook version of Lonely Planet on it - costs more than the real book though!

[rakis]

Originally Posted by RCR

Someone asked about Lonely Planet PDFs on the Sony a while ago. This was my response then -

I just downloaded the freebie "Getting Started.pdf" of the Lonely Planet - Philippines and put it on my Sony. (I have the real book to compare with the ebook).

I had no problems zooming to a very readable size. Maybe it is the bits you have to pay for that are locked.

Although the freebie was readable on my Sony, illustrations were badly mangled. Maps appeared greyish with their place names stripped off and appearing uselessly in a list separate from the map. Sidebars and boxes also appeared in a muddled fashion. This is no doubt because of the poor way the Sony handles pdf's.

On my normal computer screen the pdf was identical to the real book. Maps were clear and easy to read, and zoomable of course. So I guess if you were carrying your laptop on your travels, it would be handy to have the ebook version of Lonely Planet on it - costs more than the real book though!

Thank you so much! I've heard mixed things about pdf's displaying on the Sony Reader, I'm glad to hear a first account. I've also been looking at the hanlin v3 (EZ-Reader), and am thinking of trying one out providing they sell them at the local electronics store (they list them on their site).

Have you tried converting the "Getting Started" PDF using a 3rd party utility?

Thanks for your reply!
-Ray

[RCR]

Originally Posted by rakis

Have you tried converting the "Getting Started" PDF using a 3rd party utility?
-Ray

Yes, I tried that. One utility mangled the illustrations and layout and the other utility gave a correct page layout, but so tiny as to be unreadable, and it wouldn't zoom at all.

I do a fair amount of travelling. My Sony is brilliant at keeping me supplied with normal ebooks. But I've given up trying to read PDFs on it.

When I travel I also take an Asus eee with Win XP which can handle any ebook format, plus check my email and browse the internet and do all my computing stuff. At home I read PDFs on my desktop computer.

[ReD]

I was wondering about this too so when I got the PRS-700 a few days ago, one of the first things I did was try out the Lonely Planet "Getting Started" chapters on the Reader. The single-page layouts (such as Egypt and India) are perfectly alright to read but I had a little bit of difficulty with the two-page spreads (eg. New Zealand). As RCR's first post mentions, maps are separated onto another page and things are sometimes out of order. However, I'm wondering if Lonely Planet might be changing their chapter layouts to single-page as only a few months ago when I was looking at these same chapters, all of them were double-page spreads. I'll definitely be keeping my eye out for this as I'm planning a 6-month trip next year and don't want to lug around too many paper guidebooks if I can help it.

[julia]

i bought several chapters of the china travel guide.
pdf's really don't read well on the sony.
maps are horrible small and almost unreadable.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by rakis

Hi all,

I just posted in the Hanlin forum as well, and figured I should expand my horizons to include a couple more readers...

I was just wondering if anybody has tried out the "buy by chapter" Lonely Planet PDFs (found here ) on a Sony Reader? I'm going to do quite a bit of traveling in the coming months, and one of these devices would be a godsend compared to carrying 20 guidebooks around. Thanks so much for you input!

Thanks,
-Ray

If you want travel guides in PDF to take with you, the best device to get as the iRex DR1000S. But it's more expensive then a lot of laptops and the battery life is not all that wonderful. So basically, forget PDF based books unless you have a large enough screen and then you won't have enough battery life.

[rakis]

Originally Posted by ReD

I was wondering about this too so when I got the PRS-700 a few days ago, one of the first things I did was try out the Lonely Planet "Getting Started" chapters on the Reader. The single-page layouts (such as Egypt and India) are perfectly alright to read but I had a little bit of difficulty with the two-page spreads (eg. New Zealand). As RCR's first post mentions, maps are separated onto another page and things are sometimes out of order. However, I'm wondering if Lonely Planet might be changing their chapter layouts to single-page as only a few months ago when I was looking at these same chapters, all of them were double-page spreads. I'll definitely be keeping my eye out for this as I'm planning a 6-month trip next year and don't want to lug around too many paper guidebooks if I can help it.

For the double page spreads, have you tried modifying the PDFs using the technique found here?

Personally, I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty in some scripting or code to get some modified pdfs that work for a device. I would forget about the whole idea, but I'd literally be carrying 20 guidebooks, or re-purchasing them along the way.