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Old 02-04-2010, 08:20 AM   #1
lapwing
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accidentally wandered into a mine field ...

Hi ...

The other day i was wandering about the house having a crisis about how on earth i can manage to fit more books in the house when i thought (for me) outside the box and started to consider ebooks ...

Since then i've downloaded calibre and have merrily downloaded loads of free epub books which although free and exciting i'm finding a pain to read on my netbook ... hence the increasing and obsessive desire for a ereader.

Given that most free books seem to be in epub and i live in the UK the most obvious seemed to be a sony ereader but i looked at some in PC World and they didn't 'feel right' for me. I think I would feel more comfortable with a larger screen more like the Kindle DX. This is partly because i read incredibly fast and therefore would feel like i was turning pages frequently but also i read a lot of PDF's which appear to look good on the kindle DX.

However ... and this is coming from someone who until a few days ago knew nothing about ebooks and their formats ... most of the free ebooks are in EPub and Kindle works with Mobi ? I can use Calibre to covert non DRM EPub's to Mobi but in practise how easy is this ? Will i be entering a minefield where I have to know a lot about doing funny things to code to do this or in practise will calibre do it well enough at the click of a button ?

Also will i be able to have access to most of the books on the Amazon site or are there still a lot of Geographical restrictions ? I have a very large and varied taste in books - from classic novels to science fiction and fantasy, non fiction, such as, politics, philosophy and religion and i also read a lot of PDF's for work and study.

I basically want it all - a big screen, immediate access to a big book shop, newspapers daily and the ability to read loads of free classics at my leisure ...

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Sarah E
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Old 02-04-2010, 09:02 AM   #2
desertgrandma
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Welcome to MobileRead, lapwing.
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Old 02-04-2010, 09:19 AM   #3
sony_fox
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Welcome. THere's a bewildering amount of choise out there.

Have you looked at the MobileReads comparisom matrix, from the wiki at the top. This should help you compare most models. I think the Irex would be a strong contender for reading pdfs on a large screen. But I'm happy with my Sony 505. Which model did you look at in PC world? the 300 is small, the 600 larger and the not quite yet available in the UK but hopefully soon 900 larger still.

I've not found Calibre conversions to be a 'click of the button' job.
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Old 02-04-2010, 09:19 AM   #4
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Originally Posted by desertgrandma View Post
Welcome to MobileRead, lapwing.
some extra info would be nice, DGM!

But yes, welcome to the forum. You've found the right spot to get some more confusing answers to your questions

Quote:
Originally Posted by lapwing View Post
Hi ...


The other day i was wandering about the house having a crisis about how on earth i can manage to fit more books in the house when i thought (for me) outside the box and started to consider ebooks ...

Since then i've downloaded calibre and have merrily downloaded loads of free epub books which although free and exciting i'm finding a pain to read on my netbook ... hence the increasing and obsessive desire for a ereader.

Given that most free books seem to be in epub and i live in the UK the most obvious seemed to be a sony ereader but i looked at some in PC World and they didn't 'feel right' for me. I think I would feel more comfortable with a larger screen more like the Kindle DX. This is partly because i read incredibly fast and therefore would feel like i was turning pages frequently but also i read a lot of PDF's which appear to look good on the kindle DX.

However ... and this is coming from someone who until a few days ago knew nothing about ebooks and their formats ... most of the free ebooks are in EPub and Kindle works with Mobi ? I can use Calibre to covert non DRM EPub's to Mobi but in practise how easy is this ? Will i be entering a minefield where I have to know a lot about doing funny things to code to do this or in practise will calibre do it well enough at the click of a button ?

Also will i be able to have access to most of the books on the Amazon site or are there still a lot of Geographical restrictions ? I have a very large and varied taste in books - from classic novels to science fiction and fantasy, non fiction, such as, politics, philosophy and religion and i also read a lot of PDF's for work and study.

I basically want it all - a big screen, immediate access to a big book shop, newspapers daily and the ability to read loads of free classics at my leisure ...

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Sarah E
First, geographic restrictions. Yes, they are there. No, you won't notice it unless you specifically search for it (at least Amazon won't show what you can't buy).

If you have free, non-DRM epubs, they're really easy to transform into non-DRM mobipockets, using Calibre. If you have bought epubs (and they contain DRM), it's a bit more complicated, but still possible.

I'm not sure how the DXi handles PDF's these days, but I have heard some noises earlier of how it didn't work too well.

You could also look at the Irex DX800. Most European shops sell epubs and the DX800 does read those.

And yes, the ebook area is a huge minefield right now, with all those nice and sweet devices already available and soon to be available!
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Old 02-06-2010, 01:58 PM   #5
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You could try to search at amazon.com for, for eaxample, the last 20 books you bought. It might give you an impression of whether amazon will have books available that you are interested in. It seems to depend on what you read. I know HarryT have found it problematic, but personally, it's very few books I've been interested in that I couldn't get
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Old 02-07-2010, 09:46 AM   #6
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lapwing said "I basically want it all - a big screen, immediate access to a big book shop, newspapers daily and the ability to read loads of free classics at my leisure ..."


http://www.skiff.com/skiff-reader.html
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