![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Since this Wednesday, I'm the proud owner of a Sony PRS-505 e-book reader (in silver). I've been wary about e-book reading devices for a long time - expensive, incompatible proprietary formats, horribly overpriced e-books in Germany, DRM, intrusive companies (Amazon deleted bought books on the fly!) - but recently, Sony dropped the price for the key-operated device by a hundred euros, adopted the open standard epub along with its proprietary formats and - let's face it - the lack of inbuilt WiFi (in comparison to the Amazon devices) comes as a large plus with respect to my books & privacy, so...
Squee!
Why the squee?
1. the reading experience is truly comparable to a paperback novel (don't compare it with netbooks or smartphones, it's so much easier on the eyes!) and when reading in bed, it is actually superior to a paperback novel, because the background of the reader page is better than the average yellowish paperback page, changing pages takes about the same (or less) time than turning a paper book page, and you can do it one-handed!
2. a lot of the books I read are one-timers - that is: I read them and never read them again, because I remember the story precisely - so my bookshelves clutter up fairly fast (and recycling books is something, I do but loathe, because - let's face it - giving away a book you had a positive experience with is like tossing a good friend out into the drizzle).
3. with using the free book-managing software calibre, instead of Sony's clunky stuff, I can download article feeds of my favorite news sources (Spiegel, Heise, Welt, BBC...) onto my reader before getting on the train in the morning, thus being paperless up-to-date without killing trees for a morning paper (or squeezing comp time into my coffee breaks at work)
4. there are a couple of freeware solutions for turning html- and open office documents into epub ebooks. I think, I'm going to put my favorite fanfics onto the device. No more propping of A4 lever-arch files onto my pillow (and getting my face slapped, when falling asleep, reading in one of them)!
5. my preferred reads are science fiction, fantasy, and dark fantasy books and novels, which are nicely available in a couple of online stores. For example at Baens Free Library for free and at Fictionwise for decidedly less than what the German ebook stores demand (a lot of the books are available for international customers; prices are typically well below 10€!).
And if you are into classics (Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes & co.), you'll find most (if not all of them for free at Project Gutenberg or at the mobileread forum, which holds a lot of extremely well and meticulously designed free e-books. I've started on their illustrated Sherlock Holmes and... just wow!
and the ultimate SQUEE:
6. reading scanlations comfortably in book form!
(which means, I won't buy much books for the time being, anyway ;) ).
I've just discovered how to convert CBZs and picture folders with minimal effort into ebooks. The page loading time is about the same as with most other ebooks (~1-2 seconds, which is NOT longer than when I have to switch pages in a paperback novel - and really, that's what the device should be compared to, not to a computer or smartphone!) and it takes less than 5 minutes to do so (now, I need a 16 GB SD card, though):
I'm sure most e-book geeks laugh at my "discovery", but I'm still happy it works for me, because I currently can't put time into this:
(1) turn your scans into a .cbz file by putting all the images into a folder (make sure they sort correctly by file name) and zipping the folder, then rename the folder.zip into folder.cbz
(2) import the cbz file into calibre (above) and convert it into epub (make sure calibre's default conversion format is "epub" and it uses the profile for your reading device; the software recognized mine automatically)
(3) edit the meta data (author, title, publisher, tags for sorting, etc.) using calibre's change meta-data
(4) upload to the reader :)))
Squee!
Why the squee?
1. the reading experience is truly comparable to a paperback novel (don't compare it with netbooks or smartphones, it's so much easier on the eyes!) and when reading in bed, it is actually superior to a paperback novel, because the background of the reader page is better than the average yellowish paperback page, changing pages takes about the same (or less) time than turning a paper book page, and you can do it one-handed!
2. a lot of the books I read are one-timers - that is: I read them and never read them again, because I remember the story precisely - so my bookshelves clutter up fairly fast (and recycling books is something, I do but loathe, because - let's face it - giving away a book you had a positive experience with is like tossing a good friend out into the drizzle).
3. with using the free book-managing software calibre, instead of Sony's clunky stuff, I can download article feeds of my favorite news sources (Spiegel, Heise, Welt, BBC...) onto my reader before getting on the train in the morning, thus being paperless up-to-date without killing trees for a morning paper (or squeezing comp time into my coffee breaks at work)
4. there are a couple of freeware solutions for turning html- and open office documents into epub ebooks. I think, I'm going to put my favorite fanfics onto the device. No more propping of A4 lever-arch files onto my pillow (and getting my face slapped, when falling asleep, reading in one of them)!
5. my preferred reads are science fiction, fantasy, and dark fantasy books and novels, which are nicely available in a couple of online stores. For example at Baens Free Library for free and at Fictionwise for decidedly less than what the German ebook stores demand (a lot of the books are available for international customers; prices are typically well below 10€!).
And if you are into classics (Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes & co.), you'll find most (if not all of them for free at Project Gutenberg or at the mobileread forum, which holds a lot of extremely well and meticulously designed free e-books. I've started on their illustrated Sherlock Holmes and... just wow!
and the ultimate SQUEE:
6. reading scanlations comfortably in book form!
(which means, I won't buy much books for the time being, anyway ;) ).
I've just discovered how to convert CBZs and picture folders with minimal effort into ebooks. The page loading time is about the same as with most other ebooks (~1-2 seconds, which is NOT longer than when I have to switch pages in a paperback novel - and really, that's what the device should be compared to, not to a computer or smartphone!) and it takes less than 5 minutes to do so (now, I need a 16 GB SD card, though):
I'm sure most e-book geeks laugh at my "discovery", but I'm still happy it works for me, because I currently can't put time into this:
(1) turn your scans into a .cbz file by putting all the images into a folder (make sure they sort correctly by file name) and zipping the folder, then rename the folder.zip into folder.cbz
(2) import the cbz file into calibre (above) and convert it into epub (make sure calibre's default conversion format is "epub" and it uses the profile for your reading device; the software recognized mine automatically)
(3) edit the meta data (author, title, publisher, tags for sorting, etc.) using calibre's change meta-data
(4) upload to the reader :)))
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-11-27 22:06 (UTC)From: