[ale] eBook readers for PDF reference material

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Fri, 2010-08-20 at 13:46 -0400, James Sumners wrote:
> I'm sorry. I can't reply and tell you that I love my iPad for reading
> books in any format. I can't tell you about how it supports ePubs
> (DRMed or otherwise), PDFs, and really any sort of "book" format you
> throw at it. I can't tell you that O'Reilly's DRM free eBooks are
> available in ALL popular eBook formats and that they specifically
> support the iPad.
> 
> I can't reply and tell you all of this because the iPad is a computer
> that is geared toward a specific type of use, but it isn't open to
> tinkering like a traditional computer. 

Wow.  I totally didn't realize that my query would manage to merge two
threads together, or I would have deferred posting it until the other
thread died down... I suppose I should have realized that, though, given
that the other thread kind of reminded me that I'd been meaning to post
this one for a while.

So you like the iPad.  That's fine.  I'd thought about it, too, for its
screen size, but it costs more than I actually have the ability to
spend, and the primary reason that I want an ebook reader is because the
power of the full computer enables too many distractions---email, IM,
whether its for work or not.  I want something that is pretty easy for
me to focus on, and that's handy alongside the computer as well as
wherever the hell I wanna read any one of the fifty books that I'd
rather put on the reader instead of lugging around.

For once in my life, I just want something simple that does basically a
single dedicated thing and isn't overly complex with the ability to
tweak and mod and whatever.  As long as the display is about the size of
a piece of real letter paper, and it does PDF, I'm pretty well happy
(for the moment).

Okay, so that is partially my inability to let my email/IM build up and
feeling like I need to deal with it the moment it arrives.  I can
probably change that mindset if I want to.  But I would just like
something simple that I can load PDFs on and go.

And I didn't know about the O'Reilly books.  That's awesome---and at the
same time, I wonder how I missed that, though that doesn't strictly
speaking matter, I know about it now.  Thanks!

	--- Mike