by Frank McPherson, author of How To Do Everything With Windows Mobile

 
I've been a customer of eReader ever since they have been known as Peanut Press, which needless to say is a long time. This is an ebook reader that started on the Palm OS platform and expanded to Windows Mobile once it became popular. To this day books are still stored in an encrypted *.pdb format, which I believe indicated a Palm database as the Palm OS doesn't really have a file system.

eReader is popular because of the huge number of titles available. Pretty much any book that you could want is available, though in most cases the book prices are at or slightly below retail. Up until just recently shopping for an ebook was a process of logging in to the web site from a PC, download the book you bought on the PC and then transferring it to your device.

For a while now you could buy a professional version of eReader, which had more features, or use a free version that I always found to be good enough. Recently the professional version became free for Windows Mobile users because the online store has been integrated into the device. In short, you can now purchase and download ebooks directly on your device.

eReader has a couple of features that I like: online bookshelf and wish lists. The online bookshelf is a record of all the books that you buy. If you switch devices or accidentally delete a book, you can always go to the online bookshelf and download another copy. You may need to re-enter the the DRM credentials, which is a combination of your name and the credit card number that you used to buy the book. eReader's DRM is very sensible to me, and is based on the assumption that people will not freely give their credit card numbers to others. If you transfer a book to another device you have to reenter the credentials. I really wish that Apple provided a similar type of "bookshelf" for the music that you buy from iTunes, which would provide a level of security from losing music if you should have a hardware failure.

The new professional version of the reader provides access to your bookshelf, so if you switch devices all you need to do is install the new client then access the bookshelf and download the books you want to read or reference. Unfortunately, eReader does not provide the same for the other feature that I like, wish lists.

I use a wish list to keep track of the books that I want to buy in the future. Since this is a feature of shopping, I think it is curious that it is not included because any book that I would want to download from a wish list is a new purchase, unlike the bookshelf which are books I already purchased. Hopefully in the future eReader will add wish lists to the client, in the mean time I'll just have to go to my wish list on a PC, purchase the book, then access the bookshelf from my handheld to download it.

If you like reading books, and haven't tried eReader, I highly recommend it. I find it particularly handy for carrying a number of books with me, and most Pocket PC screens are very readable. I am particularly happy that my Tytnn II has a job wheel on the side, which is handy for turning pages.

Labels: 2007, ebooks

posted by Frank at 6:50 PM 

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