New Toy

Well, it looks like it is going to happen. They've hit forty for the month, NAEB will be sending my a brand-spanking new Bookeen Cybook in the near future.

(What are you babbling about, Fred?)

It's a gadget to read eBooks on. I've been reading electronic books for quite a while now. When I first got the Apple Newton (remember that?), it was around the same time that texts were appearing on the intertubes. Some were self-published works by various "non-professional authors". Others were efforts from groups like Project Gutenberg. As time went by, I eventually acquired a newer Newton. When the Newton was cancelled, I eventually got one of the early Palm Pilots. Then a Handspring Visor. And (most recently) a Sony Clie.

In the course of all this, I continued to download books from Project Gutenberg. Other sites came into being, some free, some paid, some mixed. I happily downloaded from Baen Books, eReader (under various owners), Fictionwise, Manybooks, Memoware, and others. I now have thousands, yes, thousands, of electronic books of various lengths (ranging from short stories to multi-volume novels).

The new reader will handle some, but not all of the formats I have. Alas, one party or the other is being stubborn, so I'll not be able to read in some formats as TomeRaider or eReader. In some cases the eBooks are in multiple formats so I'll just download in another (readable) format. And I'll keep my Sony Clie around for those DRM-locked and crippled eBooks that I was foolish enough to purchase. Who knows, maybe some day publishers will come to their senses.

In the meantime, I'm quite excited. As with a iPod, it'll be nice to be able to carry around tons and tons (so to speak) of titles, able to dip in to something at a whim. Battery life looks nice (a trade-off, in part, to the lack of backlighting as well as the "eInk" technology). Screen size and quality looks nice. Who says you can't read books on a screen? I've read hundreds!