Petar Mimica’s blog

If there is one thing I would have to admit about myself, it is that I am an avid reader. If I have to wait five minutes, I just have to read something, preferably a book. Until recently, the only books you could get were…well, books. But things changed for me in 2005.

That was when I discovered this device:

It is Palm Z22. It had a convenient price of 99 EUR. The only thing I really used on it was the eReader application, and e-book reading software. Finally, I was able to bring a whole. library (a bookshelf, really, the device had limited memory) with me. And I fell in love with it! The battery life was long enough to have to recharge it only once per week, and the screen quality is just barely good enough to read. And the best thing: in the night I could finally stop having to switch off the light when I fall asleep reading. With time I noticed I could read many more books, because I could just take the Z22 out of my pocket whenever I got few minutes time. For me it is almost unimaginable to have to resort to analogue medium of paper books.

I also discovered that one could buy many books (and recently, the prices are beginning to drop, especially for older books), but download public domain works from many sites. However, I found out that there is a very simple procedure to make your own e-books from any text, which can be opened by software able to understand the eReader format. I might explain how in one of the future posts.

In the subsequent years other devices appeared which could be used to e-read. I even used iPod Nano 2g  for a time (using the Notes application), after my Z22 had an unfortunate accident involving water. Nowdays there is a version of erRader for iPod touch and iPhone. I almost purchased an iPod touch when I found out that 1) I need a new mobile phone and 2) there is an affordable smartphone with Palm OS, namely Palm Centro. Needless to say, it has a much better display than Z22 and a much larger storage.

I never thought about something like Amazons Kindle, since the six-inch diagonal is far too large for me to carry in my trousers pocket. I might eventually acquire one for reading at home, but so far my laptop is good enough (there are eReader versions for Windows and MacOS, as well).

Realistically, I am not sure that e-reading will become mainstream anytime soon. Here is an argument about why that might be so.

This entry was posted on 4 April 09 at 23:07 pm and is filed under Computing, Mobile. Tagged: ebook, ereader, Palm Centro, Palm Z22. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.