Transferring and reading an E-book on your PDA

As a web designer and lover of all things technical, I joined the hottest craze of the last two years and purchased a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). This little gizmo fits in my small purse and has become my "computer in a bag/personal entertainment system". You may have one too and think all you can use it for is keeping track of your schedule. But it's very easy to make your PDA entertain and transport you to faraway distant worlds. Here's how.

(By the way, I'm currently toting 12 e-books on my handheld. I read everywhere from bathroom, to bed, to beach and car. It never ceases to amaze folks when I show them all the stuff my little gizmo can do.)

ON A POCKETPC

(Compaq, iPAQs, HP Jornada, Casio Cassiopeias, Toshiba e740s/Genios, etc.) The e-book reader of choice is surprise surprise Microsoft's MS Reader. This comes bundled on all PocketPC devices.

Download/purchase MS Reader books (come in the extension .lit).
Put a copy of the file (or master if you're very daring) in your PocketPC My Documents folder. (I create one called Books.)
Synch your handheld to the computer. All e-books will be copied to the PocketPC.
On your handheld, open MS Reader. The program opens with a library of all e-books on your PDA. (It also searches any CompactFlash, Multimedia or Secure Digital cards you have loaded.)
Click on the title you want to read. The program opens to the cover page. You can either click on the Table of Contents or Furthest Read to jump ahead. Or just click Begin Reading. Most PocketPC's have jog dials so just tapping the down dial will take you to the next page.

To advance a page use the Jog Dial or tap the page number.
To jump a page, tap and hold the page number until the menu pops up. Then you can jump to the last page or enter a GO TO PAGE number.
To add a bookmark, highlight, note, drawing or copy a sentence, tap any word and hold. A menu pops up to give you the option.

If you turn off your PDA or close the program, MS Reader remembers exactly where you left off. This is thanks to a special "Annotations file" with an .ebo extension. When you synchronize your PDA, both the e-book and annotations file is copied to your computer. You are able to read on computer, then pick up where you left off on your PDA.

PALM OS Devices (Palm, Handspring, Sony, etc.)

As of the Palm m500 releases, e-book readers were built-in. It's called the Palm Reader program (i.e. Peanut Press or PalmDoc titles - .prc). The procedure is pretty much the same.

MobiReader (for Palms and PocketPCs)

One free alternative to the built-in reader programs of both units is Mobipocket's Mobireader and can be downloaded from www.mobipocket.com for free. This program works on both PocketPC's and Palms, as well as Windows PCs and Macs.

Mobipocket works the same as all reader programs. The one advantage is it comes with a built-in conversion tool allowing you to drag and drop any text file (Word, RTF, HTML, etc.) into the synch folder. Mobipocket converts and copies this file to a special E-docs directory on your PDA. It appears in the library and can be read as you see fit.

Adobe Acrobat Reader (for Palms and PocketPCs)

One other interesting tidbit to note is Adobe is now releasing a PDA-version of the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Just go to www.adobe.com and download the Reader program as normal. But make sure you select the Palm or PocketPC OS for whatever device you own.

Tips from the author of Notorious Angel
On Sale from Hard Shell Word Factory.
Buy e-book ISBN: 0-7599-0326-3
Buy paperback ISBN: 0-7599-0472-3