Connecting geeks

Reading books

December 7th, 2005

After some weeks with my Nokia 770, I have discovered that it is awesome to read books. These days I have made some trips, and spent lots of hours in a coach, so I have had enough time to test the gadget with some e-books readers.

First of all, I downloaded some books from these sites:

Project Gutenberg, a project which is making available online lots of classical books. They have only books whose copyright have expired in the United States, and offer them freely available in several formats (even in audio formats).
Online library of University of Pennsylvania. It is a repository of books available on the Internet. Their catalogue contains 25000 books.

From the sea of available books, I recommend you these little pearls:

Orwell’s books, in particular, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse.

Related to the readers, I have tried two of them: FBReader and Plucker. And I must say that FBReader is much better than Plucker. It can read more formats, you can easily browser your collection, you can read in horizontal and vertical positions, scroll with the hardware buttons, it shows a bar representing the whole book, and how long you have read.

If you choose the right fonts (for me, NewTimes 22 points), reading books is very comfortable, even when there is hardly light (as it is usual in the coach I always take).

So, there is another excuse to buy your Nokia 770 .

6 Comments Add your own

1. LudoTheHUN | December 8th, 2005 at 3:44 pm

Hi, fello 770′er here
Thanks for bloging your experiences with the 770, it is a superb device.
2. Ginger Vasser | December 12th, 2005 at 6:45 am

Hi what is this website all about.
3. herraiz | December 12th, 2005 at 11:12 am

#2: About my experiences with the Nokia 770
4. Alejandro Rivero | January 9th, 2006 at 12:03 pm

The problem about books is that the screen has angular dependency, so landscape and portrait modes do not read equally well.

I am planning to attach the Nokia to a Sony Librie to get a second screen
5. herraiz | January 9th, 2006 at 12:06 pm

Well, you must agree that the best factor in the Nokia 770 is the screen. And I can tell you that it is quite comfortable for reading books. I usually read in the landscape position, and even with minimum bright is clear and comfortable.

But you are right, portrait position is not so comfortable.
6. Alejandro Rivero | January 10th, 2006 at 8:12 am

Indeed I agree; the screen has a fantastic resolution and it seems it is already hitting the limit in pixel densities. The new libretto has more surface at almost the same density, it seems, but it is expensive and it is to be used as a standard laptop (guttop?)

We will still see what happens with Irex iliad, if it comes to be shipped this summer.