To begin, I'll using the reader primarily to proof the appearance of magazines converted to the .epub format, and then to better design documents that will work well in ebook format. Most of these won't be actual books -- they'll be magazine and newsletter-style articles with images.
We're going to avoid DRM-locked formats, at least to whatever degree any of them limit us from offering the magazine in a format that can be read on other readers.
I'm also aiming for affordable rather than top of the line. Most importantly, I need a reader that will come closest to duplicating the screen size and sorts of interfaces the majority of techie and scientific ebook users are likely to have.
As for what else I need to consider, please, you tell me. I am but an egg.
Thanks!
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I can bring it next weekend if you'd like to see it.
Looking forward to seeing your famous GOH self!
I downloaded the Kindle for Mac. Alas, while Kindle has bunches and bunches of magazines available in regular Kindle format, so far I've only found three magazines available for the Kindle for Mac version -- MacWorld news, something called "Code" that does an excellent job of displaying likely problems we'll encounter in the free sample they offer, and knitting patterns.
Still, it's a quick start and I greatly appreciate that. I'll still get a reader, but having the desktop option should greatly expand my ability to see what publications do in different formats!
I'm betting ebook readers will be popular Black Friday sale items, another argument for waiting an extra week or so. Thanks to you telling me about the computer readers may well buy me the time I need to be able to wait. You rock.
The other epub reader I use, iBooks, gives me considerably less control, but the interface is a bit nicer.
Unless you know for sure which device people are going to be using, I'd suggest buying a low-end iPad, since that lets you use apps that mimic most of the readers out there.
The cheapest option, the $139 Kindle, won't help you at all, since it doesn't read .epub files natively; you have to convert them to .mobi.
Hope that's helpful!
As a whole, it's a pretty shaky standard, and none of the major players are doing a terribly good job of hewing to it.
Thanks for the confirmation on both the blog and the book.
I don't really know which ebook readers most tech-savvy or scientific readers use, but I think the Nook is the most accessible of the dedicated readers that do epub. I'll also echo the suggestions above about reader apps on the iPhone and Android. I suspect that users on those platforms do make up a large portion of the people who use epub documents, but they are going to be different experiences from those who use dedicated epub readers (smaller screen real estate is the main thing, plus different methods of switching pages (button presses on dedicated readers vs. screen swipes or screen taps on iPhone/Android)).
Kindle doesn't do epub, Jeff Bezos says implementing epub would harm Amazon's ability to innovate.
Nook is an Android OS system. Open source geeks like it. The little color display at the bottom for control interface and such is kind of cool. Battery life (because the color display is tiny and the main display is ePaper) is great.
Charlie Stross likes the Sony Reader, and wrote a blog entry a few months ago about how the interface is really nice. Battery life is great, the display is ePaper.
The iPad is a great reader, and the touch screen is definitely different than the button interface on dedicated readers. There are some quirks in the iBook software, but you have the option to load other reader software (I've got Kindle and Nook, but I use neither of them). Battery life isn't nearly as fabu as ePaper devices, but the iPad is color. It's an iOS device, so you can run a bunch of different apps besides readers on it. On the down-side, it's iOS, so you're in Apple's walled garden.