E-Books and E-Book Readers

        The new big thing these days is the E-Book craze. All the book outlets seem to have their own form of a Reader and book Format. My wife and I both enjoy e-books and try and share our passion with others. Questions that we are asked include: Cost, "brand" of Reader, ease of use, and book formats. I will try and answer some of these.

         First, a little history. Believe it or not E-Books have been around since 1971 and the Gutenberg Project. When founder Michael Hart began digitizing books the technology was still in its infancy. A book with 300 pages took up a Meg of space.  It wasn't until the mid 1990's that E-books really took off. Online writers or Romance and other fiction began marketing their books. In 1995 Amazon started selling Ebooks. The first book readers came into being in 1998 with the Rocket Ebook Reader. A year later Baen Books launched its Free E-Book Library. The rest as they say is history. Lots of readers and thousands of books.
     A few things about the newer readers. Almost none are "back-lit", that is there is no light behind them like on a PC or laptop. The screens use an electronic Ink format that is really cool. Think Etch-A-Sketch technology. Like PDA's or laptops they have rechargeable batteries. Some last longer than others. Memory is either internal, external, online, or a combo. First off is cost. It was in the new just the other day that Amazons brand Kindle was dropping in price to combat  Barnes and Nobles Nook reader. For under $200 you can now get a reader. Sony makes two different sized ones. My wife has one called an Astak that was also $200. Very soon Borders will start selling theirs called a Kobo reader. So lots of choices. We have played around with all of the "biggies" and have owned a Sony. Ease of use on all of them is fairly easy. Most are touch screen or button, the type can be enlarged, and most come with a carry case. Battery power last from around a couple hours to a week depending on use. The newer ones come with a storage capacity of around 2-4 gig. That will hold between 2000 -4000 books. All inside one small container. That is one advantage to a reader. Putting your whole library in one small place.
  One major disadvantage to most of the readers is the online storage or the "networks" that you become a part of. At least from a Prep standpoint. Amazons Kindle is notorious for deleting content that they find unacceptable. That is if you have something THEY don't approve of in your memory they will delete it For you. (Illegal copies, some non-Amazon stuff, things like that). Barnes and Noble has a similar system and so does Borders. Personally, I don't like any electronic thing that reports to someone my habits. Too much like Big Brother. Sony's interface is clumsy and hard to use. Many of the books that you download now have copy-protection just like the Music industry. So no sharing. My wife's Astak reader has pre-installed software and runs over 20 formats. With NO company interference. All of the Readers use different formats. Some such as TXT and PDF are universal extras that will still work. Using a program like Calibre some books can be converted to other formats. Brand new E-books cost from as little a .99 cents each to the same price as a new hardcover. Many book outlets discount them quite a bit.
  Like many things choice is the big issue. As a prepper I like to convert many prep style books into a PDF format. My wife's reader can and does read these files. Her reader uses and takes less energy that a laptop and we can recharge it in the car. For us it is Ideal. Barring an HEMP event this gadget is a welcome addition to out preps. But its all about choice. My advise to someone who is interested in one of these is to go and try one out. The major book stores all have one. Amazon has video and so does YouTube on reader operation. Feel free to comment and I'll try and answer any questions.
   Many E-books are available on-line for Free. My personal library is above 15,000 books. Many text books, medical books, fiction, and other things are available. Below I've listed a few of the better sources of info. In the above article I mentioned converting files to PDF. One of the neatest little programs I've found for that is this one.

**Baen Free Library  -Lots of Free books over a 100
**  Gutenberg Project Library  - 32000 Free books
**  Forgotten Books            -Lots of Fiction and Non Fiction
**  Steves Pages          -Hundreds of Free Military Manuals in PDF   
** Burgomeisters Books  -Cool site with hundreds of Free Books. Good place for some mainstream PAW fiction like Alas, Babylon and Lucifer's Hammer
**PAW FICTION collection  - This is my own collection online. Its a zip file. NO viruses. If it doesn't start immediately Press the BLUE BUTTON