Books on the go

Q.

Although I have quite a large collection of e-books on my computer, I do not find the idea of sitting in front of a computer for extended periods appealing. Could you please recommend a portable device, such as a mobile phone or a multimedia player that can double up as a capable e-book reader?

A.

You can pretty much use any Java-based mobile phone for occasional reading purposes, thanks largely to the development of applications such as the free Tequila Cat Book Reader (www.tequilacat.org/dev/br/index~en.html). However, in order to get the best reading experience possible and added functionality, such as the full-text search feature and i dictionary lookups, consider investing in popular mobile phones such as the Apple iPhone 3G and Nokia S60 third edition devices (such as N and E Series mobile phones); Windows Mobile devices by HTC, Samsung and l-Mate or Blackberry devices. Not only do these offer large, high-resolution screens and expandable storage, but they also support an extensive catalogue of applications which include feature-rich e-book readers. An example is that of the Mobipocket Reader (www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/default.asp?Language=EN), which is one of the most acclaimed cross-platform e-book reading applications around today. Moreover, an increasing number of these devices now come with out of the box support for Adobe PDF files. Alternatively, you may wish to consider some hardware devices dedicated for reading e-books, such as the popular Kindle 2 by Amazon that uses an electronic paper display and can even be used without a computer.