Subject: ebooks Resent-Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2000 08:10:21 -0500 Resent-From: Geoffrey Fox Resent-To: p_gcf@npac.syr.edu Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2000 17:36:08 -0500 From: "David E. Bernholdt" To: gcf@npac.syr.edu CC: bernhold@npac.syr.edu Louis's slides listed four vendors. EveryBook is a PDF display device (running embedded Linux) with two 8.5x11 LCD screen (monochrome, I believe). Link to PC to download documents. It will not be available until 2Q2000 and will cost $1600. GlassBook seems to offer only PC software for reading ebooks. Perhaps physical reader is in the works, but not available now. SoftBook is very cagey about actual capabilities of their device, but it doesn't sound as flexible as EveryBook or Rocket eBook. No PC connection -- built-in modem to some dialup they provide, from the sounds of it. Base price is O($900), but if oyu commit to buy a certain level of subscriptions from them for two years, you can get it for O($300). NuvoMedia's Rocket eBook is the closest to being an actual product. It has a monochrome screen, and is essentially a dedicated HTML viewer. It sounds like it can handle anything you can convert to HTML & GIF/JPEG/PNG, but it converts all images to PNG. There's a PC conversion program/librarian that handles this and downaloading. Comes in two models with either 4 MB or 16 MB of memory. 16 MB "Pro" version is about $300. Unfortunately, bn.com isn't shipping orders until 15 Feb so we can't get one for ERDC Review. EveryBook and Rocket eBook claim to be able to store underlining, notes, etc., but no details are given. Nor is it clear to me if/how Rocket eBook deals with links in HTML. It sounds like they work within the document, but it wasn't clear if you had to be in some special mode of the eBook. I think that's about as far as we can go at this point. Perhaps we can buy a Rocket eBook after the review if you want. I still don't see that we have a non-trivial application yet. David -- David E. Bernholdt | Email: bernhold@npac.syr.edu Northeast Parallel Architectures Center | Phone: +1 315 443 3857 111 College Place, Syracuse University | Fax: +1 315 443 1973 Syracuse, NY 13244-4100 | URL: http://www.npac.syr.edu