D.I.Y.
MOBILE
READING eBOOKS ON A
PALM HANDHELD
Discover the pleasures of reading by backlight.
By Mark Frauenfelder
I’ve tried using a few different dedicated eBook
readers. They suck; they’re much worse than
paper books. But I do like using my Palm OS
handheld as an eBook reader, especially at night
in bed with the backlight on. Last year I bought a
Sony CLIE T615C with a color 320x320 screen for
about $75 used on eBay. I see they’re going for as
little as $50 on eBay now, a great deal for a 16MB
device.
The screen is about 2.5x2.5 inches and it’s at
least as legible as a computer screen, if not more.
The pixels are very small and the characters are
very sharp. This high resolution is key for reading — the kind of screen that comes with the
134 Make: Volume 01
Treo 600, for example, is no good for long texts
(although I have a friend who keeps eBooks on
his Treo and swears by it because it gives him
something to read when he is in line or waiting
for an appointment). Any Palm device will work,
but standard low resolution (160x160) makes it
more difficult to read. The Sonys and the Palm
Tungsten have that satisfying high resolution
(320x320). Recently, I picked up a Tapwave
Zodiac, a combination
PDA/handheld gaming
unit with a 480x320
display. It’s even better
than the CLIE for read-
Books on handheld
devices are actually
easier to read than their
dead-tree counterparts.
