Best of Both Worlds

Palm Reader Desktop

The best ebook reader for PDAs has made the leap to PC and Mac desktops. How does it measure up to desktop readers from Microsoft and Adobe?

Well, first off, given that it's free, how can you possibly complain? Palm Reader is now the only full-featured ebook reader to work on Palm, Zaurus (via the Palm emulator), Pocket PC, Handheld PC, Windows PC and MacOS platforms. Palm Digital Media has bent over backwards to ensure that if you buy a book from them, you can read it on any device you have. (The only exception seems to be Linux PCs, but I'm sure someone in the Linux community can address that.)

The desktop versions of Palm Reader read the exact same files as those on your handheld, although they don't synchronize where you are in the book. If you're reading a book on two different devices, you'll have remember a key phrase near where you left off and search for it. On the whole, though, Palm has nicely sidestepped the debacle Microsoft went through when most Microsoft Reader files could be read on the desktop, but not on Pocket PCs.

As mentioned above, the Search function on Palm Reader works great, and this is one of the features in general that makes ebooks so compelling. While I don't expect a lot of people to read fiction or other "entertainment" ebooks on the desktop (with one notable exception, see below), I think Palm Reader will be great for referring to books on the desktop that you've either already read or only bought for reference anyway. Business books like Selling the Invisible or Rich Dad, Poor Dad are particularly well-suited to this.

A big advantage Palm Reader has over both Acrobat Reader and Microsoft Reader is resizability. With Microsoft Reader you're limited to "Microsoft's Size Fits All" and with Acrobat you have to size the reader window to fit the pre-formatted content. With Palm Reader, you can make the reader window any size you like, and the content will repaginate to fit. I can read what I want to read, how I want to read it. What a novel concept! (Yes, I see the pun, and it was really quite unintentional.)

Keeping with the idea of making the reader happy, Palm Reader also has a collection of "themes" you can use to customize your reading experience. If you really prefer green text against a black background (old school terminal colors), you can read that way. No problem. I prefer the "Canvas" theme, which gives me black text against a subtly textured background. I looks a lot like a quality hardcover. You can also, obviously, read in whatever font you prefer (as opposed to what the author thought you should read in for Acrobat or Berling Antiqua for Microsoft) and whatever font size is most comfortable for you.

The user interface as a whole is much more comfortable than other readers. Bookmarks and annotations are conventient to access, but stay out of your way. Once you size the window to your desired size, you can "maximize" it and center the page on your screen with an unbroken black background fewer distractions (Microsoft Reader also does this, but without the ability for you to tune the page size first). The book title is shown on the title bar of the window, so that's what you see in the Windows task bar. There are lots of little touches that make Palm Reader on the desktop a viable alternative to its siblings on palmtops.

But what's really going to put Palm Reader on the map when it comes to "desktop" PCs isn't a desktop at all. This November Microsoft is going to release the long-awaited Tablet PC. For those of you who haven't seen one, a Tablet PC combines the power of a Windows XP-based ultra-slim laptop with the portrait orientation, long battery life and pen input of a PDA. The Windows version of Palm Reader will be perfectly suited for a Tablet PC, once and for all putting to rest the objection of "I'd like to read ebooks, but I don't want to be chained to my desk and PDA screens are too small." Now you'll have the best of both worlds.