Re: [NTLK] Reading ebooks from Palm Digital Media

From: Dan (dan_at_dbdigitalweb.com)
Date: Mon Dec 20 2004 - 08:17:08 PST


karel Jansens wrote:
> This will probably score high on the DumbQuestion'Ometer <TM>, but
> does anyone know of a way to read the encrypted ebooks (.PDB format)
> from Palm Digital Media ( http://www.palmdigitalmedia.com/ ) on a
> Newton MessagePad?
>
> They have several interesting titles and sometimes I pine when reading
> them on my Treo sub-micron screen.
>
> Karel Jansens
>

Ok first it is not possible. These books have encryption that requires
the companys special software and decryption keys for it to work and
that is then keyed to your device. So you can't read the book on
another palm device.

If they are uncrypted books you can convert it from plam doc to plain
text with Mini Reader (free), then use Bookmaker or Press to create a
Newton book. I do this all the time and takes about 2 minutes without
putting in a table of contents. If I put that in, it takes me about 15
minutes (with Bookmaker anyway).

I do not purchase encrypted books because the technology does not let
you read the book the way YOU want. And I can't tell you the problems I
have read with people not being able to read books they DID purchase
either because of a gilich, a software upgrade or hardware upgrade. And
purchasing such books just makes sure that such bad ideas stay around.

There are a lot of unencrypted books on fictionwise.com (look for
multiformat), alexlit.com, www.baen.com (which also has a free section
you might want to check out), among others. You just have to look around.

-Dan

-- 
This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries
Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/
WikiWikiNewt for all kinds of articles: http://tools.unna.org/wikiwikinewt/


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Dec 20 2004 - 08:30:01 PST