Tech From an E-booker’s Viewpoint

If you’re tired of buying MS Office consider trying out some of the free choices available.  I used to think that everyone knew about Open Office, but as I have said before, the literature course I am taking has really opened my eyes.  A fellow student was lamenting about needing an office suite, but couldn’t afford to buy MS Office.  Now usually when I suggest open source software people turn up their noses.  They seem to think that since it’s free and non-Microsoft it must be inferior.  I guess they’d rather be without anything if they can’t buy Microsoft or spend their time trying to get an illegal bootleg copy.  I told her about Open Office and her eyes seemed to double in size.  So I was pleasantly surprised when she told me that not only had she downloaded it, but had installed it on her children’s computer.  Even more surprising was that her daughter’s teacher somehow caught wind of her installing a free office suite and contacted her to find out where he could get it.  This past week I have been following IBM’s introduction of a free office suite called Lotus Symphony.  The suite is in beta, but I plan to give it a try.  It’s available for Windows including XP and Vista, as well as some Linux platforms.  I do not know if it is open source though.  So why aren’t more people informed about alternatives?  Maybe people have all been brainwashed to think that all software worth having is expensive.  So please get the word out there especially to schools, students, people on fixed incomes, and anyone else that will listen.

Edit:  I’ve edited for some typos.  I had to have Lasik enhancement surgery on Friday afternoon and my vision isn’t that great right now.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

If you have been lusting after a N800, but the price was too steep for you, this may be your chance.  Buy.com has the Internet tablet on sale for $232.99.  This is a drastic drop from the $359 I paid just a few months ago.  This definitely makes the N800 a contender for an alternate e-book device.  Although the screen is smaller than the Sony reader, it is in color and has a backlight.  I have to admit that the smaller screen size is not a deterrent.  The screen’s resolution is great and I find I get just about as many paragraphs per page as I do with my Sony reader. The device also uses SD cards instead of RS-MMC cards and comes with two slots, one internal.  I have a 4gb and 8gb card installed.  That’s a lot of storage capacity for books, movies, and music.  Also, there is a wider range of applications available for the N800 than the N770.  Don’t forget that all of the applications are free. 

The only drawback is that the only reader software is FBreader, which means no DRM books.  For those of you who know how to convert your bought books, this won’t be a problem. For document reading and blog posting there are a few applications that work quite well.    I like using Evince for pdf and word document files.  For blog posting I use Maemo WordPy since my blog is powered by Word Press. It was a little tricky setting it up, but not difficult.  One thing though, if you use it to post to your blog, you will want to get a keyboard for it.  I have Think Outside’s Sierra BT Stowaway.  It’s easy to set up and both fit in my purse.  Other than games the best feature on my N800 is the RSS reader.  The N800 is great for RSS feeds.  Until I got one, I rarely read RSS feeds. Now my list of feeds has grown to about twenty.  So does tthe price drop mean that the next generation IT is right around the corner?