Recycling an old Pocket PC
Posted on August 25, 2007
9 Comments
The Background
I have a Toshiba e740 Pocket PC (old review) that’s been sitting in a drawer for about 4 years now. I used it for a couple of years, but once I got my iPAQ 4355 — that I still use daily — this unit was retired to the bottom desk drawer.
Shame too; I had purchased the extended battery and a pricey (at the time) Piel Frama leather case for it (that case is soooo sweet!). It also has built-in WiFi (802.11b and WEP only) and both compact flash and SD card slots.
Truly a nice little machine for when it was built.
Only real problem with was is a loose battery switch. The slightest little bump and it cuts power — usually causing a hard reset. Annoying, but I believe I’ve fixed it with a 1/2″ strip of electrical tape to just force it locked.
A Dedicated E-Book Reader
I was chatting with Vox last night about e-book reading. He had hooked me on μBook a month or so ago and since then I’ve been doing a lot of reading with the iPAQ. While we were chatting, I remembered that I had this Toshiba sitting in a drawer. Not any more! Now it’s a dedicated and full time e-book reading machine.
μBook is pretty slick. It reads quite a few formats of e-books and is smart enough to open .zip files, which allows packing a lot of books into a small space.
Rich recently mentioned Mobipocket, which offers another option for e-book reading. I haven’t played with that reader very much yet, but installed it just in case the urge strikes.
Let’s not forget the Adobe Reader for Pocket PC. Sometimes the only format for a document is PDF, so this is handy to keep around just in case.
Back to the Toshiba
That extended battery adds a bit of thickness to the e740, but it also adds a lot of battery time which means I won’t have to charge it every night.
E-books tend to be rather small, so an old 64MB SD card works nicely to store them. Now I just need to find more good places to (cheaply) acquire them. The μBook site has a nice list that’s got me rolling, but I’m sure there are a lot more to find.
Do you have any other readers I should look at or good sources for free and inexpensive e-books? Leave a comment and share!
Tags: acrobat, adobe, eBook, μBook, pocketPC, ubook
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9 Responses to “Recycling an old Pocket PC”
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Even though I asm quite a gadget freak, I have never been able to convince myself that these ebook readers can provide me the reading experience of a real book. I am probably too old fashioned where books are concerned.
Traveller - I was the same way. But it actually works out very well. Being able to read in bed without a light is a plus too.
What I really like is I can put a large number of books on a little 64MB card, yet what I’m carrying around is maybe half the size of a thick paperback.
If you have an old Palm or Pocket PC laying about, it’s definitely worth a shot.
I’ve been reading ebooks on a PDA for over 3 years now, and ubook reader is by far my favorite reader. I’ve never actually installed Adobe’s PDF reader, as ubook has spoken PDF for the last few versions.
I have to admit I’m always amused at the number of people that express surprise that you can read books on a PDA, and then protest that “Oh, I could never do that…it’d hurt my eyes” or “Its just not the same, i need the actual paper book in front of me”
Amen, Dave — and thanks for sharing!
And now my book is leather wrapped.
Honestly, I think the screen is perhaps a bit easier on my eyes than a dead-tree book. Granted, that could be due to the amount of reading I do in low light conditions.
Now if those uBook guys would send me my license…
Mine is magnesium…one of the Innopocket Mag cases. I rather like the flip cover rather than the open to the side cover, but thats personal pref I think.
I just converted my readaholic girlfriend to a PDA this weekend, by the simple act of handing her one loaded with books and saying “let me know when you run out”.
I have to agree with the lowlight statement…its much much easier on my eyes to read off a PDA when its in lowlight conditions.
Still waiting? I remember them being fairly speedy on that.
Magnesium? Fancy.
Mine’s a flip cover as well — and I agree, it just seems to work better than way.
Yep, still waiting for the uBook folks. I’ve sent a few emails this week with no reply. I reckon tomorrow I’ll tackle the “give me my money back process” via paypal. Bummer.
I’m happy to update that I’ve received the uBook license
Apparently we had some odd spamtrap related issues, but all resolved now.
I took a Jornada 567 with me to Iraq. I read many books on it, including the entire Dark Tower Series by Stephen King. Having the bulk of a book hidden from view (and feel) enables one to really get into a story and be surprised when the ending comes. This is contrast to knowing the ending is coming as you get less pages