Favorite Daughter has been raving about the Kindle she received for Christmas. So, I though I'd see what was out there that could be read on my humble hardware, namely Antique Laptop running Windows XP. Actually quite a bit. Ultra tech savvy son was able to find the latest George R.R. Martin "Game of Thrones" novel. Then I found Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. Yesterday I Googled for an old E.E. Smith space opera. It was there, long out of copyright and thus free and legal, complete with cover art and illustrations from the 1920's pulp magazine in which it had first been serialized.
Only one small hitch, the file had extension was .EPUB and none of the software on Antique Laptop knew what to do with that. Googling for .EPUB came up with a history of the breed, and a most helpful post comparing about 10 different EPUB readers. Of the reviewer's top picks, one from Adobe required the Adobe flash player to work, the other was a straight Windows program. I'm not a Flash fan, that program gets patched on a weekly basis, and usually patches break programs. So I downloaded the Sony Reader, all 40 Mb of it.
And it works. Clicking on the ebook file launches the reader. Comes up with a nice readable font, and a one button page turner.
I suppose I need to go all the way, download a for pay Kindle E-book and a Kindle reader program. That's still on my to-do list.
Actually, I prefer reading a paperback to reading on Antique Laptop. Paperback works in bed, outdoors in bright sunlight. Antique laptop runs hot, and feel hot and heavy in the lap, where as a paperback is next to weightless.
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