Someone on the Acer Aspire One user forum recently posted instructions on how to turn a netbook into an e-book reader. The demonstration uses Google Books and Acrobat Reader, but with the proper application and display settings it can apply to all sorts of online books. My adapted method is:
- Download the book and shut off the wi-fi to save battery power.
- If the book is in plain text (e.g. many Project Gutenburg texts) set the browser or reader preferences to render fixed-width text in an eye-friendly font.
- Set your reader to open documents where you left off. (In a browser you can just leave the tab open or use an extension like Taboo to save the tab and your place in it.)
- Open the book in the browser or reader.
- Switch to full-screen mode. (Go to the View menu and learn the hotkey. It's usually F11.)
- Rotate the display, either in the reader or with your display adapter. Use hotkeys to avoid having to "mouse" on a right angle.
That last bit is very important because it is extremely difficult to use a mouse or trackpad when your display is rotated. Scrolling is done by keystroke. It might also be handy to learn the hotkeys for zooming in case the font is too big or too small for your liking.
Obviously this isn't going to be as light and handy as a Kindle, but with my little netbook it is no more unwieldy than some of the tomes I read, and it has the added bonus of being a computer! I can look something up or post a quote to my blog with just a few keystrokes. Although the display on the Aspire One is phenomenal, I don't think it's as sharp as the Kindle appears to be, and it may cause eye strain after a while. I don't know if I would want to do a lot of reading this way, but it might come in handy if I find a book online that I can't get anywhere else or that I just want to peruse.
Here's how it looks. The picture doesn't do the screen justice, but you get the idea.
