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I've been seriously considering getting an e-reader of some sort ever since I found out you could load fic on them, but I couldn't decide between the Sony PRS-505 and the Kindle. Both have their good points and their bad points. Then some people on my Yahoo!Groups said they read fic on their various mobile devices. I have a PDA, so I figured I'd give it a try once before spending the money on additional techie toys.
On my first try, I was able to format a fic properly, save it to my SD card, and open it in Word Mobile. It looked great, but you can't bookmark things in Word Mobile. The document opens at the beginning every single time, so the farther you get into a fic, the more of a chore it is to find where you left off. So, I decided to give Mobipocket a try. It said it could read .doc and .rtf files, and I could download it straight to my PDA. Awesome.
I got out my PDA to download Mobipocket and discovered I couldn't get a Wi-Fi signal. I work in a Wi-Fi hotspot. I've always been able to get a Wi-Fi signal at my desk. So, out I go to look for a signal. And look. And look. I finally found one on the first floor in the middle of the open area between the reference desk and the online catalog station. Fortunately it wasn't busy, so I just stood there and downloaded and installed Mobipocket. Yay! Then I tried to open my .doc fic with it. That's when I got a message that basically said, 'Oh, when we said you could read .doc files, we really meant only if you loaded them through Mobipocket Desktop.' Nowhere did it say this on the Website. ::sigh::
So, off I go home to spend 20 minutes downloading and installing Mobipocket Desktop. It installs just fine. Yay! Then I tried to import my .doc fic from my hard drive where I'd left it after synching it to my PDA the first time. That's when I got a message that basically said, 'Oh, when we said you could load .doc files through Mobipocket Desktop, we really meant only if you have MS Word on your PC.' Which I do not. Nowhere did it say this on the Website. ::sigh::
So, on the theory that I couldn't be the only person in the history of ever to try to use Mobipocket with Open Office, I hit up teh Intarwebs. Sure enough, someone cleverer than I had figured out that Open Office can save documents as .html files. Mobipocket can read .html files. Plus, Mobipocket doesn't recognize .html files as requiring a word processor to deal with, so it just imports them directly. Yay! I loaded four fics onto my SD card in .html. That's when I discovered that having files in .html limits the display in Mobipocket to one of two of the butt-ugliest fonts I've ever seen, instead of the MS Word supported font I'd originally saved them in. ::sigh::
I chose the least objectionable of the two fonts and have made it about halfway through a 9,000 word fic. I'm getting used to the butt-ugly font, and it's nice to be able to carry some of the longer fics around with me that I can't read in one sitting (the 9,000 word fic was just a test run to see if I'd like reading off the PDA; the other fics I loaded are over 40,000 words each). The end result has largely been worth it so far, but it shouldn't require an entire evening on my part to do what should've been a simple set-up. I always get the feeling that these things are easier for other people.
On my first try, I was able to format a fic properly, save it to my SD card, and open it in Word Mobile. It looked great, but you can't bookmark things in Word Mobile. The document opens at the beginning every single time, so the farther you get into a fic, the more of a chore it is to find where you left off. So, I decided to give Mobipocket a try. It said it could read .doc and .rtf files, and I could download it straight to my PDA. Awesome.
I got out my PDA to download Mobipocket and discovered I couldn't get a Wi-Fi signal. I work in a Wi-Fi hotspot. I've always been able to get a Wi-Fi signal at my desk. So, out I go to look for a signal. And look. And look. I finally found one on the first floor in the middle of the open area between the reference desk and the online catalog station. Fortunately it wasn't busy, so I just stood there and downloaded and installed Mobipocket. Yay! Then I tried to open my .doc fic with it. That's when I got a message that basically said, 'Oh, when we said you could read .doc files, we really meant only if you loaded them through Mobipocket Desktop.' Nowhere did it say this on the Website. ::sigh::
So, off I go home to spend 20 minutes downloading and installing Mobipocket Desktop. It installs just fine. Yay! Then I tried to import my .doc fic from my hard drive where I'd left it after synching it to my PDA the first time. That's when I got a message that basically said, 'Oh, when we said you could load .doc files through Mobipocket Desktop, we really meant only if you have MS Word on your PC.' Which I do not. Nowhere did it say this on the Website. ::sigh::
So, on the theory that I couldn't be the only person in the history of ever to try to use Mobipocket with Open Office, I hit up teh Intarwebs. Sure enough, someone cleverer than I had figured out that Open Office can save documents as .html files. Mobipocket can read .html files. Plus, Mobipocket doesn't recognize .html files as requiring a word processor to deal with, so it just imports them directly. Yay! I loaded four fics onto my SD card in .html. That's when I discovered that having files in .html limits the display in Mobipocket to one of two of the butt-ugliest fonts I've ever seen, instead of the MS Word supported font I'd originally saved them in. ::sigh::
I chose the least objectionable of the two fonts and have made it about halfway through a 9,000 word fic. I'm getting used to the butt-ugly font, and it's nice to be able to carry some of the longer fics around with me that I can't read in one sitting (the 9,000 word fic was just a test run to see if I'd like reading off the PDA; the other fics I loaded are over 40,000 words each). The end result has largely been worth it so far, but it shouldn't require an entire evening on my part to do what should've been a simple set-up. I always get the feeling that these things are easier for other people.
