A lots of big-boys have entered the market of e-book-reader technology and a war has broken out. It's a war to develop the most commonplace and universally accepted e-book format. Among these we have:
LRF - Sony's proprietary format.
AZW - Amazon's proprietary format.
MOBI - Mobipocket; a more widely accepted format across the board.
PDF - Adobe's universal format.
The Sony Reader is one of the only e-book-reader that doesn't support the widely available Mobipocket format. The reason for this is that Sony hope to make a profit by selling e-books in their own proprietary format to its customers. This is a risky tactic as they run the risk of loosing many potential customers not willing to limit themselves to Sony's e-book collection. Amazon however have taken a more open minded approach by giving their Kindle device Mobipocket support as well as support for their proprietary format, AZW. Generally speaking, when considering a purchase of an e-book-reader device, the more supported formats the better. In this article I aim to look at the various advantages and disadvantages of e-book formats.
Sony Reader Format (LRF)
LRF is Sony's proprietary e-book file format. The Sony Reader devices allows three levels of zoom for LRF e-books. E-books of this format can be purchased from Sony's own website which boasts thousands of best-selling titles. Unfortunately this format is only available with the Sony Readers and therefore the e-book collection isn't as large as it is for other formats on offer.
Amazon Kinder Format (AZW)
The AZW format is Amazon's proprietary file format. Unlike Sony, Amazon have taken the surprising step of allowing support for other commercial formats on their reader device. For Amazon this may be a case of shooting themselves in the foot, or alternatively a stroke of genius and a missed opportunity for Sony. Amazon have their own e-book store in which they sell AZW books. Being the largest book supplier on the Internet, Amazon certainly know a thing or two about this market and should feel quite confident going up again Sony in this way.
Mobipocket Format (MOBI)
Unlike the other two mentioned formats, the MOBI file format wasn't developed for any specific device. Instead it was made for a specific piece of software. The Mobipocket reader software is free for download and distribution. This is what makes the format so appealing. Money is made purely through book sales. This philosophy seems to have more future than that of Sony and Amazon with their proprietary formats. Amazon however seem to have recognised this and allowed the format on to their devices - a step that Sony haven't taken. In this digital age of so many different devices, it is in the interests of the consumer to have standards: the Mobipocket format seems to be establishing itself as this standard.
Adobe Reader Format (PDF)
It would be a brave manufacturer who released a device without support for the PDF format. Over the years PDF has really established itself the number one digital text format. There are a number of issues with this format however that I hope to clarify here. Firstly, the philosophy of the PDF format is to display text on screen exactly as it will display in print. The problems arise when a text was designed for A4 print. There are currently no e-book-reading devices with an A4 screen size and as such, PDF documents on these devices will not display as they were intended. This also leads to reduced readability and sometimes even zero readability. There are a number of third party programs designed to tackle this problem. For the Sony Reader there are packages that convert the PDF files into the proprietary LRF format with minimum loss of quality. It's important to note that the Amazon Kindle doesn't support the PDF format at all, they do however provide "experimental" software that should convert a PDF file to the proprietary AZW format.
Final Thought
So when considering purchasing an e-book-Reader device, research is everything. An important question to ask oneself is this: what are the e-book formats I use the most? You should look at the various e-book stores to see if they offer the kinds of books that you might buy. If you usually read larger PDF files you might consider buying devices with larger screens such as the Irex Iliad. Initial research is the key to avoid headaches later on.
Richard Merry E-books and Readers
My name is Richard Merry and I'm a computer studies graduate. I'm currently studying Spanish though my primary interest remains information technology.
E-books and Readers
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