The Nokia N800, a powerful little e-book-friendly handheld, is now selling for $240 at Buy.com. See our review from earlier this year. The screen is 4.1 inches (800 x 480 res, 65,000 colors). Alas, Mobipocket and the other commercial programs with DRM capabilities won't run on the linux-based N800. But you can use FBReader on public domain classics and other nonencrypted work. What's more, if you live in a country where it's legal, not the U.S., unfortunately, you can strip away the "protection" from Microsoft .lit. Earlier the street prices for the N800 were well north of...

The E Ink screen on the new Sony Reader is brighter and definitely has more contrast, according to Mike Cane, a hardware-fondler extraordinaire. But there's still one big, gaping omission beyond lack of a color screen---no keyboard for searching. Enter the new Nokia N810, successor to the 770 and the 800. Search probs over, at least if this photo is any clue. Oh, and behold that inviting LCD screen! Alas, as Kevin Tofer at jkOnTheRun has noticed, there' s no WiMax. I also wonder if the linux-based N810 and related Nokia models will end up someday with...

I've used practically every gizmo around to read e-books, starting in the 1990s with one of the first Pocket PCs, the HP Jornada. You name it, there's a good chance I've read off it: Palm units, such as my favorite, the TX; Smartphones, from the tiny Cingular 3125 to the large screen Nokia E61i and iPhone; Internet tablets such as the Nokia 770 and 800. Somehow I've always managed to get through my books, some of them pretty lengthy, but the experience has never been as good as a paper book. Well, the Sony Reader is something new for the industry, and for...

Don't be scared if you're an e-book newcomer and have shied away from a Linux handheld. The menus on the affordable Nokia 770s aren't that hard to puzzle out, for example, if you spend a little time at it. And good e-reading software is available, FBReader, which is open source. Missing until now: Handy customization instructions The missing ingredient up to now has been a set of handy customization instructions for FBReader newcomers, many of whom might want to modify their respective key layouts to turn Nokias or other devices into much better e-reading machines. Below, I'll share some FBReader...

To move ahead a page on my Nokia N770, I want to be able to press the raised metal button in the center of the scroll keys. Now I can. FBRreader lets me remap scroll keys and others. Yes, you can change key assignments on other FBReader-capable machines such as the Pepper Pad. I'll present tips from Alan Wallcraft, then follow through with a few of my own. Look for FBReader key assignment tips Friday or Saturday. This is old news for advanced users, but should help newbies....

Yesterday my husband's N770 somehow got turned off. He went to turn it on and there it was…the White Screen of Death. I tried turning it back off and it did eventually. When I turned it back on the WSOD was gone, but the screen colors and letters bled together. Reflashing the device the device didn't help. His screen is dying. So today I will start the tedious task of getting it fixed. According to this excerpt from Nokia's warranty section on the N770: The limited warranty for the Product extends for ONE (1)...

LibriVox audio recordings of e-books are a treat to hear on my new Nokia N770---I especially liked a narrator's performance at the start of F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise. So Branko's coincidental post on LibriVox's second birthday was super-timely for me. I've hooked the N770 up to a cheapie Radio Shack radio, now selling for $39.97 and worth every penny. My 770's net.radio tuner carries settings for half a dozen stations, but LibriVox, too, will be welcome listening. Oh, and notice the positioning of the Fitzgerald photo and the angle of his eyes? Is his ghost looking covetously at...

Last month I was among the many people who bought a Nokia N770 Internet Tablet from Woot. In fact, I bought two---for my husband and daughter, one of whom would spurn the Tablet, probably. And then, I figured, it would revert to me. Wrong! They fell in love with the N770. But some buyers haven't been as happy. A rash of White Screen of Death (WOSD) incidents happened among the Wooters, causing many potential shoppers to rethink N770 purchases from other retailers with low prices. Some of the sales in the $140 range may still be going on. If you buy,...

So are Linux handhelds---no, I don't mean certain book-optimized tablets like the Sony Reader---ready to catch on as e-reading devices for the masses? If you consider Nokia the most promising game in town, the current answer is a big fat "No." Enticing feature mix, despite current e-book-related shortcomings I say this even though the recent N800 atones with an enticing mix of features, including a pop-out camera and the ability to transmit images via the Skype VoIP service. As Roger Sperberg has pointed out, the older Nokia N770 actually comes with better ergonomics for e-book-reading than the N800 does. He prefers the...

So are the rumors true? Are the $144 Nokia 770s at Buy.com having problems with bad screens and also with the White Screen of Death? That would certainly be at odds with the predominantly favorable reviews from Buy.com shoppers, but I'm still curious. Meanwhile, stay tuned for a review of the N800---the 770's successor---today or tomorrow, complete with my thoughts on how it works with FBReader. Find out whether I agree with Roger Sperberg's conclusions....

The $130 brand-new Nokia 770s may vanish from Woot.com within hours, so check this out now. Roger Sperberg, a TeleBlog contributor, has written many a post extolling the Nokia 770 as an e-book machine when used with FBReader. Just remember that the Web browser is slow. Buy the 770 with realistic expectations. But for $130? You probably can't go wrong. Thanks to Chris Meadows for the tip. Specs follow. Update, 8:50 a.m., June 16: Sure enough, the one-day deal is gone. Anyone manage to snag the 770 at $130? Specs Warranty: One year Specifications: * High-resolution (800×480) touch screen with up...

The Nokia N800 Internet Tablet is not the perfect e-reading device. If it were, it would come with the world-class FBReader pre-installed instead of making you download the software yourself. Instead, Nokia shows how secondary books are to its thinking by including a Web browser and Flash 7 plug-in, as though Web pages, animation and video were of equal value to e-books; including speakers (and headphone jack) and FM radio, as though listening to music or audiobooks were as important as type; and squeezing five times the usual number of pixels into each square inch of the display as if that...