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Adobe Acrobat:
Adobe is currently the dominant force in ebooks.
The benefit of using Adobe is that just about everybody has the
software already on their computer or pda. Adobe's reader is free
to download. the quality of the documents produced by Adobe Acrobat
is superb in Version 5. The letters are crisp and easy on the
eye.
On the downside Adobe charges a huge amount for
the software to create pdf files. There are a few shareware programs
that create pdf documents cheaply. However, when I tried one of
these free alternatives, it produced unacceptable errors; fine
if you're just emailing a friend, but not okay for someone who
wants to distribute documents that look professional.
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Microsoft Reader
Microsoft Reader, currently in V2, is a relatively
new player in the ebook arena. Typical of Microsoft operations,
you should expect to see it's use increase substantially over
the next few years.
There are some great features. Check-out text-to-speech,
which is not available on the current Adobe Reader. However, what
makes it likely that Microsft will dominate in the ebook field
is that it provides a free tool to convert Word documents into
Microsoft Reader Format (lit). Compare this to the very expensive
Adobe Acrobat software.
To create more complex Microsft Reader documents,
with chapters and special artwork, you may need to buy software.
Yet even here Microsoft wins, as the price is much lower than
Adobe Acrobat.
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| File sizes: Adobe became popular
becasue of it's ability to produce small files, perfect for the
old modem based internet. On my testing Microsoft's Reader produced
some good reductions in file size, but in most cases not as good
as Adobe Acrobat. However, on a large document running close to
1000 A4 pages, Microsoft format was less than half the size of Adobe.
With broadband becoming more widespread, a few k difference isn't
as important as it used to be, and so file size differences won't
be as important as other considerations. |
