Finding
Free eBooks for Your Tablet PC
By Bill Mann
One of the
neat things about the Tablet PC form factor is that you can hold it like
a book, with the screen in portrait (taller than wide) mode. This makes
reading on a Tablet much more like reading a book. A pretty darn heavy
"book," but a book none the less.
The easiest
way to take advantage of this is with Microsoft Reader for Tablet PC,
a program that comes pre-installed on many Tablets. (Microsoft Reader
for Tablet PC is also available as a free download here: http://www.microsoft.com/reader/info/tablet.asp
)
Microsoft
Reader for Tablet PC allows you to read electronic books (eBooks) on your
Tablet. The regular version of Reader works on Tablets too, but the Tablet
PC version has two key advantages: it allows you to read eBooks in portrait
mode, and you can annotate your eBooks by writing on them with the pen.
I'm not going
to cover Reader itself here. Instead, I'm going to talk about where to
get things to read with Reader. A number of people who've posted on TabletPCBuzz.com
say they like to use their Tablets to read. While I was writing "How to
Do Everything with Your Tablet PC," I came across a great source of free
eBooks anyone can download.
The Electronic
Text Center at the University of Virginia could be the best source of
free eBooks on Earth. In addition to a collection of tens of thousands
of texts and images available in SGML and XML formats that Microsoft Reader
cannot read, they make available over 1800 free eBooks in Microsoft Reader
format.
The eBook
library at the University of Virginia contains classics like Aesop's Fables,
Herman Melville's Moby Dick, and Shakespeare's Midsummer Nights Dream.
They also have more contemporary works, as well as special sections for
African American, Native American, and Early American Fiction. In all,
the 1800+ works are divided among 11 broad subject areas. To explore the
Electronic Text Center free eBook library, go to: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/
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