I knew when I picked up the Palm Pre that I was going to do without reading e-books on the phone, at least for a while. There weren’t any e-book reader apps available for the Pre, certainly not eReader Pro, which I use on every device I touch. The good readers here lost no time in reminding me that eReader was available in the original Palm OS version and that it could be installed under Classic.
Classic is the Palm OS emulator for the Pre produced by Motion Apps that will let Pre owners run just about any old Palm app. The emulator is pretty impressive and creates an eerie Palm environment on the little screen of the Pre. It is available in the App Catalog and while expensive ($30) there is a 7-day trial available. I jumped right on it and installed eReader for the Palm OS.
It works, is about all I can say about it. The default font of the program in the emulator is pretty ugly, but it works, and it’s better than nothing. The Classic emulator creates the Palm OS environment completely, and that means the tiny screen. Only about 2/3 of the Pre’s gorgeous screen ends up displaying the e-book contents so paging is something done frequently. It’s better than nothing. I have to keep saying that because that’s about all I can say about it. The problem is the price — I don’t think it’s worth $30 for me just to run the “free” eReader app. It’s too bad. I miss my full eReader Pro. I hope a Pre version is in the stars.

Image courtesy eReader
There is now a Pre version of Shortcovers, a cloud-based e-book reader. I looked at it briefly but it feels like reading books in a browser and didn’t make for a good experience. Long-time reader Rodfather has looked at it and covers it on his blog with screen images of it in action.

{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2009\/06\/09\/e-book-reading-on-the-palm-pre\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_93874953f62eef4511a134ea9d9a2e59","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}