Read all about it - electronic books - Brief Article

Black Enterprise, Sept, 2000 by C.M.B.

Hold up to 40 books or 15,000 pages of text in the palm of your hand

You can have your favorite reading materials, whether it's a new business book, hot bestseller, today's newspaper, or last month's magazine, all in the palm of your hand using Rocket eBook from NuvoMedia Inc. This portable electronic reader stores roughly 10 paperback novels or 3,200 pages of text. The Pro model holds 40 books or about 15,200 pages.

A RocketWriter feature lets you transform corporate or personal documents into eBook formatted files. You can connect the eBook to your personal computer to download electronic text from the Net.

Reading is as simple as choosing a title from an on-screen menu and turning pages by pressing the device's directional buttons. Using a stylus to access black and white touch screen menus, you can bookmark pages, search for words, add notes, underline or highlight special passages. The Rocket-Library.com is a community base in which written works and ideas can be exchanged between eBook owners and friends who are avid readers.

The eBook, which is about the size of a paperback book and weighs 22 ounces, fits fine inside a briefcase or backpack, but it is still a bit too heavy for your hip pocket. To take full advantage of the eBook, you will need about 10MB of hard disk space and 16MB or RAM for Rocket software, one available serial port, a Web browser, and Internet access.

The Rocket eBook retails for $199; the Rocket eBook Pro lists for $269 (www.rocket-ebook.com).