WHY MS READER FORMAT?

THERE are competing e-books formats -- which is understandable at this early stage of e-book development. Most notably, Adobe's e-book reader is an important player together with Microsoft's Reader.

e-Asia uses almost exclusively the Microsoft format. In our opinion, the MS Reader format, with its Cleartype fonts, is as readable as the printed page. Reader book files are amazingly small in terms of file size. Reader e-books scale well and offer software features that mimic the activities you normally do when reading a print book.

Nonetheless, should a different e-book fomat emerge as a defacto standard, e-Asia can convert to that format since its holdings are archived in a variety of formats.


The purpose of e-books (at least in the vision of e-Asia) purpose is neither to duplicate nor displace printed traditonal materials. So,

WHY E-BOOKS?

  • Most e-books, unlike printed books, are word searchable. Bad indexing or no indexing is no longer a problem.
  • e-Asia e-books are web-based and available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There is no line at the checkout desk, no overdues (hence no fines).
  • The e-book format used by e-Asia allows you to highlight text, make bookmarks, drawings notes/annotations, In fact, you can deface the e-book if you wish (you can easily un-deface a book, however).
  • No more photocopy machine fees. e-Asia books permit the copying of text -- text that can be inserted into a word-processing document.
  • No more trips to the Reserve Books Room or competing with 20 classmates over two copies of required reading.
  • Build your own library from the offerings of e-Asia. e-Books in the Microsoft Reader format are remarkably small in terms of file size.