Here's an interesting Tech Tip I got from Geeks.com. I thought it
would be interesting to those thinking of buying an Apple tablet or
Amazon Kindle or Sony etc. Not ready to give up paperbooks myself but
eReaders are pretty big news this year so far and lots of peeps have
Netbooks.
How To Turn A Netbook Into A Full Page eReader
by Staff Writer - February 21, 2010
So, you have a netbook that you find handy for different computing
tasks. Well, with a little effort, you may find it easy to use a netbook
as a full page eReader. That's right, full page - not just a section of
a graphic novel on the screen at a time. Plus, being able to view
material in full color is something that dedicated eReaders cannot do.
Screen Rotation
First, let's do a little research - pick up a paperback or hardcover
book, and look at the width to height ratios. Do you see how it's taller
than it is wide? Okay, now let's look at your netbook. Well, this is no
good, it's just the opposite - the netbook is wider than it is tall. But
we can fix that.
We are going to use an Asus 901 for our example, but you can check any
netbook reviews <http://www.testfreaks.com/netbooks/>, to find a
suitable netbook - they tend to be very similar in their hardware. Now,
in order to get the screen to turn sideways, the easiest thing is to
find a driver that will accommodate it. This is the easiest path, and
luckily Intel provides a more than capable driver for these chipsets.
As you can see from the driver screen shot, I only have to assign a hot
key to rotate the screen when needed. I use <ctrl><alt> + arrow keys so
that I can rotate any direction at will, but you can map as you see fit.
The important thing is that you want to be able to pull up the reader
and then rotate your screen, and get back from it after your reading
session is over.
Get The Reader
Okay, we now have the screen rotated, how about the reader? Well, for
most graphic novel works, I like the cbr/cbz format, which is basically
a zipped or rar archive of the book images. You can find many comics
available on the web in this format. But for the reader itself, I
suggest you look at the program Comical
<http://comical.sourceforge.net>. From the readers I have tried, this is
one of the fastest and most dependable.
Download Comical and install it. Now, you will need something to read,
so as a test try downloading Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of the
Here and Now
<http://www.archive.org/download/CoryDoctorowsFuturisticTalesOfTheHereAndNow/Cory_Doctorows_Futuristic_Tales_of_the_Here_and_Now_CBZ.cbz>.
Download it, and load it into Comical. Go to view/zoom/fit height, and
then right click/full screen. With a little luck, you will have the
following on your screen:
As you may note, the screen is hard to read, and there is a lot of black
dead space on the sides of the comic. But now hit your rotate hot key
assigned above, hold the notebook rotated in your hands like you would a
paperback, and you should have the following:
While the Cory Doctorow image above is made smaller to fit on the page
here, you can see that it is a full page image, and quite readable.
Instead of having to scroll up and down to see the page, you just have
to change pages.
Fix the Keys
And this is where the next detail of our task comes into play. Again,
netbooks vary, but on the Asus 901 the page down key requires a function
+ down arrow to work. This is rather awkward when you are trying to
read, so we need a better solution.
The answer is in a free program called KeyTweak,
<http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/> which can be found at This
program will allow you to remap the keys as needed for a number of uses,
which in our case is a simple page down mode.
Download and install KeyTweak, and set up your new key assignment. After
you do that, it will be simple to hit a key to go to the next page while
reading without having to hit the function key.
Beyond Graphic Novels
Of course, it can be used for more than just Comics. For example, below
is a technical PDF shown full page on the netbook:
As you can see, the entire table is on the screen and readable in the
actual size full screen view, something that would be impossible with
the standard orientation.
*So there you have it*, a simple way to turn a cheap netbook on its
side, using the screen in portrait mode for a full screen display, and
even how to map a custom key to make it easy to navigate. Once you try
using a turned netbook for full page reading, I think you will find it
to be a capable eReader for a wide variety of material. Even laptops
would work great as an eReader, and as laptop reviews
<http://www.testfreaks.com/laptops/> show, there are many from which to
choose.
