Being an avid reader, my commute gives me 2 whole hours to actually relax with a good book and ignore the multitude of masses making their way home. While I prefer the tactile nature and overall sensory experience of reading an actual real paper book, I hate to have to lug a big tome around with me (Robert Jordan fans can appreciate what IÂ?m saying). So I decided to ditch the paper and to try reading ebooks with my new UMPC.

After 5 minutes of Googling, was able to find an incredible amount of both free and pay ebooks online for download. For my first experiment, I downloaded The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown on Amazon for $6.99. Not bad considering the hardcover version was selling for $14.97 and I was able to download it in seconds rather than having to wait 3-4 business days by mail. The format the file came in was .lit which is MicrosoftÂ?s proprietary DRM format needing Microsoft Reader to view (free both to download and use). There are many other formats out there for ebooks such as .pdf which opens with Adobe Reader or if you prefer not to be burdened by the limitations of DRM, there are many free ebooks out there in .txt and even HTML.

When I actually started to read, I was quite surprised and how relatively fast I got accustomed to reading an electronic book. Microsoft Reader breaks the text into pages and with a simple tap you can change to the next page. Another benefit is that since the file size of an ebook is so small (no image .lit file is usually not more than 500 KB) you can literally (bad pun intended) keep thousands of ebooks in your library for reading at any time.

Download Microsoft Reader here:
http://www.microsoft.com/reader/downloads/pc.asp

Download Adobe Reader here:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

Here is a great site with over 18,000 ebooks you can download for free:
http://www.gutenberg.org/