The true test of e-book devices is whether a reader can plunge into another world with abandon.

Beginning in the 1990s, attempts have been made to design and market e-book devices permitting a limited form of marginalia.

Amazon have the market-leading e-book device and distribution service.

But after some highly publicized e-book devices failed to take off in the late 1990's, those long-held hopes have remained elusive.

It will have a dual screen that will allow children to use it either as an e-book device or a normal computer.

The various e-book devices felt like solid hardcovers in hand, but the first generation seemed stiff to me, somehow nerdy and bulky.

The iLiad is an electronic handheld device, or e-book device, which can be used for document reading and editing.

The text can be downloaded or read online in HTML without an e-book device.

"We frequently heard patrons state that now that they have tried an e-book device," she said, "they have put it on their birthday wish list."

The Iliad e-book device includes an Apabi 'viewer'.

Compared to contemporary e-book devices, the Palm PDA seems like a woefully inadequate reading platform.

This page also offers tutorials for patrons to learn how to browse, check-out, read, and return E-books and Audiobooks from different e-book devices.

An e-book reader, also called an e-book device or e-reader, is a mobile electronic device that is designed primarily for the purpose of reading digital e-books and periodicals.

By giving the program away or selling it at low cost, Microsoft says, it will stimulate the manufacture of more e-book devices that the company hopes will eventually all use the Reader.

RCA REB 1100 eBook TYPE - A dedicated e-book device, above, with a backlighted monochrome display.

The Nook Simple Touch (also called the Nook Touch) is the second generation of the Nook e-book device by Barnes & Noble.

If he activates the books again on this same computer - as the virus has made necessary - he says he will not be able to reactivate them for use on his hand-held e-book device.

Although pocket-sized touchscreen devices are arguably not the most comfortable way to read copious amounts of text, modern multifunction smartphones offer a convenient alternative to dedicated e-book devices such as Amazon's Kindle.

They will also be able to turn pages with finger swipes in a future version of Kindle for PC, a feature that highlights Amazon's goal of not just using the Kindle itself as a legit e-book device, but also tablet-like computers.

Some of the major book retailers and multiple third-party developers offer free (and in some third-party cases, premium paid) eReader applications for desktops and mobile devices, to allow the reading of eBooks and other documents independently of dedicated e-book devices.

The Mobipocket software package is free and consists of various publishing and reading tools for PDA, Smartphones, cellular phones and e-book devices (Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, webOS, Java ME, BlackBerry, Psion, Kindle and iLiad).

It is a proprietary material that is processed into a film for integration into electronic displays, particularly for E-book devices such as the Sony Reader, the iLiad, the Cybook Gen3, the Amazon Kindle, the Readius device from Polymer Vision and Plastic Logic's Reader.