I have always been a voracious reader. Ever since I can remember, reading has been a constant in my life. Back in my elementary days, I remember reading some of my literature textbooks even before the start of the class. My room, when I was younger, was a virtual library and half of the mess found in it were books, comics and magazines.

Fast forward to the late 1990’s: I got my first Palm PDA (a 3Com Palm III) and I was really thrilled to have one. After playing around with it for a couple of weeks, I discovered that it can be used as an eBook reader. The Palm III is woefully short on memory and I was only able to load one eBook at a time. But that did not stop me. Back then Memoware.com was my constant source of eBooks for the Palm. It provided me with more than enough reading materials than I can read in one sitting. Memoware has files compatible with different eBook readers available for the Palm.

Then I discovered iSilo. A Palm application that is actually designed to be an offline web browser. But using a companion PC-based app called iSiloX, I was able to create my own eBooks. By then my virtual library started to grow because I was able to convert books on my own… most of which came from the Project Gutenberg website. This does not include other reading materials I obtained through the web (how-to’s, product manuals, etc.).

I’ve gotten used to using a PDA as an eBook reader that I can’t imagine myself without a PDA at all. The fact that I can bring a couple of books with me and read any of them whenever it hits my fancy is a big factor why I think my PDA is a gadget I can’t live without. Another reason why I prefer eBooks over their “dead-tree” counterpart is it provides me with an easy way to put bookmarks, allowing me to quickly start off where I left without having to fiddle around with *real* bookmarks or even rabbit ears.

A couple of months ago, I decided to take the plunge and move over to the “dark side