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Here’s my ebook reader dream: Have searchable PDF content in a highly portable format that doesn’t make me want to stab myself in the eye when I read it. Is that really too much to ask?

Over the past year or so I’ve increasingly bought PDFs for technical books. Almost every book I’ve bought from Pragmatic Programmers in the last year I’ve bought the PDF and paper bundle. This gives me access to the beta book and it’s been really convenient to fire up the PDF and search for something specific.

I’ve also started buying quite a few PDFs from Apress through their daily deal (or, more specifically, following my twitterbot @apressdailydeal) for $10. I’ve bought a few books that I wouldn’t have otherwise bought because $10 is a no brainer for me.

So far, PDFs have been great for searches on specific words. They’ve been horrible for actually reading. Reading on an LCD at your desk sucks. It’s not much better on a Tablet PC. My current tablet is an X60T and weighs in at maybe 5lbs, and it’s still not something I like to have with me on the couch while I spend “quality time” with the wife as she watches “Survivor”. I can’t imagine a laptop is much nicer as the keyboard is just in the way most of the time. I have a buddy that reads on his iPhone, I can’t get over the idea of reading a paragraph at a time on display the size of a deck of cards.

So what about ebook readers? I’ve seen very few out in the wild. I believe I’ve seen one Kindle and a Sony PRS-505 at borders. If they were really awesome, you’d think I’d see more, especially in the technolust circles I travel.

Kindle support for PDF is experimental at best, you have to email the PDF and they’ll [Amazon] will convert it and make it available to you. Sounds like a great plan for a bunch of text that you’d like to have on your Kindle and a horrible on for a technical book. Something like The RSpec Book with loads of code sections or Web Design for Developers with code and lots of illustrations just doesn’t stand a chance? Maybe with a little more control over the process I’d feel more comfortable about it, but I have no confidence an automatic converter would get close.

I read a lot more technical books than any other type of books so PDF support needs to be pretty good. Granted, I’ve not looked at how many technical books offer Kindle support for a reasonable price. Reasonable to me isn’t much beyond the cost for the paper book, let me spend another $5 or $10 and have a digital copy. So without real PDF support on the Kindle (and with Amazon dropping SD on the Kindle 2) it didn’t seem like much of an option. Even if there was a lot of available content for the Kindle I don’t want to throw away my existing ebook library.

It seems the next obvious player was the Sony PRS-505. That’s right, the older model, not the newer 700 because it doesn’t have back lighting on the screen which is supposed to degrade the viewing experience of the display. I’ve even seen one guy talk about how he reads a Pragmatic Programmer’s book on it. It’s Pragmatic Thinking and Learning, so not a ton of code in this one.

Border’s is clearing them out and had them on sale, and in stock, for $270. I decided to take one for the team and see if I can get my technical PDFs to display decently on an ebook reader. Over the next few weeks I’ll be going through my library, mostly as I have a need for them, and trying to convert them to a usable format on the PRS-505. I’ll show side by side comparisons of the print book, the publishers original PDF and the PRS-505 natively and with conversion.

In the mean time, I have a question for the publishers: Is it loads of extra work to offer a variety of digital formats? I’d even concede a few rough edges if it were generally formatted to fit the screen layout of a particular device. The PDF gives me searchable content, but I’d like it to be more portable than the paper version.