Computer Illiterate! Can someone please tell me about e-books!?

Question

I am basically computer illiterate and don't know the first thing about bits & bytes or Rom & Ram. (It's pitiful; I know.) Anyway, I heard about this thing called e-books, that I'm pretty interested in, but I don't know exactly how it works.

Obviously I know you read it online; I got that much. But I need to download this program (that they tell me is free) so that I can read them. The thing is, I'm so paranoid of viruses, and taking up too much space on my hard drive. I also don't understand the first thing about zip files and stuff, either, so where do the e-books go once you buy them? Like, where would I go each time I want to open it up and continue reading?

So basically, I guess I'm asking how EXACTLY do e-books work, is the program really free, and when I download it, do I run it or save it, and where do I save it to and how? Oh, I also heard the term PDF. What's that?

Sorry to be such a pest! I just want to make sure I understand it before I do it! Thanks!

Answer 1

Don't panic, it's all cool. An E-book is generally in a PDF form(Stands for Portable document format) which kinda looks like a seperate picture of each page. The file is downloaded to either your desktop or another place that you designated. Since you bought it it's yours to read every time you open it(double click it) most PDF readers will either remember the page you were on or will allow you to skip to a page.

I'd like to know the program your talking about. Generally the program that most people use to open a PDF is Adobe's Acrobat reader. This is a free program. It's free because it's a package that doesn't have all the features of the paid version. The paid version has none of the small advertisments in the corner and has more features, but it's all spyware free. If you want another PDF viewer that i personally enjoy better you can go with Foxit PDF reader:
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/downloads/
It's also Virus/spyware free and while not as polished looking as adobe it's a faster program.

Now, if your E-book comes in a Zip format don't worry about that either. There are alot of free unzipping programs. My favorite is 7-zip.
http://www.7-zip.org/
This is a free program that handles more zip types then WinRAR or WinZip. It'll handle all but the more obscure formats. Download the 32-bit exe version if your using Windows.

If you need more help you can send me an Email at [e-mail]. Best of luck!

And get that program name!

P.S. RAM is Random access memory, Bits are really small measurement of computer memory(like a milimeter) that go in incriments of 1024. 1024bytes=1kilobyte. 1024kilobytes=1 megabyte 1024megabytes=1 gigabyte and 1024gigabyte=1 terabyte(lots and lots of memory)

Answer 2

Okay, if the e-book is coming to you in the form of a ZIP file, you will need to open that file..WinXP will do this automatically for you. If you have an older Operating System you will need to download one, and CoffeeCup has a free one for you. Once you open that file (e-Book) it will remain on your hard drive for your reading pleasure. You are not allowed to use it on more than one computer (you can not resell or share it). When yoou have finished reading it, you can either save it and reference it later on, or you can delete it and make that space usable for something else. Most e-Books that you download will come in a PDF type format, making it readable, but not changeable. If you have to download a special program to read it, it is because the author decided to take security for the content into his own hands, which is rather normal these days. Hope this helps.

Answer 3

e-books can be in different formats: .txt or .html and .pdf basically, but there are some other. If your book is in txt, like those from www.gutenberg.net. You can save a book from there as an internet page, or as a text file. Look, here is for example a book by Jane Austen http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext94/persu11.txt Just a text, you cannot catch a virus by saving it. You just scroll it and read.

You don't need a special program for that. If the book is in pdf, (most electronic textbooks are in pdf) you need Acrobat Reader to open it, and it is free to download. Sometimes the library let you download books in some rare format, they have a program to read the file too, but it is only to take money from you to let you download the program.

If you are talking about audio books that you can listen to, you just download them and listen in any audio program you want. You can get them from Gutenberg Project too.
Feel free to ask me if you have any questions.
Cheers!

Answer 4

Jesus did not teach scripture alone. And much of what hes said and did is part of our -- Catholic -- unwritten history. The new testament is not a transcript of every moment of Jesus's life or ministry. It is the story of the fondation and early formation of the catholic churhc. The Gosples are the speivifc trainng that Jesus first bishops recived at his hand -- He hadn picks them trains them appoints a leader, ordains him is crucified rises form the ded and ordains the remaining. Int he meantime instuting the scaraments. The gosples are more and outline highlighten the most iimportant spects of Jesus's mission which was to found His kingdom on earth, which includes teh instution of the sacraments. UNderstood in this contxt sripture makes perfect sense. Outside of this context it makes no sense and all kinds of errenous notions and missunderstandings are produced. This si why -- the context -- it is so easy for a catholic to debate a protestant particualrly the sola -scrupture or "fundies" becasue we know the trutht and the true context so we have the truth with us, and can easliy straineout false concepts brough about by each indiviudal inperpting the owrds for themselves. So no nothing could be further fro the truth Jesu gave scripture it's correct and indeed exalted palce but he did not express the notion of sola sripture or he would have wrote himslef, he would have spent his time writng and not fouodning he church. Sola scripture is a form of idolatry which negates the actul jesus, aND UINDEED A PERSONAL REALTIONSTHP WITH HIM THAT IS ONLY AVAILABLE through the sacrametns.. It elavtes the bible to the sataus of God. Indeed many call it the word of god when in fact weknow that jesus is the word of god and the bible contains the words of god.

Answer 5

Reading e-book requires PDF acrobat reader program. There are softwares that are in place like Office Max that allow you to create PDF documents.

E-Book by definition is a electronic book that allow you to read it on computer. They are ordered and downloaded from different sites.

Answer 6

PDF-Portable Document Format

Answer 7

Sure try this book "As a Man Thinketh"