Electronic Books: Pardon Our Trim

I read Karen Kaplan’s article comparing the Rocket EBook and the SoftBook Reader (“A Novel Device, Electronic Books Are Still Far From an Easy Read,” March 2) with some interest, as I am the owner of an electronic book myself.

In her review of the Rocket EBook, she comments that the most irritating thing was “my inability to track my reading progress.”

She mentions that the SoftBook Reader solved this location problem with a horizontal line along the bottom of its screen.

I found these remarks puzzling, as the Rocket EBook solves this problem in the same way as the SoftBook Reader, except that the “line” she mentions is on the left side of the screen instead of the bottom.

--BRIAN PARK

Redondo Beach

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(Editor’s note: Actually, Ms. Kaplan did note the vertical line in her story and that it didn’t work very well, but that sentence was trimmed for space.)