AportisDoc Reader 2.2 (free version)
AportisDoc Reader (at http://www.aportis.com/tryme/download/AportisDoc/aportisdocreader.html) can display text in a large font, but it has no bookmarks, text copying, or full-screen mode. These features are present in the shareware version, however. Note that if you delete this reader, it'll take all your documents with it. There are many richer, danger-free readers to choose from. AportisDoc Reader requires 29K and is pictured in Figure A.

FIGURE A

AportisDoc Reader has a number of limitations.

Book Wormie 1.0
Book Wormie (at http://www.ipda-asia.com/main.asp?page=bookwormie) requires a convoluted registration scheme to invoke its features. It has no full-screen mode, no large font that isn't bolded, has a distracting animated ad at the top of the document selection screen, and you can't change the default font. It requires 60K. I suggest you look elsewhere.

Book Wormie is pictured in Figure B.

FIGURE B

Book Wormie has a distracting animated ad at the top of the document selection screen.

CSpotRun 1.05
CSpotRun (at http://www.32768.com/bill/palmos/cspotrun/index.html) is wonderful. It has a great feature set: line spacing, full-screen, truly smooth auto-scrolling, and it's fast. It remembers the font chosen for a document, and it's the only one with a pop-up document list in the text screen (QED has a dialog box). It does lack bookmarks and text copying, however. With those, it could be the ideal reader. It only requires 24K. Incredible!

CSpotRun is pictured in Figure C.

FIGURE C

CSpotRun has a great feature set.

MobiPocket 3.1.0
MobiPocket (at http://www.mobipocket.com) is on track to replace CSpotRun as the best free reader. It has excellent features, including full-screen mode, big font, and grab-it bookmarks. The full-screen mode is accessed via a double-tap in the Graffiti area, though the directions confusingly refer to it as the "digitizer." MobiPocket is pictured in Figure D.

FIGURE D

MobiPocket has a number of excellent features.

On the downside, the bookmarks are inconveniently located in a dialog box. Also, the Find feature is slow as molasses, so it's a poor choice for quickly looking up reference material during conversations. The interface is poor in spots. The Find screen covers the entire screen, and MobiPocket sometimes puts an X in the top corner of the screen rather than a standard Cancel button in the dialog box. This is perplexing if you're not looking for it.

Justified text sometimes fragments, with words broken in strange places. It displays fewer characters on a line (about one and a half to two lines less). Finally, there's no text copying. It requires 87K.

Palm Reader (formerly Peanut Reader 3.2.13)
Palm has just acquired peanutpress.com (at http://www.peanutpress.com) and renamed Peanut Reader to Palm Reader. Maybe they'll improve it. There's no full screen mode, and it always shows the page number, meaning it often displays one less line than other readers. You can't copy text either, likely because it's a proprietary reader designed for pay-for-view ebooks. Bookmarks require a dialog box rather than tapping an icon, and they come up as page numbers, which is not very helpful. However, the bookmarks are highlighted, so they're easy to clear. Overall, I find it very slow to load documents, rendering it almost unusable. It requires 133K.