Back to the Cybook for a while

I've been reading a lot of Historical Fiction lately, specifically Dracula and historical romances. This type of eBook seems to always have words in them which have dropped out of common usage but which are exactly perfect for the time they are set in. This means that I need to be able to easily look up the words in order to get the full effect of the story. For me, this also means that when I pick up an eBook reader to read them on, I choose the Cybook. I know that I posted how to use a dictionary on the BeBook, but I've never been able to get it to work myself. Also, I hate leaving the book I'm in to look up a word, though I would if I could figure out how. If anyone has suggestions on things I can try to get my Dictionaries working on the BeBook I would be happy to test them out.

Anyway, this means I'm back to the Cybook with my handy dandy "Concise Oxford English Dictionary" (13 MB of concise!) and the "Chambers Dictionary" (25 MB!!!). Between those two I know I will find the definition of any word an author can throw at me. Some people have complained that the dictionary lookup on the Cybook is slow, I've not found this to be the case even with over 400 eBooks loaded. I have all my eBooks in folders based on Genre and my Dictionaries are in the root of the "/eBooks" folder. This way when the Cybook goes looking for dictionaries they are the first things it finds, it has sped up my lookup time significantly. When I had dictionaries in the "Non-Fiction" folder it could take 30 seconds or more to get a definition, I was almost about to give up. Then I moved the dictionaries out of the genre folders put them by themselves. Now I get the 'cursor' to pick a word almost instantly and it only takes about 5 seconds to get a definition once the word is selected.

Having two dictionaries loaded at the same time means that I am often offered 2 different definitions for the same word, it also means that choosing "Back" from the menu will only take me back to the 2 definitions. Now I get to play with the buttons on the left hand side of the Cybook and click on the button with an arrow on it. This will step me back all the way to where I left off in my eBook. It is just sooo convenient to be able to get the definition of an unfamiliar word without having to leave my eBook to do so.