Turning Your Macbook Into a Better Ebook Reader

I was reading The Selfish Gene on my Macbook this weekend and since Kindle isn’t yet available in Canada, I have to work with what I have. Here is how to improve the experience (thanks to Andrew Burke for the heads up):

Download Adobe Reader or the lighter weight Skim PDF app
Open the PDF file, rotate view counter-clockwise (cmd+shift+- in Reader) and make it full screen (cmd+L)
Set mouse button to turn to the next page
Now the hard part: Turn Macbook sideways so the screen is vertical and can be held like a book
Bonus: Download Flux if you do a lot of reading at night, it adjusts the screens contrast based on the time of day

Macbooks have really wide screens that are awkward for ebooks when horizontal but great when vertical. The pages are much larger and fit better into the screen. Plus having the mouse button next to your hand to change pages is more ergonomic.

The drawbacks are that its heavy if your not resting it on a pillow and the glossy screen isn’t quite as readable as E-ink.