E-book hardware roundup

Monday, April 04 2005 @ 03:04 AM PDT

Contributed by: matt

I am a big fan of ebooks, and I am done with dead tree books for the most part. There are exceptions, but when it comes to reading plain old fiction, reading on my PDA is the way to go. I have been doing this for a couple of years... starting with my HP iPaq 4150, but more recently with my Dell Axim x50v. In both cases, my software weapon of choice is uBook, which is well worth the $12 fee. (I use MS Reader on the rare occasion when I need to read a .lit file.)

Text is quite readable on an older 320x240 screen, but on a VGA Pocket PC like the x50v, it looks great. But a VGA PDA is expensive, close to $400. It seems like there should be some way to get a cheap device that can display text files with basic formatting. For ebooks to take off, the readers need to be cheap enough that you won't cry when you lose them. Well, they are not quite there, but they might be getting close.

Tonight I stumbled across this page which lists some gadgets for reading ebooks. It is way out of date if you look down at the PDA section, but there is still some useful information here. Dedicated ebook devices are now available much more inexpensively than when they first came out.

First, the non-inexpensive device: the Cybook from Bookeen. [Review] Color, 10" screen, reads all kinds of formats... and it is $700. Next, please! (Side note: the Cybook software seems to be related to uBook in some way--so it's probably very capable.)
The next candidate: The Rocket ebook reader (REB1100). It uses a proprietary format, but you can find tools to convert your text files to the .rb format. Looks like it is $120 at Amazon. The screen is 320x240, greyscale. In my experience this is tolerable for reading. Battery life is said to be around 15 hours. (!)
Then, there is the eBookwise version of the above device, also $120. Claims to read txt, HTML, Word (.doc) and Rocket format.
- Apparently some companies (Filament is another) have bought up the unwanted Rocket eBook stock and rebranded/reprogrammed them. At $120, this might be worth a look if you can truly read your own files on it. (No wonder it's in the bargain bin now, it was about $400 and only read proprietary files when it was launched years ago.)
Franklin eBookMan, $75. Ouch, check the reviewers' comments on data loss, but if you are a gadget lover with a high tolerance for BS it might be worth playing with. The eBookMan uses the Mobipocket format with a .PRC extension. It should be easy to convert your text/HTML files to MobiPocket format with their free conversion software. Presumably, you can generate eBookMan-compatible files this way. Note the resolution though: 200x240. This device won't look as good as the Rocket hardware. (Here is some guy's old but detailed review.)

Now, I am very happy reading on my 640x480 PDA screen, but if I were not a PDA person, and I wanted to dabble in a dedicated ebook device I would probably get the eBookwise 1150 off eBay for about $100.

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