Congo calls it: Good stuff!!

Hey so I recently bought an eBook reader (BeBook) after considering my choices for about half a year. A great place to start such a search is over on mobileread.com which is a forum and site dedicated to eBook readers. The community is great and I dont think that there is an answerable question that go well unanswered. If you live in America and don’t mind the big man deciding what formats your books should be in then I guess that the Amazon Kindle is hands down the right choice. It enables you to download books on the fly and easily stores hundreds of them. Now I live in europe where Kindle is not supported (atleast the online feature is not) so that opens up a hole lot-a-options.

First off an eBook reader sould NOT cost you a fortune. It should be a fairly cheap peace of technologi that fulfills these requirements

• Easy to read
• Format independent
• Lightweight

Everything else is just exchauses to weed out more of your hard earned cash that could otherwise be spent more wisely. The eBook reader is in a raveniously fast stream of development. The most resent edditions rely on a screen technology called eInk. Basically it is a screen that is not backlit (most are not, but I think that Sony might produce one that is), only uses power when something changes on the screen (ie. you turn a page) and finally have a very nice contrast ratio. Currently in consumer based products we are in the 800 to 1200 pixel width range and 4-256 grayscale colors. So it’s like your dads old PC CGA/EGA/VGA color wise though the resolution, which actually matters. You can get physical sizes from a paper back book to A4. Now with that out of the way, why are the three things that I listed above so darn important? Well you need to keep your focus here. Since eBooks are developing fast and everyone is trying to become the next Apple, you the consumer might as well take advantage of the situation and take the next train. That means jumping on the last economy class wagon of todays train. Here you will find simple devices that do not have WIFI connect ability, that does not have a touch screen interface. Try to consider the actual application for the device, and if you really feel that you do need say WLAN  why not grab a sub notebook instead? It would be a lot cheaper and more flexible.

For me the eBook reader of choice was the cheap scape, low key, low tech BeBook, also known as the Hanlin V3, or just V3 since it’s an OEM device in many disguises. It supports lots of formats, and you can even flash it wih OpenInkpot – a nice linux based peace of software that just keeps getting better and better. There is a list of supported devices, so you might be lucky. What I realy like is the ability to tweak fonts and styles very nicely to your personal requirements.

A few hints regarding SD cards. The BeBook is quite picky when it comes to how the SD card is formatted. It requires you to uphold the original standards layed down which poses a problem if you just slap an SD card into your computer and format it head over heels. It might hold your books and enable you to read them but if you want to get anything fancy done – such as flashing a new firmware or perhaps that nice OpenInkpot – you need to get a hold of a small application made by Panasonic. Check it out here -> SD format

A few years down the road I am sure that I will get another and better device but right now the price difference between say an iLiad and a BeBook is just out of this world considering what the primary function of the device is. So save your pounds, schillings and cents and go cheap.

For a price performance ratio I just have to give the BeBook five stars.