EB1150 my first ereader

Back in May 2008 I took the plunge and bought an ebook reader.

I waited (not terribly patiently) for Amazon to come out with a new lower priced kindle and/or Sony to do the same thing, I gave up. I am cheap, I refused to spend more than $200 on a ebook reader. If I am going to shell out $300 or more dollars I would buy myself an iTouch or a iPhone.

Why did I want to get an ebook reader? Well I have to say it’s because of the 6 boxes of books that I had. I love books, and I love to read. However, I am getting tired of the amount of space that they take up. (I think I am going into a minimalist stage)
So after doing some research online I found that www.ebookwise.com sells a reasonably priced reader. Which is to say that it is a mere $100. So I took the plunge and bought one.

I was very pleased to find that it is a nice little machine. It is slightly larger than a regular mass market paperback. It is roughly the width of a book that is about 300 or so pages long. It has a nice bulge with a rubber grip on the left side and the right also has rubber on the back. The screen while not having the clarity that e-ink supposedly offers, I have not actually seen a e-ink reader myself, its screen is very readable. It has an adjustable back light which is nice, the e-ink readers that I have read about do not have that feature. The battery life is supposed to run about 15 hours. I am guessing that is fairly reasonable. I have to admit that even I don’t sit and read for 15 hours straight. I have sat and read a whole 300+ page book with it and the battery still had 10+ hours left at the end.

The reader came in a nice box with easy to understand instructions. The biggest problem I had with the initial set up was the fact that in order to the setup easily you need to have a phone line to make a call out directly from your ebook reader, though they kindly include a phone line for you to use. This would be a problem for me in general, because I don’t normally have a LAN line. However, I am currently living in the boonies and am on DSL so do have a LAN line instead of cable internet. The phone call the little machine makes takes only a minute or two. Then you can download the USB software from the site and hook the ebook reader directly into the computer. You can apparently do the setup through the USB software somehow, but I could not figure out how. I kept on getting a message that my ebook reader needed to be registered.

The librarian software and can directly download ebooks from the www.fictionwise.com and www.ebookwise.com websites. (Fictionwise owns ebookwise). If you are like me and actually already own ebooks this is not terribly convenient. I downloaded the ebook librarian software and must say it’s not the most user friendly software that I have ever used. I found a great website: http://www.mobileread.com/ which has forums and it had the instructions that I needed to the software to work.

The ebookwise reader doesn’t read all formats, its primary one is a .imp. Have you ever heard of the .imp format? Yeah me either. The reader can also use .txt, .rtf, .html, and .doc which the ebookwise librarian can convert into a .imp file type.

The software menus on the ebookwise reader its self, were somewhat confusing to me initially. I had trouble with my ipod when I got it too. It was a bit too easy and I over thought the process. The problem that I had with the ebook reader was pretty much the same. The software is pretty easy and if you can’t figure out what you want it to do you can always open up the nice and convenient instruction manual that they provide on the ebook reader its self.
The touch screen could be a bit more sensitive in my opinion. I had a palm handspring in the past and feel that this one is not nearly as sensitive. Then again perhaps that is a good thing, that way you don’t accidentally exit a book when reading just because you accidentally bumped the screen.

One of my favorite features is that you can leave a book without even bookmarking it and when you open it next time it will be at the same spot. Overall I have to say the pro’s outweigh the con’s of this product. The pro’s being its reasonable price, comfortable size and shape and backlighting. The con’s are the software could use some work and instructions that also could use some work. I think I will enjoy my ebook reader greatly, I don’t have to pack a ton of books when I go on vacation now and I have the bonus of having less book clutter around my house.