I have posted a review of the eBookwise reader (http://www.bowindex.com/et2/) along with a few photos.

At first I was kind of disappointed with the low res, half VGA screen, but that quickly changed when I started to read. My reading speed went way up because of the larger screen. I could sort of scan ahead. Also even though it is lower res, I find the 1150's serif font easier to read than the default sans-serif font on my PDA.

The camera makes the screen look green. It really does not look that way when viewing it with the naked eye.

I like the sound of this reader in general, and I have long thought that there need to be more dedicated ebook readers out there. That said, this unit sounds pretty limiting, in that you can't read .txt or other formats that you could get from Gutenburg or the like. It would also be nice if you could dump in web material with Sitescooper. But overall it sounds good, and it was clever to use these abandoned readers. They probably picked them up for a song.

What is your experience with battery life? Or have you had it long enough yet? Does it do bookmarks? Does it have any kind of hyperlink capability?

Thanks for a thorough review.

Hi ignatz,

It will read other formats:

* Rich Text Format (.rtf)
* Microsoft Word (.doc)
* Plain Text (.txt)
* Rocket eBook Editions (.rb)


In addition I just tried it with an HTML document from Gutentalk and that seems to display fine. I'm not sure if it will do hypertext links though - my text document did not have any.

I have also tested it with a Rocket eBook formated book (.rb) that I got at Blackmask. It displays beautifully.

The fact that it will display .txt, .rb, and .html opens up whole worlds of books and documents.

I have only had it about 72 hours - battery life seems long but I'm not sure how long. I thing there is a way to bookmark and also make margin notes but I have not really tried that.

Something else I like, once your internet based bookshelves are stocked with either books you buy at eBookwise or your own content on your personal shelves the 1150 can download it directly without a computer through it's built in modem. It automatically dials in through a tollfree number. A nice feature if you are stuck at Grandma's house over the holidays and need another book.

The modem feature is fantastic! I could see that being very useful. Also with text, doc, rtf, and html, that thing sounds ready for prime time. I'm impressed. I definitely prefer a PDA for size, because I wind up doing a lot of reading a page or two at a time, whenver I can steal a moment. But this is the first ebook reader that has tempted me...

eBookwise has a help page that explains (http://www.ebookwise.com/servlet/mw?t=help_uploadcontent.htm&si=43) how to upload your personal content on the reader device.

Thanx Brad! that was a good review. I'm thinking on buying an ebookwise 1150 but I'm not sure about the screen quality. Could someone post higher quality pictures of the screen? I'd like to know how much brightness and contrast you can get with the 1150. Also it'd be great if you post some photos of the screen showing pictures.
I'm afraid half VGA may not be "nice" enough to read special ebooks.
Thank you!

>>brightness

Brightness is tricky as the camera flash tends to obscure such things.

I know Brad, it's hard to capture some things. I noticed that sometimes taking pictures without a flash is better.
Anyway, there are not many pictures of the 1150 while it's ON. It'd be good if you could post some more pictures, larger and clearer. Like the one in ebookwise site (http://www.ebookwise.com/mindwise/books/big_ewreader.jpg) (but with the display on)

In case you don't know it yet. There's a site where you can host some pictures for free. You can try it and upload some photos for us! Try the ImageShack (http://www.imageshack.us)

So far, I only found your review on the internet! thanks again!

Only pitiful thing for EB1150 is no hyperlink.

Thus, I can't converse html novel from internet to eBookWise 1150.

Except that I have left my Palm T3 to read use only eb1150.

larryliao

Does anyone know where to get the 1150 in Argentina. Or where to buy it in the states that they can export it?
I wonder why there are restrictions for exporting this thing :angry:

Don't know. But I am in Taiwan and got Eb1150 from my sister in the States.
Now I could read tons of ebooks from eBookWise and Listen audible files from Rio,and other MP3 players. What use could be for my Palm T3? ( Being not a big potato I don't need calendar, outlook, tasks... )

My ebookwise reader got pushed off a nightstand in the dark. Unfortunately it fell and impacted so that I got a star pattern in the bottom edge of the screen. The cracks have spread widely and the touch screen feature now works erratically or not at all. Can the cracked cover be replaced or is it intergral to the reader? Ie do I need a new reader or can it be fixed? Thanks in advance for any sharing of information and or links.

Ugh. I don't know if you can replace the screen or not (some services are out there for pdas, so maybe it is possible).

There are a few on eBay for $115 plus $9 shipping, and you can buy it from the main ebookwise site new along with a 64meg storage card for $124.95 (plus $9.95 Shipping and Handling. USA and Canada shipping only.) But that doesn't even match your original deal, so I hope you can find a way to get it fixed cheaper.

I'd suggest an upgrade by splurging on something like the Sony Reader, but you wouldn't be able to read all your existing content on it.

Only pitiful thing for EB1150 is no hyperlink.

Thus, I can't converse html novel from internet to eBookWise 1150.
Can anyone else confirm this for me? I have seen several sites claiming the 1150 has hyperlink capabilities, but they all seem to be quoting some single source of promotional material...

Thanks,
Jack

The eBookwise reader has no problems with hyperlinks. Here's a sample picture of a file I just made with some links, and an archive of the IMP file itself and an IMP viewer for Windows. (The viewer can't be used directly. You have to select the IMP file, then choose 'Open With' and browse to the viewer.) The short story is made with the largest font, which I favor.

Can anyone else confirm this for me? I have seen several sites claiming the 1150 has hyperlink capabilities, but they all seem to be quoting some single source of promotional material...

Thanks,
Jack

The (unencrypted) Fictionwise multiformat book downloaded in .imp, most .opf books (you know those from... :) ) converted to imp (another handy thing of Ebk1150, you can convert opf directly to imp) have automatically hyperlinks on Ebk1150 which is very nice especially for short story collections.
I bought more than 20 multiformat e-magazines or short story collections from Fictionwise and all of them have working hyperlinks in imp

Also Ebk1150 has a very good search capability and combined with bookmarks, it will do for those books that do not have hyperlinks.

I also presume that you can modify html or rtf preconvert to include hyperlinks in converted imp but I have no idea how to do it.



Liviu

I wanted to buy an iLiad, but I just don't think I can justify the cost right now. On the other hand, I've got a bunch of eBooks to read (I've been reading them on my Mac laptop) and also a large number of journal articles and other documents which I'd like to be able to organize digitally. I have some questions about the eBookwise 1150, though.

1 - Can you search or even browse "bookmarks," i.e. annotations? I'm guessing it doesn't do handwriting recognition at this price, so you couldn't search the text of your notes unless there's a screen keyboard, which would be clunky, but is there any way to review the markups you've made to a document? (E.g. search highlighted text?)

2 - Can you backup bookmarks/annotations? Are they readable other than on the device?

3 - Can you turn the backlight off, and if so, is the device readable in sunlight?

Thanks,

1 - Hmmm, never actually searched for the note contents themselves so can't say anything there. I normally just used the jump function to go to the next markup (which is still extremely fast). While you can search "highlighted text" as far as I've used it it just for finding that text again in the document.

2 - No idea though you would think there would be some way to do it for a clever, clever person.

3 - The two visual display controls are "contrast" (darkens or lightens the background screen compared to the letters) and "brightness" (increases and decreases the backlighting). Good thing too since it changes as the temperature and time in use changes.

In fact, it was this unit that got me fully hooked on ebooks. It went anywhere (yes, readable in full sun but not as nearly as readable as Sony or Irex), holds a good charge (for what it is), a decent sized display and is still more comfortable to hold for long periods than the Sony reader (for my hands) since it's easy to switch the LARGE page buttons to either side of the reader so you can switch from left to right and back again.

Another plus is that it's fairly rugged with a sturdy plastic and rubber body so it's easy to lug around. Again, not as easy of most e-ink if weight is a major concern but not enough to notice in a bag with other items in it anyway.

Downsides are the display (of course) since it is limited to a coarse LCD, storage media (removable is a SmartMedia card, not as available as all the others anymore though it can still be gotten), direct bright light readability (possible but some shadowing on the display is preferable).

That said, I still use it even though the current favorite at home is the Sony eReader (and now with the latest 2.8, Illiad is starting to give those come-hither looks) since it still does what it needs to (display text information) very well, making it great for manuals and guides as well as general reading.

I hear you on those come-hither looks from the iLiad. Part of the reason I'm asking about annotation export is that if I go for an 1150 now, I will probably want to switch to an iLiad at some point, and I'd like to keep my annotations created on the 1150 in the meantime.

Are the annotations images, like the iLiad's "Scribble," or do you use a screen keyboard?

Thanks,

Without seeing an Iliad in action (something that is probably safer for my wallet), I would say it's similar since you use the stylus (or finger, coin edge, frozen mackerel....anything really since it's not a Wacom but just a touchscreen) to draw on the screen itself.

I'm not sure if it would matter though since it may store the annotation info as a specialized file. Maybe someone with both a Ebookwise and Iliad would know? Are there such beasts?

Probably some iLiad user has had an eBookwise 1150 at some point. I'll try posting in the iLiad section. I would guess that the annotations are stored in a separate file, matched up somehow with the content file. I would need to look on the memory of an eBookwise with a file with annotation to see if I could figure out what it uses. Based on the other discussions in this forum, the .imp file gets pulled apart on the eBookwise itself; presumably one of those files created during this process is the annotation file. Depending on the format of that file, it could be possible to create a utility to convert the annotations to a format usable on the iLiad. It's an interesting idea, anyway.

Does anyone have an example of an annotated file (probably a group of related files) on an eBookwise reader that they'd be willing to share? One of the iLiad techies wants to take a look.

Only pitiful thing for EB1150 is no hyperlink.

Thus, I can't converse html novel from internet to eBookWise 1150.

Except that I have left my Palm T3 to read use only eb1150.

larryliao

The EB1150 supports hyperlinks just fine. Just use the publisher and select the html documents you want. Hyperlinks between documents is fine.

Dale