03-12-2010, 07:57 AM
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Member
Posts: 22
Karma: 52
Join Date: Feb 2009
Device: Sony T-1
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Pi - The Official Indian Ebook-Reader!
Hello friends!
I visited the World Book Fair at Delhi, India last month and came across this e-book reader. I had no idea that this was under development.
Pi is being touted as India's first eBook reader. Though, design wise it is nothing revolutionary, it could prove a good buy for people on the lookout for a 'budget' reader (approximately $220 USD or 146 GBP). It has almost all the basic functions.
Here are the main specs:
1. 6" Vizplex e Ink screen, b&w 8 Grayscale
2. Supports almost all major formats: PDF, EPUB, HTML, TXT, MOBI, DOC
3. Internal Memory - 512 MB. Extendable up to 4 GB through SanDisk SDHC.
4. MP3 player.
5. The battery supposed to last for "7 days", which is a pretty vague description.
6. Progress bar to display position in the book.
7. Search inside a book or document.
8. Sort documents (Date, filename, Catalog).
9. Game Play by Function Key & Navigation for Soduku.
10. Increase font size and reflow text automatically.
11. Add bookmarks.
12. Screen Rotate for landscape / portrait views.
14. For those interested, it also supports local languages or vernacular like Hindi, Marathi etc.
Luckily, I was carrying my Sony PRS-505 so was able to compare.
Even though PRS-505 has a 16 Grayscale screen, this holds up pretty well. I found the screen to be surprisingly sharp and crisp. Another thing which caught me off-guard was how fast the page turns are. Maybe, I felt this because my PRS-505 is stuffed with around 600 books and this one had a few, but there was a noticeable difference. The music, as expected, does not sound great.
Also, these guys have a dedicated website to download books from. All DRM'd, of course. I felt left out when Sony website did not let me download any books but these guys have a pretty good collection too. I have since bought close to 15 books from them.
Frankly, I am not considering buying the device cause I'm happy with what I have I just thought this information should be here. I also wanted to put this under E-Book Devices Forums, but somehow couldn't figure out how to. I hope this was helpful in some manner, though.
Here are some pics from their website:
http://www.infibeam.com/Pi#specsAnchor
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