05-22-2009, 11:21 AM | #1 |
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Considering a Bebook, any others?
I’ve decided to buy a new e-book reader and need some advice. I’ve read for years using my old palm pilot, however, the touch screen is dying, which leaves it virtually useless. My eyes are going south too, so a larger screen would help.
My entire e-library is stored on an SD memory card, so I’d like to be able to use the same SD card. Most of my e-books are saved in Palm doc format. I have used the Ereader for Palm as the reader software, but I’ll probably switch to Mobipocket. I almost never read current books and I live way out in the boondocks, so internet connectivity is useless to me. I’m content to read classics and other junk I can download for free, however, I do read (and have) some current political books. I’ve got some old format converters saved on various computers and I’ve learned how to fiddle with formats to make things work. In short, I think a dedicated format type would not work for me. I want to be as flexible in formats as possible. For these reasons I’ve been considering the Bebook reader. I also considered the Bookeen, but have all but rejected it so far. Are there any other readers I should consider, or should I reject my current candidates for any reason? |
05-22-2009, 12:04 PM | #2 |
Wizard
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If you are not up on the issues, you might read: https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Choo...n_Ebook_Reader
If you aren't worried about DRM, then a cheap choice is: https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/JetBook One really, bad idea, but it would work. You can purchase a used Palm device. I did this for a few months when I was waiting for a new reader to hit the market. I got a nice Palm TX for about $70. However, I think the technology is ready now, and I would go for a dedicated ereader. If you have a little more, I would go for the Astak EZReader from Fry's. It is eInk based. For those who aren't constrained by budgets the choice is usually between Sony and Amazon. The Sony has better support for organization (folders). The Amazon Kindle is US only for now. The Kindle's strength is the ease of buying and downloading books wirelessly and the ability to synch books between the Kindle and a iPhone. |
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05-22-2009, 12:17 PM | #3 |
reader
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The EZ Reader is a Hanlin V3, like the BeBook. If you are in the US, this is a good choice. Fry's often has it on sale for $240. The firmwares for the Hanlin V3's are interchangeable, so you can run BeBook firmware on the EZ Reader. Currently the EZ Reader supports DRMed MOBI, but the next firmware will instead support eReader (and perhaps the same reader SDK will support PalmDoc). Since the firmware is interchangable, you should be able to load the new EZ Reader firmware on a BeBook if you buy it instead.
I don't actually know how well the current Hanlin firmware supports PalmDoc, but these work well under FBReader using the Open InkPot firmware. Given your existing SD library, I agree than the Hanlin V3 is your best choice. The only alternatives might be the BeBook Mini (smaller and cheaper) and BeBook 2 (more features), but these are not available yet. |
05-26-2009, 07:47 PM | #4 |
Grand Sorcerer
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Hanlin supports PalmDOC very well. The font is good, the display is nice in this format however it does some ugly hyphenating on occasion. It does not support the internal bookmarks that may be in a PalmDOC file. A tab at the start of a paragraph becomes a good way to indent a line one character. I like reading PalmDOC files on my EZ Reader.
Dale |
05-30-2009, 10:46 PM | #5 |
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