Gen3, Hanlin, ... ?

[alexxxm]

I was about to make the step towards eInk, but these are really - as chinese say - interesting times, damn!

I was waiting, week after week, for the Gen3 to go on market, when I read the specs of the V3 and wend in panic again... which one? Which one?

Please, can anybody give me some advice?

Background:
1) I read eBooks since the good old Rocket
2) DRM doesnt matter, I get everything from Gutemberg & IRC
3) I live in Italy, and support from the France-based Cybook could be interesting - how is it for the V3?

thanks!

Alessandro

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by alexxxm

I was about to make the step towards eInk, but these are really - as chinese say - interesting times, damn!

I was waiting, week after week, for the Gen3 to go on market, when I read the specs of the V3 and wend in panic again... which one? Which one?

Please, can anybody give me some advice?

Background:
1) I read eBooks since the good old Rocket
2) DRM doesnt matter, I get everything from Gutemberg & IRC
3) I live in Italy, and support from the France-based Cybook could be interesting - how is it for the V3?

thanks!

Alessandro

Don't forget the Sony Reader as an option. There is supposedly a new model coming out in October sometime.

[miyami]

I just bought a Hanlin V3 and cost $329. After test the book. There someting is really nice to me.

1.The V3 use Vizplex screen
2.Just take a sceond to do the page turning
3.V3 support most popular format (PDF.DOC HTML image...)and read them natively.
4.over ten language have been support.
5.really fast file onpeing
6 nice design, easy menu to use.
7.they use Cell phone battery. (My nokia battery can be fit)

[MikeF74]

Where do you live? Where did you buy it from? How much was shipping?

[T-bag]

I bought a v3 too. I current in us and i order from their website. I wire total $391. The V3 is $329 and the shipping is $62. check out the link

http://www.jinke.com.cn/Compagesql/E...dpro/index.asp

[guguy]

Including shipping to the US it costs 390$.
I suppose the shipping charges are about the same for europe
so that should be 280€.

You can order it from jinke website form.

[alexxxm]

Thank you for the hints, everybody.
To better clarify my question, however, I want to add that my problem is how <similar> these devices are: from what I just learned, Gen3/Starbook/Hanlin (anything else?) are practically identical.
So, the reasons to choose one or the other must depend on details, mostly - am I right?

So, among the details I'm more interested into, are:
-) wide range of formats
-) ergonomicity
-) producer support in case of problems


Jon: I dont forget Sony, but I really wanted to get something using Vizplex - if the new Reader model has it by october, my range of choices widens further ...


alessandro

[guguy]

Currently the GEN3 doesn't support suspended mode, maybe with a
firmware update but it's not sure...

Buying a V3 can be very expensive because of the custom fees, a member
of this forum paid an additionnal 84€ of custom fees.

So in total he paid 394€ which means 551$

For this price he could have bought two Sony Reader !

If the GEN3 don't support suspended mode at the official launch date he will probably
never and in this case the PRS-505 will be the best choice : cheaper than the V3 with
more functionality (DRM ebooks for instance) and probably something like 150-200$
of ebook credit (maybe only classics but that is still interesting since the formatting
will be perfect).

[HarryT]

Guguy,

Could you define, please, exactly what you mean by "suspend mode"?

I understand a "suspend mode" as being the operation of "dumping" a memory image to disk (or flash memory) so that one can re-start rapidly.

No book reader that I'm aware of - including the Sony Reader - does this. The Reader has a long battery life simply because it has a very low power consumption. It never "suspends" and never turns off - the battery drains at a constant rate regardless of whether or not the machine is being used.

What is it that mean, specifically, when you talk about a machine having a suspend mode?

[guguy]

Well, you know, on the reader as you say you can't power-off, you can
just enter in a kind of suspend mode in which the screen is turned off
and the cpu is in low-consumption mode.

And when it's in this mode, turing it on only takes a second and you come
back exactly where you stopped in your book.

Without this mode, for instance on the iLiad, when you want to stop reading
you have to turn it off. And later, to go back to your book you have to start it again
(which takes 1 minute) and open again your ebook. Of course you don't have
to turn it off but in this case the battery will go flat in max. 10-15h.
But on the sony reader you can stay in suspend mode for days and weeks...

[HarryT]

People have measured the power usage of the Reader, and it seems to be pretty much the same whether it's "on" or "off". The power switch on the Reader is like the "Hold" switch on an iPod - it basically just blanks the screen and disables the buttons.

I don't know what Sony have done to give the Reader such a long battery life - it seems to be something very clever! - but the only point I was making is that the Reader is in the same "state" whether on or off - it doesn't use any less power when it's off than when it's on. If it does use a "low power" state then it uses it constantly, not just when switched off.

[Adam B.]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I don't know what Sony have done to give the Reader such a long battery life - it seems to be something very clever! - but the only point I was making is that the Reader is in the same "state" whether on or off - it doesn't use any less power when it's off than when it's on. If it does use a "low power" state then it uses it constantly, not just when switched off.

My guess is that the sony does go into a "suspend to ram" mode between page turns. When you flip the page, it wakes up flips the page and goes back to sleep. This is only an educated guess, as I have no idea how an electronic device can stay powered for so long otherwise.