Bebook vs iLiad - sometimes less is more

[carandol]

I've had an iRex iLiad for almost a year. It seemed when I got it to be a machine with a lot of potential. The screen was lovely, and very sharp (1024x768). I could make notes on it, and used this function extensively in university lectures. It had wifi access, which while useless at the moment seemed to promise delights to come.

But I can't say my iLiad had a trouble-free life. Firstly a faulty main board, secondly a cracked screen caused by the repair of the first fault. It's had more foreign holidays than me this year.

But that wasn't what made me get rid of it. One was the fact that I'd finished university, and had less use for a large screen on which to read academic journals and make notes. The other was iRex's decision not to develop the software any further. Since I finished my degree, I've only been using my iLiad to read fiction. And if that's all you want to do with an ebook reader, the iLiad is not the best machine for the job. On the one hand it's a much more powerful piece of kit than is needed, and on the other hand, the 12-15 hour battery life and long boot-up time make picking up a book for a few minutes while waiting for the kettle to boil is not an option. It's also larger than ideal if you just want to read a paperback. And while there are lots of cool things the iLiad *could* do, in practice it doesn't at the moment. I know there's now an open source project to come up with new software, but that's in the future, not now.

The other thing is that its rather an expensive piece of technology to break if you don't have the money to fix it. I always set off with it in my bag feeling like I'm taking a ming vase out into the world.

So, I decided to sell it and buy something which would do the job of reading fiction, without all the bells and whistles I didn't need. I did some looking around, and decided on the Bebook; small, light, long battery life, oodles of file formats, nice leather cover as standard. Seemed ideal.

I got my new Bebook yesterday. First impressions are good. It's so *small* (compared to the iLiad). Also it doesn't have that skewy top left corner which always makes me feel like my glasses aren't on straight. Light. Once the cover's taken off, *incredibly* light. And the cover's lovely too -- real leather and very sturdy. Nicely placed buttons mean you can read it one-handed with either hand (so you can read and eat crisps at the same time without getting it greasy! )

The screen seems nice and sharp and clear, despite the lower screen resolution. Grey scale graphics look pretty bad compared to the iLiad (only 4 tones, as opposed to 16). I wouldn't want to try to graphics heavy material on it, but I know it's not something I do, so that's not an issue.

Line drawings in the Mobipocket software are actually *better* than on the iLiad, because with the lower screen resolution they're bigger and easier to see. In fact, the Mobipocket viewer is better than the iLiad's all round; you can change the font, and I've discovered that some of my ebooks have covers I'd never seen before!

PDFs though -- not so good. I'd converted a bunch of ebooks to PDF in the right page format for the Bebook using OpenOffice.org 3, only to discover they don't show up properly on the Bebook -- text in italics missing, whole documents blank after a heading, etc. PDFs from www.feedbooks.com show the same problems so I guess it's an issue with the Bebook software. But the company seems pretty proactive about putting out software updates, so I'm hoping there's a solution soon.

One of the things I really like, compared to the iLiad -- there's only one cable! The USB cable doubles as a charger cable, so there's none of that wrestling with the "travel hub" *and* the USB cable *and* the power adapter than there is with the iLiad.

And I can leave it switched on! Oh joy! None of the problems of reading for a bit, putting it down, forgetting its on, and picking it up later only to find the battery's died. Or alternatively thinking "I won't be reading for a bit" and switching it off, then having a spare minute to catch up on my book, only to find I have to wait 45 seconds for it to boot.

So apart from some annoyance (but hope in my heart!) about the PDF situation, I'm happy that I've made the switch. The iLiad is a technically clever machine with a lot of unrealised potential; the Bebook, while less sophisticated, does exactly what I want for much longer, in a small, neatly designed package. Last night I was reading a novel in bed, and was so engrossed in the story that I'd already completely forgotten that I was reading it on a device I'd been completely unfamiliar with that same morning -- which is really what you want of an ebook reader.

[orwell2k]

Hey, nice comparison of the pros and cons between the two readers. In some ways comparing apples and oranges because of the huge differences between the devices, but interesting nonetheless.

I have convinced my work bosses to order an iRex DR1000S for me to use at work, so I'm still awaiting delivery but have high hopes of much improved PDF capability on that compared to the BeBook. Most of the PDFs I use at work are A4 source, and I prefer not to try and reformat because there are page headers, graphics, etc. I'm really keen to see the DR1000 at work!

But I couldn't agree more about the comments referring to eBook usage and the BeBook. It is just soooooo light, and the grippy matte finish makes it incredibly easy to hold. I was worried at first that it could slip out of my hand and I had visions of shattered screens and eInk flowing all over the floor...

But the surface finish and lack of weight make it a dream to read one-handed, leaving that second hand free for crisp-eating, nacho-dipping or whatever other pleasures you wish to partake of whilst reading... And the button position actually makes it easy for righties or lefties. I actually think it's better for lefties, as the standalone page turn buttons are on the left (backups on the right in the "9" and "0" key positions), and the cover seems to work better if you flip the BeBook around and slide it in for left-handed usage.

I was surprised to hear you say the Mobi reader was maybe a little better than on the iLiad - a surprise there, since I find it still pretty lame compared to the FB2 or RTF renderers. I'm sure they'll improve it, and hopefully they'll improve the HTML/CHM and TXT handling too. I'm happy because I tend to convert most things to FB2, and that works great!

I think PDFs will always be disappointing - the italics issue is one thing, and even if they improve the PDF parser and enhance the zoom settings, etc., it's still a small screen compared to A4, so there will always be difficulties.

I found the PDF eBooks that the BeBook people made were quite nice on the BeBook. But apparently many people find the text too large, so BeBook are going to reformat them and update their online free library. Of course, these are all freely available books from Gutenburg, but having them format the text is nice - saves me the trouble. Which means pretty much anyone with an equivalent size reader display can grab the formatted versions off the BeBook page and take advantage of their efforts.

But for eBooks, BeBook is mighty fine!