Borders UK launches £189 e-book reader

[ShortNCuddlyAm]

Originally Posted by Patricia

Borders in the UK sells a lot of Elonex products. I've been thinking of buying a 7" digital TV/picture frame for £55. I don't really need it but it looks cute and might distract me when I'm tidying the kitchen.

The last thing I need is something else to distract me from tidying the kitchen! I think even a blank wall can do that

[Patricia]

I went to the Borders in Central Cardiff today and played with the demonstration Elonex Ebook Reader for a little while.
The screen is clear and very legible. However the case is made of plastic and seems much more flimsy than my sturdy Sony 505. It comes with a hundred books preloaded. I opened a Shakespeare poem and found that it displayed rather poorly: it didn't really look like verse at all. But this may just have been the result of a poor automatic conversion.
The device supports TXT, PDF, HTML and ePub.

Incidentally, there are piles of fliers in the store saying:

Get 25% off any ebook titles downloaded from Borders.co.uk. Valid until 31 August 2009.
Redemption instructions: To redeem, simply enter the voucher code at checkout and the discount will be automatically applied. The voucher code is: LOADMEUP

I actually bought the Elonex 7" digital picture frame/digital tv. When I took it home and unpacked it, the screen had several very deep scratches. It's going back on Monday. I haven't yet made up my mind whether to exchange it or demand a refund.

[wallcraft]

There is now a PDF user manual on-line. It provides a good overview of what the device can do, but mostly via screenshots. For example, the device also supports FB2, PRC (MOBI) and JPEG because these show up in the library view on page 8.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Patricia

I went to the Borders in Central Cardiff today and played with the demonstration Elonex Ebook Reader for a little while.
The screen is clear and very legible. However the case is made of plastic and seems much more flimsy than my sturdy Sony 505. It comes with a hundred books preloaded. I opened a Shakespeare poem and found that it displayed rather poorly: it didn't really look like verse at all. But this may just have been the result of a poor automatic conversion.
The device supports TXT, PDF, HTML and ePub.

all of the supplied books are either TXT or HTML which is likely why the TXT are not formatted very well. They are also downloadable from the web site, by the way. http://www.elonex.com/support/products/ebook/600eb.shtm

There are 62 html books and 38 txt ones.


Dale

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

all of the supplied books are either TXT or HTML which is likely why the TXT are not formatted very well. They are also downloadable from the web site, by the way. http://www.elonex.com/support/products/ebook/600eb.shtm


Dale

The txt suffer the same CR/LF line length problems of Project Gutenberg books but the HTML are pretty well formatted using embedded style sheets. The disclaimer text however, is run into the final paragraph of the book. Not a particular good way to end a book. There is support of emdash in the html books.

Dale

[hywel]

Originally Posted by Patricia

I went to the Borders in Central Cardiff today and played with the demonstration Elonex Ebook Reader for a little while.
The screen is clear and very legible. However the case is made of plastic and seems much more flimsy than my sturdy Sony 505. It comes with a hundred books preloaded. I opened a Shakespeare poem and found that it displayed rather poorly: it didn't really look like verse at all. But this may just have been the result of a poor automatic conversion.
The device supports TXT, PDF, HTML and ePub.

I agree - I had a play with the Elonex Ebook at a Borders, and this is what I thought:

1. Light and comfortable to hold, and the buttons are reasonably laid out. Seems plasticky though

2. Software is *dreadful*. Takes ages to start up, and the menu system is totally non-intuitive. It is very hard to navigate around the book list - at the end of the list you can't click 'down', you have to click 'right'. Why not just make both work??? Argh.

3. Worst of all, when you turn off the machine it forgets where you were.

4. Where's the bookmark button?

5. The preloaded books don't format correctly. Maybe proper ePub works better, but you would have thought they could have made the shop demos look good. Not a good sign.

6. There is significant ghosting on the screen - enough to be distracting. Much worse than the Sony PRS-505 I usually use.

7. It's £189! That is the same more or less as the Sony RRP. And you can get the Sony 505 on Play.com for 150 quid right now.

There is no reason to buy one of these things - stick with the Sony. The Elonex is way over-priced, presumably because they think that consumer ignorance in this product area will enable them to charge extra (it works on memory cards in camera shops). If the Elonex were about 50-80 quid it would be a good price point. But no way at nearly 200!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by hywel

6. There is significant ghosting on the screen - enough to be distracting. Much worse than the Sony PRS-505 I usually use.

There is no ghosting on the 505's screen. If you have ghosting on your 505's screen, then you probably have a defective 505.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

There is no ghosting on the 505's screen. If you have ghosting on your 505's screen, then you probably have a defective 505.

I also agree with that assessment.

Ghosting ended with the demise of the Sony 500.


Don

[hywel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

There is no ghosting on the 505's screen. If you have ghosting on your 505's screen, then you probably have a defective 505.

That's what I said. There is ghosting on the Elonex, but none on the 505. Therefore the Elonex is much worse than the 505!

[lioslaith]

I also popped into my local Borders so see up front and personal the new reader the had on sale. Luckily they had just arrived so I was able to test drive the device. A fact I liked, kudos to the staff, they let you pick it up and put it on and meander at your own speed through the menu etc., and if you needed it they would demonstrate it for you. No pressure to buy and I was able to play around with it and go back a few times during my visit when I thought to check something else off my mental checklist.

I own my own Sony 505, but to avoid a potential custody battle with my Mother over it I opted to shop around for another reader specifically for her. I opted to purchase I different device to avoid mix ups and to also compare devices and see which was more suited to each of us.

So upon reading this thread when it first was posted I too went over to the Borders UK site and could find nothing about the reader there, a visit to my local store I found out all I wanted in a hands on fashion. Much better.

So after going home and counting my pennies (figuratively speaking but not far off the mark) I realised I could afford one if I waited a week or so for my bank balance to go up. So I ordered one online without telling my Mother. It arrived quickly, in half the time my order from Play arrived incidentally, but arrive it did. My Mother's exact words when I opened the parcel was, "That's my reader right?!" So needless to say she was thrilled, and has hardly put it down in the time since.

She prefers the lighter Elonex than my 505 and finds it easier to navigate as I have the books set up in folders, clearly marked for finding exactly what she wants when she wants it. It's the one facility I envy her. The ability to arrange her collection into folders and to then browse these folders like with you do on a conventional computer hard drive. She found it confusing to attempt to find her books on my Sony. This way she opens the relevant folder and viola there is the book(s) she is looking for. She also likes the fact there are less buttons to contend with and has gotten used to the pop up box that appears when she presses the menu button when inside a book. She also loves that she can simply change font size by pressing on the button on the side. She has only once or twice had to increase font size and said the she doesn't encounter the broken text/scrunched text that the zoom function on my reader causes when it attempts to reflow the text.

All in all she is very pleased with her reader. She just had to purchase the accessory pack so that she could have the leather case to place it in as the reader didn't come with a cover included (although it did come with the mains adapter). It pads the device making it safer, especially in transit, and she found that finger prints show up of the surface of the reader if you don't have a cover to place it in. Also she received the 4GB SD Card with the cover but I put that away for later as she still has plenty of room on the internal memory provided. HTML pages are her favourite to read and they render so well in the reader.

Unlike previously posted she doesn't have problems navigating and her reader comes on more quickly than my sony does. It has nothing to do with the amount of books loaded either, she currently has more books on hers than I have on mine now. I placed all books inside the Digital Editions folder on the internal memory and once she opens that folder all her books are inside other folders inside the ADE folder. She finds this easier to navigate.

Well, all that said, I suppose I'll keep my beak out of it.

It all depends on what you want in a reader. I love all things about my 505, but I do have a wishlist of upgrades I'd like to see. The main one being able to create a folder structure like the Elonex that you could surf like the folders on your hard drive, but as people keep reminding us this is just basically the first generation of these devices we are using so they will evolve and adapt with the users - hopefully - and get better as time goes on.

[Hellmark]

I wonder why Border's in the US sells only the Sony readers, and not the Elonex.

[HarryT]

Different contracts, I guess. In the UK, a bookstore chain called "Waterstones" sells the Sony Reader.