[FreddyB]

I have eventually received the replacement for my faulty Jetbook from the US. Again I advise UK customers to think twice before buying this device from the US. Buy and collect it from a UK retailer to whom you can return it if it is faulty. You will thus avoid 1) International shipping charges when returning the item 2) FedEx's limited UK delivery/collection service 3) An additional Import Tax bill.

FedEx in UK:

There was a delay in it being delivered to my UK address because it was shipped by FedEx. I was at work when delivery was attempted to my home address but, unlike with the UK postal service, Fedex's nearest collection depot is in the middle of nowhere and unreachable by me during the working week. It also does not open at the weekend and FedEx do not deliver at the weekend either. I arranged to collect from a more convenient FedEx location (i.e. accessible by me during the working week). After waiting 2 days for the package to be relocated for collection, I phoned ahead before going to collect and was informed that this location could not in fact be used as a pick up location after all. I eventually had to arrange delivery to my work address.

Import Tax

A few days after receiving my replacement Jetbook, I was mailed a GBP 20.30 bill from FedEx for import duty they had incurred on receiving the device. Curiously, there was no request for import duty after receipt of the original item.

No charger:

On receiving my replacement Jetbook, I found that there was no mains charger in the box! A 3 pin universal adaptor plug for the UK mains supply was included but no cable to connect it to the Jetbook. Pending receipt of this item, I was advised to use the USB cable for charging, even though the manual specifically advises using the special charger instead.

Goodies?:

I did find that, as promised, some goodies had also been included to compensate for my shipping costs when returning the original faulty Jetbook to the US - namely a reading light, a leather wallet, a plastic sleeve and a SD storage card. Alas, none of these are really of any practical use to me. I already have a SD card, I do not read in the dark, the clumsy chunky wallet hinders access to various keys whilst negating the compact portability of the Jetbook. The white rubbery protective? sleeve thingy seems to serve no purpose than to uglify the sexy black Jetbook.

Dictionary:

Having used the Jetbook a little now, I have found that one of its selling points - dictionary support - leaves something to be desired. Unless the word being looked up is very common then there's a good chance that it will not be in the dictionary. E.g. on briefly looking through Oscar Wilde's ' The Canterville Ghost', I find that the dictionary is missing the following words 'falchion, dimity, oriel, hominy'. Even 'butler, wrought' are absent. What's the point in the dictionary function if one cannot look up obscure words, or indeed, not so obscure words.

Also, it seems that the English dictionary is not selected by default and has to be selected for each book read. The User Manual appears to be wrong in its description of a setting for the dictionary language from Main Menu -> User Settings. There is however a setting at book level (i.e. it has to be set for each document) to select English. The default 'Auto-detect' setting used the Polish or Russian dictionaries to look up English words!.

PDF Support:

The Jetbook has more zoom features than my Sony PRS-505 for viewing PDF docs but the Sony's PDF word wrap (reflow?) and e-ink display really come in to their own and are far superior to the spidery display of PDFs on the Jetbook.

Conclusion:

The Jetbook is a nice, but over priced, device for viewing text docs. It is compact, has flexible folder support for organising documents and also has Search and (limited) Dictionary functions which my Sony lacks. However, I think that in future I will stick to ordering my gadgets domestically or possibly from within the EU.