Hello all,
I am a former Bookeen Cybook (BC) owner and now I own a Kindle 2 (K2). I thought I would share my thoughts on a comparison of the two. As you will see I prefer the Kindle. However, I'm not trying to troll. I see posts on this forum from those who are still making a purchase decision and from those who are replacing their Cybook's. This post is really orientated towards them.
Much of my preference comes from the way that I use my device. I like to keep my entire e-Library on the device, and it totals just over 450 books. With a large library such as this, the K2 is much faster than the BC, as I will explain. I know that many people prefer to keep only their current books on their reader. If this is more your style, I think you will find the BC approach just as appealing or even superior.
On the other hand, the K2 is limited since it does not support removable memory. Given the rate at which my books use the memory, I estimate that I could fit over 2,000 books on the K2. So, if you like to keep the entire Gutenberg library you might be limited on the K2
.
I have to admit that it has been over six months since I used my BC so some of my recollections on it may be a bit fuzzy or wrong. I owned two different BC's due to warranty problems so I expect my observations to be somewhat representative across units. Both were the first generation (smaller intenal memory).
My observations follow:
SPEED to Launch
=============
Starting up the BC was quite slow for me.When I hit the on button, it would take 1/2 minute to a minute to get into my book. It would show a start up screen for several seconds and then it seemed to take time to rescan my entire library. If I had only a few books on there it was much quicker.
The K2 takes two to five seconds before it delivers me back into the book I was reading. This makes the K2 experience much more book-like. I can pick it up and read just a few pages while I'm between tasks.
SPEED to Find Books
===============
I can navigate my library much quicker with the K2. Paging through to find a given book took forever on the Bookeen. Since I have well over forty pages of books it seemed to take forever. The K2 has a couple of advantages.
- Much faster page turns
- Go to a letter: type a letter such as W to go to authors whose name begin with "W".
- You can sort by author, title, or most recent read.
- You can search for specific text that you type in on the keyboard. That works extremely well.
BC Advantage: One advantage of the BC is its book cover view. The K2 only has a text listing of titles in the library. The BC has multiple layouts for the library. Several layouts include small thumbnails of the covers. With the BC you have more options in general for customizing the settings.
PROBLEM: Folders/Collections
======================
Neither device has a way to organize the library through folders or collections. I understand the Sony has something like this, but I haven't tried it.
SPEED navigating a book
==================
On page turns the edge probably goes to K2. It seems to turn pages faster (although my memory isn't great on this). The BC did have the ability to buffer several page turns to successive page turns if you were flipping through the book while the K2 requires a next page for each turn.
On the other hand, the K2 has a nice search function. Type in search terms and it will give you a listing of every instance in the book in the context of two or three lines from the book. I wouldn't want to look up the word "the"
, but if you can think of something unique enough it can help you quickly find your spot.
I'd give the nod to the K2. In certain circumstances the K2 search is very useful. However, I'd say there are times that it would be much easier to flip through a paper book.
BC Advantage: READING
==================
The K2 definitely comes up short in the actual text display on the page. It only supports one font in six sizes. Furthermore, there has been considerable criticism regarding the darkness of the font. I believe that the K2 uses anti-aliasing since it has more levels of gray scale. Unfortunately on small fonts this leads to a font weight that is too light.
On my BC I used the embolden function and the fonts were sufficiently heavy even at the smaller sizes.
I expect Amazon to address this since they are getting a lot of grief, but nothing is sure. Amazon has not been any better than Bookeen at releasing updates to their software. The good news is that when they do release it, the updates happen over the air with no user intervention.
Another criticism of the K2 regards the page layout. The standard layout includes a header, a footer and margins on all of the sides. I calculate that I could get just over 40% more viewing area if I could stretch the text to use the entire screen. Unfortunately there are NO settings for the reading layout except for six font sizes. I can't remember if the BC had a full-screen setting, but I have had it on some other devices I've used, and it is sorely missed.
For me the overall reading experience on the K2 is adequate, but this may indeed be a showstopper and a nod to the BC for some of you.
GHOSTING
========
Another K2 gripe has been ghosting. When the Kindle goes to sleep it throws up an image of a 'dead author' (Agathe Christie, for example). When it wakes up you can usually see a faint ghost of the stored image. It is easy to clear by forcing a screen refresh, and it doesn't bother me in any way, but it seems to annoy some people.
SOFTWARE BUILD QUALITY
====================
I'd have to give the nod to Amazon on this one. There were all kinds of annoying little 'bugs' with the Cybook. Sometimes it seemed to take a couple click to turn the page -- even after the firmware update. Other times I would go to the library and it would need to rescan my entire collection (see one minute startup issues above). I've only had my K2 for a few weeks, but it seems to have fewer issues such as these.
BOOK FORMATS
============
This will be the killer for some of you. All of my books are unencrypted mobipocket books and they work fine on the K2. If you have encrypted mp then you will need to strip the DRM -- I don't know if that is legal in your jurisdiction or not, but there are instructions out there on this. If you are in the United States, and your book is not available from Baen, Gutenberg, or Mobilread then I have found the Amazon prices to be very competitive. However, all Amazon books appear to have DRM applied. Bezos of Amazon claims it is up to the publisher, but many publishers have reported that Amazon forces them to use DRM even when they don't want to.
I haven't purchased anything from the Amazon store yet, and all of my books are in unrestricted mobi. However, I still had some work to do. In order to take advantage of the nice capabilities of the K2 I had a problem as many of my books were improperly formatted. None of my prc books from Baen would show the author. Baen has now switched to mobi format for mobipocket books, but they list the author as firstname lastname while the K2 looks for lastname, firstname. I decided it was worthwhile to convert and update all of the books. This meant editing hundreds of books though
. I used mobi2mobi as found on these boards. It was useful, but still a pain.
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
===============
Since I purchased my BC I've read a lot of comments from people who get non-support from Bookeen. I had one return and it took lots of messaging to get through to them. I'm not sure if Amazon is really better or not. People seem to be getting responses, but a lot of times it seems to be from call center employees who have never used the device. One plus is that there appear to be more activity on the K2 boards here on mobileread so that support from other users seems to be stronger.
The reason I quit using my BC was because I dropped it and the screen cracked. The reports here were that it took $165 to get it fixed, and I assume a lot of work to get the shipments made. I read several instances where K1 owners had their screens replaced for free. It does not seem to be a formal policy, so YMMV but it was what I heard.
Overall, I'd give an edge to Amazon.
OTHER AMAZON FEATURES
====================
Text to speech: I thought it was a gimmick, but I've found it useful in several instances. At the gym while using exercise equipment, I turned it down very low and really read the text instead of listening to it. However, the TTS also auto-turns the page. It kept me from needing to take my hands off the exerciser while working out. Also, while driving I used the TTS to continue 'reading' the book. Then I reverted to reading when I reached my destination.
One warning however, Amazon has said that it will let publishers choose to turn off TTS for individual books. Open format books like Baen & Gutenberg should not have a problem, but for general Amazon books????
Web Browsing: If you think the K2 is a web browser you will be sadly disappointed. However, If it is the only device you have available then its free web browsing can be a wonderful convenience. I was able to pull up Google maps and get driving directions. Since it works on the Sprint cell phone network it works everywhere, and there is no cost to me for using it.
Michael