MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Question about e-ink reader fragility and comment about Bebook warranty

Petrous · 01-28-2009, 03:41 PM

I bought the bebook partially because it got some good reviews (on this forum), because it seemed to have wide format support and because it was cheap and had (I thought) an international warranty.

There were some things I liked about it - e-ink is very easy to read although I did find the 'flash' and delay while turning pages annoying ( I am a very fast reader). The battery life is very good, it is very easy to transfer books onto the device and I like folder navigation.

Things I didn't like
1. There is wide format support but it's a bit of a jack of all trades, master of none device - it doesn't actually do many of them well.

In particular I found pdf even on the high magnification setting unreadable (this is mainly on two column medical journal articles, but even on some pdf novels as there is no pdf reflow.) There is a workaround with papercrop but it is very timeconsuming.

I have some large chm and html files that I had hoped to read on the bebook but found that large chm and html are either very slow or eventually crash the bebook (requiring a reset). All my html were named "chapter 1" rather than the name of the file.

I also found lits and prc flaky although apparently this has improved in the latest firmware. Even many txt didn't display correctly.

The two best formats I found were rtf (but no pictures) and fb2. I actually converted most of ebooks to fb2 and they do like nice on the bebook although they do take a long time to load and large fb2 occasionally crash.

2. I never got around to sorting out why but I found that bookmarks often didn't save. It may have been because I was using an SD card rather than the internal memory.

3. It was pretty unstable, with a few crashes especially with large documents (html, chm and fb2) and I also found when I tried the advance 10 pages button.

4. I had hoped to use it to read RSS feeds but was unsuccessful. I did try using mobipocket creator to make some RSS feeds but the created files did not have an index and were therefore not useful

5. this is nothing specific with the bebook but I actually found the size of the bebook inconveniant. It is fine for reading in the home but the problem is if you want to take it anywhere. I suspect this is where women have an advantage as it would fit in a large purse. It is much too big to fit in a pocket and so just about the first time I took it out of the house I put it in a shopping bag and it broke. I guess that is the thing about the old paperback novel - it is pretty durable (and cheap) while the bebook is basically a glass screen (and $A400).

01-28-2009, 03:41 PM	#14
Petrous Junior Member Posts: 5 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2009 Device: none	I bought the bebook partially because it got some good reviews (on this forum), because it seemed to have wide format support and because it was cheap and had (I thought) an international warranty. There were some things I liked about it - e-ink is very easy to read although I did find the 'flash' and delay while turning pages annoying ( I am a very fast reader). The battery life is very good, it is very easy to transfer books onto the device and I like folder navigation. Things I didn't like 1. There is wide format support but it's a bit of a jack of all trades, master of none device - it doesn't actually do many of them well. In particular I found pdf even on the high magnification setting unreadable (this is mainly on two column medical journal articles, but even on some pdf novels as there is no pdf reflow.) There is a workaround with papercrop but it is very timeconsuming. I have some large chm and html files that I had hoped to read on the bebook but found that large chm and html are either very slow or eventually crash the bebook (requiring a reset). All my html were named "chapter 1" rather than the name of the file. I also found lits and prc flaky although apparently this has improved in the latest firmware. Even many txt didn't display correctly. The two best formats I found were rtf (but no pictures) and fb2. I actually converted most of ebooks to fb2 and they do like nice on the bebook although they do take a long time to load and large fb2 occasionally crash. 2. I never got around to sorting out why but I found that bookmarks often didn't save. It may have been because I was using an SD card rather than the internal memory. 3. It was pretty unstable, with a few crashes especially with large documents (html, chm and fb2) and I also found when I tried the advance 10 pages button. 4. I had hoped to use it to read RSS feeds but was unsuccessful. I did try using mobipocket creator to make some RSS feeds but the created files did not have an index and were therefore not useful 5. this is nothing specific with the bebook but I actually found the size of the bebook inconveniant. It is fine for reading in the home but the problem is if you want to take it anywhere. I suspect this is where women have an advantage as it would fit in a large purse. It is much too big to fit in a pocket and so just about the first time I took it out of the house I put it in a shopping bag and it broke. I guess that is the thing about the old paperback novel - it is pretty durable (and cheap) while the bebook is basically a glass screen (and $A400).