Bookeen Cybook review at ZDNet UK

[Alexander Turcic]

Sandra Vogel from ZDNet UK has reviewed the Bookeen Cybook e-book reader and gave it a 7 out of 10. Although she misses a few features such as integrated Wi-Fi, active USB, and some more productivity software tools, she comes to the conclusion that the Cybook "has the of potential to bridge the gap between much more expensive Tablet PCs and much smaller handhelds, and it's a good example of lateral thinking in hardware development."

See our related threads:
Bookeen answers regarding Cybook review
Teleread excited about Cybook
Cybook E-Book Reader reviewed

[rlauzon]

$500. 800x600 screen (b&w only, but still, this is for book reading).

But I don't get warm fuzzies from this:
"The Cybook supports the most common e-book formats: PRC, PDB, HTML, TXT and RTF."

PRC and PDB are not eBook formats. So it doesn't look like they did their homework - at least on Palm eBooks.

But then we run into problems:
Strike 1: WinCE - that means that it's slow and power hungry. The 3-5 hours of life it's rated for prove that out. And when the battery goes, so do all your eBooks and you bookmarks.
Strike 2: Only 32 MB. With Microsoft's bloated file formats, 32 MB is not sufficient. That means if you're serious about book reading that you will be filling the PC Card slot with some sort of memory. Say good bye to any network connecivity. There's only 1 slot.

But no strike 3. This seems like a cool toy for playing with a Windows tablet PC, but as an eBook reader that can do some laptop things, it really doesn't cut it.