ECTACO Jetbook review

[Kris777]

I found this jetBook review very interesting:
http://332nd.org/forum/index.php?act...e;topic=4349.0

Title: Ectaco Jetbook Ebook Reader
Post by: Ghosth on May 15, 2009, 07:06:51 AM

Well a few of you have heard me talking about the new toy I was getting.
Well Malap reminded me that perhaps I should put up a review for anyone else thinking of getting one.
Well it arrived yesterday, so after some 4 hours of reading time, here are my first impressions.

First off here is a fairly helpfull review.

http://www.geardiary.com/2009/03/09/...device-review/ (http://www.geardiary.com/2009/03/09/...device-review/)

Mine came in the exact same box, looks just like that, except its black instead of red.
It came with

A Bonus CD with more dictionarys, flashcards, and phrasebooks than you can shake a stick at.
A USB cable, standard USB to PC on one end, mini usb connects to the jetbook. Shows up in windows as a mass storage device (flashdrive, thumbdrive). This cable can also be used to charge the battery if needed.
A battery charger 110vac to mini usb port
A pair of earphone buds. (doubles as a mp3 player, think it will actually play mp3's while reading)
A nice black case for protecting your new toy. One side has a stiff shield in it, to protect the screen.

What I liked
Battery was fully charged, ready to go.
Its small, drops into a shirt pocket, with about an inch showing.
Light weight, no hand strain holding it at all.
Text is very crisp
Boots up fast
page turns are almost instantaneous, with no flash
Has a built in file manager, lets you organize, delete, etc
2 different page turning options, plus has a configurable automatic page turner as well.
Supports many different formats (Recently added Mobi, PRC, Epub, and rtf) as a firmware update.
has choice of fonts, and sizes from 12 to 32.
Has an auto shutoff, with a variety of settings.
Is simple, easy to navigate.



What I disliked
Battery not replaceable by me, sealed into the case. So if it ever needs replacing its send it back or buy a new one.
Its small (yes thats a double sided coin)
does not support .htm format

After a couple of hours of reading, experimenting with different formats. I turned it off, dropped a 512 mb sd card I have for an older camera into it, plugged it back into the PC via the usb port. Much to my surprise it opened 2 folders, one for internal memory, and one for the sd card.

I still have some experimenting to do with how well I like the different formats.
But overall at this point I am a very very happy camper.

Retails for 300$ however Newegg has them on sale right now for 199$ with free shipping.

As far as the competition is concenered, I did not look at the Rex Iliad, out of my price range.

Kindle, and Sony I looked the most closely at. Both are designed to make you buy your content from the seller. In the Kindle's case that is Amazon.com. The good news is that with a built in wireless connection that happens pretty quick. The bad news is you pay for every book you read. Also they are not designed to be easy to load books onto from your PC.

The Jet book on the other hand, doesn't have the wireless connectivity built in. But you don't have to buy your books either.
In fact it comes with a card listing 3 very good web pages where you can download books for free.

The Kindle, while considerably bigger overall, only has a slightly bigger screen.

http://freshtech.wordpress.com/2009/...ctaco-jetbook/ (http://freshtech.wordpress.com/2009/...ctaco-jetbook/)

http://www.feedbooks.com/ (http://www.feedbooks.com/)

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page)

www.manybooks.net (http://www.manybooks.net)
I highly recomend manybooks.net, free, you can download the book in any format you choose, and can set font, text size.

For Sci-Fi and Fantasy
http://www.baen.com/library/ (http://www.baen.com/library/)
The Baen free library is top notch.
This was the site that set my feet on this path.

Searching here for my favorite Author (Mercedes Lackey) I ended up searching the net for a couple more books that I had
been unable to find. Much to my suprise, there are books out there to be downloaded as torrent files in whole library's.
Individual authors can take a bit more legwork. And you may have to find a converter to get it into a format you can handle.
For example I found my Mercedes Lackey source, but the vast majority were in *.lit format. Which is I believe Microsoft Ebook specific format. However a bit of research soon found me a free converter. I use the ABC Amber Lit Converter which lets me convert those files into my choice of PDF, html, hlp, rtf, chm, txt, doc, wpd, rb, pdb, fb2 formats.

Most of you know that I'm also a pirate. Grin
I am currently in the process of downloading a 23 Gigabyte library.
Under general fiction I have 2,194 books by over 100 authors.
Under Sci-fi Fantasy I have 2077 books arranged by author, and another 1500 that I have not yet sorted, removed duplicates, etc.

The Average .txt ebook seems to run less that 1,000kb, so you can pack quite a few onto a reader like the Jetbook.
Or an entire library onto a 4 gig DVD.

I have not yet started on WWII titles. I already have enough reading material to last me for many many years.

Conclusion, once I compared price, features, file types supported, and source of books there was only one decision for me.
The Jetbook won hands down. You might choose differently. But if your a reader, and tired of holding big heavy books, or paying for your reading material. You might want to give this a look. I typically spent 200$ a year on book clubs, trips to Barnes and Noble, and picked up a lot of books at the second hand store. Or, you can buy a jetbook for 200$ and have whole library's of free books at your fingertips. Partly it will depend on what you read.

Sorry this got so long, I guess I had a lot to say. And yes I'm more than a little excited.
I had read every book worth reading (in my opinion) in our high school by the 10th grade. 15 years ago I said the same for the Fargo and Moorhead public library's. Well now I'm reading my way through the Internet library's, and I don't see myself coming to an end anytime soon. In fact, I think I have enough "good stuff" to last me a couple of lifetimes.

[rgeorg]

Mirrors my opinions as well.
Regarding .htm files: Someone posted the info that to convert from .htm or .html to txt is very easy (which seems reasonable). Does Calibre do this type conversion? Can anyone point me to an easy (free) tool?
Thanks

[Kris777]

Originally Posted by rgeorg

Mirrors my opinions as well.
Regarding .htm files: Someone posted the info that to convert from .htm or .html to txt is very easy (which seems reasonable). Does Calibre do this type conversion? Can anyone point me to an easy (free) tool?
Thanks

rgeorg, I know that many people use Book Designer for HTML->PRC and FB2 format convertion (both formats supported by jetBook):
https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Book_Designer

Input Files:
The following input file types are currently supported:

DOC
HTML
LIT
PDB (some binary types are not supported)
PDF (text-based only)
PRC (Mobipocket) (not all are supported, it's best to convert the files first to html with the Mobipocket Tools
RB
RTF
TXT

Output Formats

The following output file types are currently supported:

FB2 (Fiction Book)
HTML0 (BookDesigner format)
HTML (ordinary HTML)
IMP (REB1200, GEB1150, GEB2150, SoftBook)
KML (Hiebook)
LIT (MS Reader)
LRF (Sony Librie, Sony Reader)
PDB (PalmDOC and eReader formats)
PRC (MobiPocket)
RB (REB1100, Rocket eBook)
TCR (Psion)
PDF (Adobe)

[mcysr]

hi! jetBook battery is easy to replace. Four screws and cover comes right off and battery unplugs. I have not looked on ebay for replacements though.

I was surprised by the torrents too! Now, have easily 15-20 centuries of steady reading on hand. Possibly, I might not get through it all.

When reading in bed or otherwise supine, hold jetBook between index and third finger, either hand.

matthew

[Kris777]

Originally Posted by mcysr

hi! jetBook battery is easy to replace. Four screws and cover comes right off and battery unplugs. I have not looked on ebay for replacements though.

I was surprised by the torrents too! Now, have easily 15-20 centuries of steady reading on hand. Possibly, I might not get through it all.

When reading in bed or otherwise supine, hold jetBook between index and third finger, either hand.

matthew

I usually keep it this way:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...5&postcount=37

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Kris777

Kindle, and Sony I looked the most closely at. Both are designed to make you buy your content from the seller. In the Kindle's case that is Amazon.com. The good news is that with a built in wireless connection that happens pretty quick. The bad news is you pay for every book you read. Also they are not designed to be easy to load books onto from your PC.

I cannot speak for the Kindle, but I do know that with ePub, you can purchase eBooks from online shops other than Sony. Lots of shops outside the US sell ePub and some in the US do as well. And some public libraries support ePub. As for getting content onto the 505 or 700, it is very easy to do. Just run eBook library, plug the Reader into the USB cable, drag over the title and you can put them in collections as well if you want. So please leave out the misinformation.

[ny10522]

Jetbook is the ticket for free ebooks via torrents and public domain sites. I have returned the Kindle DX but keep and enjoy a Jetbook. Free English-Spanish dictionary is a very good bonus that only Jetbook provides. My only gripe: the English-English dictionary needs a much longer wordlist to be useful.

[frozennorth]

Originally Posted by ny10522

Jetbook is the ticket for free ebooks via torrents and public domain sites.

It's not just Jetbook. You can just as easily use Sony or EZ reader and others. It all depends if you're willing to use illegal sources (torrents) or not. And Sony does not lock you into their store. There are plenty of stores (Diesel, Books On Board, Fictionwise etc.) and libraries you can use unlike Jetbook which doesn't support any DRM.

Kindle might be a bit more difficult because of the limited formats supported, but it's not impossible if you're handy with conversions.

[rgeorg]

Fine, but if you are using mostly public domain or other free sources for books - why pay the extra premium (and deal with additional PC-software needed to load books onto device) if you don't need or plan to use the bookstores?

[frozennorth]

Originally Posted by rgeorg

Fine, but if you are using mostly public domain or other free sources for books - why pay the extra premium (and deal with additional PC-software needed to load books onto device) if you don't need or plan to use the bookstores?

1.Because I like to keep my options open. And I think Sony and some of the others do that better than Jetbook. Not every ebook you can buy is available as a pirated copy. Especially books by lesser known authors. And I'm using my library for pbooks and like to be able to use it for ebooks too.

2.I think it doesn't matter which reader you use, most of us will use the computer to change formats sooner or later.

3.Jetbook isn't that cheap to buy in Canada. CDN$260.00 at newegg.ca and in side by side pictures I liked the look of eink better.

But I havn't decided yet which reader I will get. I'm waiting to see if Sony comes out with something new. Or maybe a new Astak mentor. I would like a search function on my reader, and a dictionary would be nice too since english is my second language. Also more font sizes than on the 505.

I will get an ebook reader though by Christmas come hell or high water.

[tanglefast]

Originally Posted by frozennorth

1.Because I like to keep my options open. And I think Sony and some of the others do that better than Jetbook. Not every ebook you can buy is available as a pirated copy. Especially books by lesser known authors. And I'm using my library for pbooks and like to be able to use it for ebooks too.

2.I think it doesn't matter which reader you use, most of us will use the computer to change formats sooner or later.

3.Jetbook isn't that cheap to buy in Canada. CDN$260.00 at newegg.ca and in side by side pictures I liked the look of eink better.

But I havn't decided yet which reader I will get. I'm waiting to see if Sony comes out with something new. Or maybe a new Astak mentor. I would like a search function on my reader, and a dictionary would be nice too since english is my second language. Also more font sizes than on the 505.

I will get an ebook reader though by Christmas come hell or high water.

i think that 260 CDN is pretty cheap. the prs 505 is 350 and the kindle isn't available conventionally.

you can wait for sony to come out with something but that will be months and then you'll have to wait for a cdn retailer to get it and it surely will be more than 350. also if following tradition, the new sony one will not have dictionary support, something that is important to you.

i believe it's better to get something close to great if it's your first device than wait ebook-less for 6 months hoping something better comes out. now if you already had an ebook reader to tide you over, waiting isn't so bad -- but this sounds like it would be your first purchase.

[rgeorg]

Originally Posted by tanglefast

i think that 260 CDN is pretty cheap. the prs 505 is 350 and the kindle isn't available conventionally.

i believe it's better to get something close to great if it's your first device then wait ebook-less for 6 months hoping something better comes out. now if you already had a previous ebook reader to tide you over, waiting isn't so bad -- but this sounds like it would be your first purchase.

The jetBook costs 300 EUROS in Europe - not a cheap option! The Sony is much less expensive (from UK at least). Same price in Germany. US has by far the best prices. The jetBook comes with a 1-year world-wide warranty, no matter where you buy it from. Sony and the other devices that I looked into do not have this.

Waiting for new technology is fine - but then you should also wait until it is "broken in" - you don't really want to be the first person to buy it. I usually wait until a device (or PC) has been available for at least 4-6 months. That way the manufacturer has time to fix any "first release" problems.

So, I agree with Tanglefast in that an interim device might be a good idea. Something that may not be exactly what you want, but gives an opportunity to try out the idea. Then you can sell it (or give it to a school-child, or whatever) and purchase a new device that has been thoroughly tested and reviewed.

Or you could discover that you are happy with the device that you have!

[Sakura]

Thank you for your review

Can someone please post screenshots showing how Mobipocket ebook looks on a jetbook reader... Thanks

[frozennorth]

I've seen Sony here for $279 CDN so not much difference. Newegg lists the original price for Jetbook as 379.99, but right now it's 120 off.

I don't mind waiting a few months. Right now I'm mainly reading books not available as ebooks.

I don't mind paying a bit more as long as it has the features important to me.

[tanglefast]

Originally Posted by frozennorth

I've seen Sony here for $279 CDN so not much difference. Newegg lists the original price for Jetbook as 379.99, but right now it's 120 off.

I don't mind waiting a few months. Right now I'm mainly reading books not available as ebooks.

I don't mind paying a bit more as long as it has the features important to me.

wow, i've never seen the sony that low and may have considered it over the jetbook at that price. frozen, where was it that 505s were selling that low? being cdn, i may have to go there for my future purchases.