Yet another review

[tdproffitt]

I’ve had my Cybook for a couple of weeks now and overall I am very pleased with it. I starting looking at the e-ink devices because of the advertised long battery life. I’ve been using my Palm TX for the past couple of years as an ebook reader and really didn’t have any problems with it, except for the fact that the battery life was pretty bad. If I really get into a book, and I have nothing else better to do, I can easily spend hours reading and the Palm’s battery is only good for about 3 hours of continuous use. (I know, three hours reading on a Palm - possible only with autoscroll!)

I looked at the Sony, Kindle and Cybook. I finally decided on the Cybook because most of my books were already in Mobipocket format, I didn’t really need wireless capacity, and I liked its simple design. I saw some reviewers comment that they thought the plastic housing felt a little cheap. The unit is light, which is a plus if you are holding it for a couple of hours straight, but I wouldn’t say that the overall look or feel of the unit is cheap. The unit is well put together and none of the buttons feel loose or wiggle. The TX has a similar 4 way navigation button so I didn’t find the Cybook’s to be difficult to use although you do have to find the button’s sweet spot to get consistence page turns.

The best thing about the Cybook is the screen! The crispness of text on an e-ink screen is amazing! It’s even better than most mass market paperback books. (no smudgy ink). The screen shots you see online really don’t do the screen justice. The page refresh is a little funky, but it didn’t take too long to get use to it. The battery life is great too, after reading straight for 4 hours the battery indicator was still at 90%. I’m a fast reader, so that was a lot of page turns!

So far, there aren’t too many things I’m not 100% happy about. I hope Bookeen releases a firmware update that activates the delete button on the unit. Also, my Cybook tends to reboot if I try to open large PDF’s; however, I’ve been able to convert the few PDF’s I had fairly easily with Mobipocket Creator so that hasn’t been a major problem. I haven’t tried to play any MP3’s on it, so I can’t say anything about the music playback quality.

The only major problem I have right now has nothing at all to do with the Cybook, but with Bookeen’s customer service. I ordered a case for the Cybook along with the Cybook, but it was not included in the shipment. I’ve been trying to get them to send me the case for two weeks. I finally got a response after the first week asking me to double check the box and after several e-mails confirming that I did not receive the cover I haven’t heard anything else. I’m willing to give them a little slack as I understand that they are a small company and are really busy right now, but they really need to do something about the length of time it’s taking them to respond to customer service requests. I’m aware that they have acknowledged this as a problem, so I hope they improve sooner rather than later. I would hate to see a company with such a nice product be undone by poor customer service.