01:30 PM by mtravellerh in More E-Book Readers | Interead COOL-ER

My Cool-ER finally arrived today. It was safely tucked in a big Jiffy-Pack. The Cool-ER itself was in a small cardboard box. Not a lot of extras coming with the reader, I'm afraid. There is a headgear-adapter and a Mini-USB cable. Not even a manual in that box! There was no cover in the package and no cover seems to be available right now.

The reader itself is not really black, it's more of a coal color. It's only plastic but it seems to be sturdier than the Cybook and at the same time lighter (about the same or a little lighter than my iPod Touch)

A foil was glued to the Cool-ER for additional protection. At first glance, the volume control on the right was easy to manipulate while the four buttons on the left couldn't be manipulated easily. The On/Off button needs to be pressed a little longer. Startup takes exactly 30 seconds and the reader starts right into the library. Interestingly, a splash screen advises that NTX reader is starting! Up side: You don't push buttons involuntaryly on this one! ;(

Menu navigation is not very glamorous but quite self-explanatory. BTW: I could change font size in two clicks (I read in a review that it takes 8 clicks) Strange, that! There are only three fonts available and I hope that there is a way to add new fonts (no manual no fun). There are 8 different font sizes on offer. The step between the smalest font and the second smalles is a bit steep, another step would have been nice here. Meanwhile, the NTX font isn't good for german texts, so I have chosen Arial.

The reader started right away and the battery was half full so I am quite sure that the device has been tested before delivery. In one of the folders (yes, there are folders and you can even add new ones), there are a few ePubs from Project Gutenberg (Ulysses, Alice in Wonderland in English and Italian, for example). There were already four folders present, one of them a music folder.

Connecting to the PC is easy as a pie. XP and Ubuntu recognized the reader right away, Ubuntu as external drive, XP as external drive and as reader (ADE offered right away to activate the reader). Transferring books to the Cool-ER is REALLY fast. A shame that ADE only transfers books to the Adobe Digital Editions folder (no sub folder or other folders). You have to move the books manually if you want to keep order! Transferring books directly per drag and drop doesn't take long at all. Even some music was swiftly transferred. Folders can only be added on your PC, not on the reader itself. Same is true for deleting a book.

Thanks to the folders, moving through the library goes very fast, too! The navigation wheel is quite responsive and holding the button gets you through the menu rather quickly as well. The central button is a bit too small for my big hands, so that pushing that middle button is quite difficult for me!

The book formats:

ePub: This device was made for ePubs. They are fully justified and the book is rendered very fast. Page turning is faster than on the 505 and Cybook, nearly as fast as on the 700. The display seems to have a lot of contrast. Calling up the TOC takes two clicks, though. Direct access would be far better. I think the Cool-ER is not subject to the 300 kb-limit anymore. I will check that out later today and keep you posted.

PDF: It's Adobe, so PDFs show up quite nicely. PDFs can be zoomed, but they lose formatting in the process and are quite ugly and reading them is hard. Reading PDFs in landscape mode or specially formatted PDFs is an okay experience, I guess! Look at the 505 and you see about the same quality here!

Mobi: Mobis work. That's the good news. They look like text files (no illustrations, no headings) but are fully justified and you can still use the TOC. Great plus: Aportis Doc (palm) files work without a hitch! Of course, DRM is not supported for Mobis.

FB2: Hey, good looking! Retains all the bells and whistles! Maybe the NTX reader in the splash screen is some kind of Cool Reader or FB-Reader clone?

RTF, HTML,TXT: HTML and RTF are looking like unformatted texts (indented and fully justified). Most of the original formatting is lost. If you're too lazy to transfer those to ePub, you can still easily read them, but the pleasure is rather basic!

Finally: The Cool-ER is still a little rough around the edges, but the ePub engine is just great and the good speed is quite nice, too. Maybe the page turning could be done with the volume control if ya don't listen to music (hint!) I am still playing with the device, so I will keep you updated!

Notes: Trying to load nonworking ePubs will crash your system (you'll need a reset) As a general rule, all the ePubs opening with ADE will open on the Cool-ER (hint: PG ePubs work but they are really not well made) Other files that can't be opened (i.e. wrongly labelled or wrongly formatted) will drop you back to the last book that you have read (much like ADE on desktop)

There doesn't seem to be a sleep mode that brings you right back to the book you were reading. You have to go through the boot sequence and the library navigation first, even if you haven't turned off your Cool-ER (major bummer). I hope there's some way to get this working as I hate starting up all over again every time! UPDATE: There is actually a way for the reader to not turn off automatically: In the library menu (of all places), is a menu where you can switch off the automatical shutdown! No real standby mode, still, but as long as it stays alive, everything is fine (doesn't need any energy when I'm not reading, anyway)

06:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Ok kids, time for the weekly roundup of what we've covered this week:

E-Book General - News and Commentary

• Vodafone Germany with new eBook-Reader
• MobileRead exclusive : sneak preview of the Bookeen Opus
• Sony eBook Library Software finally compatible with Mac!
• Kindle 2 Price Cut to $299
• Wired (or someone) altered this EZReader picture
• Chinese Kindle clone: Meet WeFound

07:33 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

China's ability to produce indistinguishable replicas of any moment’s must-have gadget is legendary. Hence it was only a matter of time before we would see the first Kindle look-alike coming from the Far East country. Tech-On is reporting that Founder Group, a major Chinese technology conglomerate, has demonstrated an e-book reader that looks very much like our beloved Kindle 2.

At the first glance, the terminal looked very much like the Kindle 2. But, after carefully examining it, I found some differences, for example, in the shapes of the buttons on the right and left sides of the terminal, the width of the upper frame and, of course, the logo.

It will be interesting to see how Amazon is going to react to this development. Remember, the company has been awarded a patent that protects the look and feel of the Kindle shell.

The Chinese e-book reader, which name we assume is WeFound, is said to be released in China by the end of this year at a price of around $210. It will also come with a SIM card allowing the user to directly download e-books from an e-book portal.

Thanks to eagle-eyed MobileReader lee1234 for the tip!

11:04 AM by purl4peace in E-Book General | News

So I was checking out Gideon's reference to the Wired review of Cooler and thought I would see what they had to say about the "native son" of RobertB -- EZReader.

I was looking at the image, and though the article specifically states there is no wireless connectivity, if you look at the top status bar, it sure looks a lot like the Kindle status bar where you have the vertical bars to represent wireless signal strength and a battery to show the charge... Even the bottom looks identical to the Kindle's status line. It is like they superimpopsed a Kindle "page" into an EZReader.

Does the EZReader really have that? If so, why? and If not, why put that into the image?

http://www.wired.com/reviews/product/pr_astak_ez_reader

02:37 PM by pilotbob in E-Book General | News

Think $359 was too much for a Kindle 2? What to spend less? You asked for it and you got it. The Amazon Kindle 2 is now on sale for its new reduced price of $299.

(@via Engadget)
http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/08/a...ut-now-at-299/

Discussion of this is ongoing in this thread:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?p=515871

12:28 PM by zelda_pinwheel in E-Book General | News

We've just had news from Sony which should delight Mac using e-book readers everywhere : the next version of their eBook Library software will be compatible with Macs, as well as PCs !

Dear Fellow Reader,
Attention Mac users! We’ve received many requests to make the eBook Store work with Apple® Macintosh® computers, and we wanted to share with you our progress on this front.
An updated version of the eBook Library Software compatible with Mac OS X operating systems will be available by the end of Summer 2009 for download to your computer to enable you to purchase, organization and download content to your PRS505 and PRS700.
Send us your email address, and we will notify you when the update is available.
Thank you,
Your Friends at The eBook Store

We are thrilled to hear that this long overdue improvement will finally be implemented.

Presumably, this means that we will now also be able to authorise Sony Readers for purchasing DRM books online from a Mac.

Registered Sony users, watch your inboxes for news...

11:16 AM by zelda_pinwheel in E-Book General | News

At the MobileRead Meet-up in Paris this Saturday we had the pleasure and the privilege of getting a visit from Michael Dahan, co-founder of Bookeen, in person, for an exclusive sneak preview of their new 5" model, the Opus.

We have to say that it looks positively gorgeous and we're very impressed with the ergonomy, and, well, we're frankly coveting one. Here are some specs :

• 5" high definition e-ink screen (200dpi, 600x800 pixels)
• Ultra light-weight : 150 grammes.
• 1go internal memory (twice the capacity of the Cybook Gen3)
• Truly pocket-sized !
• Excellent ergonomy with convenient well-placed page-turning buttons on the side of the screen for one-handed use.
• An accelerometer allows you to use it in either hand.
• ePUB and PDF support (with or without DRM) via the Adobe Reader Mobile SDK.
• 12 different type sizes
• Folder support !
• User replaceable battery.
• Memory card expansion slot (Micro SD).

MobileRead member Xaaf and Clément from ebouquin were kind enough to document the unboxing for us and we thank them for the photos, which you will find here and here.

See the whole unboxing gallery on flickr here.

EDIT : video action !

here is first one, showing the navigation and the interface (including folders), or see it on dailymotion.

accelerometer video !
http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance...-rotation_tech

fast advance :
http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance...er-screen_tech

03:11 PM by mtravellerh in E-Book General | News

In something of a surprise move, Vodafone Germany, one of the biggest players in the German mobile market, seems to have decided to take the eBook market seriously.
German magazine Wirtschaftswoche announced today that Vodafone might bring to market a new e-ink eBook-Reader with a big screen (A4) in fall. It seems that the new reader is already being tested. The device will not be produced by Vodafone itself, but will be branded. The screen size will probably be 9.7-inch which puts it in the Kindle DX range. There will also be some kind of mobile connectivity. We don't know who the producer of the device will be - for now.
Vodafone is also thinking of selling its device in combination with newspaper or magazine subscriptions.
It seems that Vodafone will not establish its own e-book store but will try to strike a cooperation with an existing German portal.

Thanks to Johannes from lesen.net for bringing this up!