02:38 PM by Nate the great in More E-Book Readers | Netronix

It's charging right now, and I can't use it until it's done. I thought I'd give you my first impressions.

Shipping - It took nine days to get to me from China. I see from the USPS sticker that it arrived in San Francisco on 8 March, and they tried to deliver yesterday. I missed it, and picked it up today.

Packaging - It's about what I expected. It looks pretty much like any other box that contains a small piece of electronics from China. The shipping box was heavy duty cardboard, well taped. I'm not going to post the rest because it's just a standard retail box. Picture is coming soon.

Contents

• M218A
• instruction manual (in Chinese)
• universal power supply
• USB cable
• earbuds
• lanyard
• CD of Chinese language ebooks (no software, darn it)

Okay, it turns out I can use the reader while charging it. The screen is sharp. The resolution may not actually be higher than that of the Kindle, but it certainly feels that way. And the refresh is fast. It's an LCD, so of course it's fast.

It has a nice GUI menu, with six options: settings, search, ebooks, enews, music, and pictures. I will need to be very careful when looking at the settings; it looks like I might have access to the system settings. One option I have under settings is "execute file". Since I can also delete the file, I guess this means that I might be able to run my own applications.

Interesting fact: this device supports folders!

Reading experience
I made a couple WOLF format ebooks while I was waiting. I can't get them to work. But I really don't care; this device has excellent PDF support. It is hands down the best handheld PDF viewer I have seen so far. If you only want to read PDFs, then you should consider this device. I've tried a couple PDF tech manuals. This is it. This is the Holy Grail of PDF readers.

The standard zoom setting is text width. This is very readable. But it also can zoom anywhere from 50% to 6400%. Also, you can zoom in on a 3 by 3 grid, or a 2 by 2 grid.

Connectivity
It's recognized as a USB drive. No problems there. I can see both the SD card and the internal storage (about 56MB). I can see some interesting files on the device; deviceID.log, PDF.log, signature.log. I can also see two Windows executables called Client and ClientUpdate. They run on my Windows XP laptop. Don't know what they do yet.

Music
Yes, it can play background music. The MP3 player looks a little ugly, but it sounds okay. The volume can get quite loud. The only things it's missing as an MP3 player is fast forward and remembering your place. I don't use an MP3 player, but i think this one has all the features.

Downsides
There is no on-screen battery or clock. It's not even an option. I'm really surprised by this.

01:52 PM by wallcraft in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

I don't have a Blackberry, but MobiPocket are advertising this on their home page.

Do you read emails on your Blackberry? Why not read ebooks and enews? Download the free Mobipocket eBook Reader on your Blackberry, and enjoy the reading experience. The online eBookstore is also integrated: find and start reading your favorite stories 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, straight from your Blackberry! Read on and discover how your Blackberry can become the ultimate ebook reader.

The latest MobiPocket Reader for Blackberry can directly access your on-line accounts and download e-books without interfacing with Windows MobiPocket Reader. See Mobipocket Reader for Blackberry OTA eBookstore. This is very Kindle-like (and again from Amazon). I assume this will appear on other device types from MobiPocket in the future.

10:43 AM by blunty in E-Book General | General Discussions

I thought it would be quite interesting to find out the average age range of people reading e-books. I am late 40s and only recently started, but like a mixture of p-books and e-books.

Are the young readers being captured? Would we trust our 6 year old or younger children with our £450 iliad (no Kindle or Sony reader in UK yet)? Is it older readers with more disposable income or 20 somethings with time/space constraints but no fear of technology.

Perhaps a topic for a survey. I could not find much from searching the forum but if this has already been covered apologies, and point me to the posts please.

02:11 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

We're pleased to announce our latest feature: the MobileRead Development Hub.

Every passionate developer and e-book aficionado invited to use the Hub for hosting his or her own open-source projects related to e-books and e-book devices. For every project you get the following features:

• A trac workspace with membership control (for browsing sources, adding timelines, handling bug tickets, etc.)
• A subversion repository (SVN) for version control (with customizable read/write authorization)
• FTP access for uploading distribution binaries
• Seamless daily off-site backups to protect your work

Over the past twelve months we've experienced a growing, vibrant developer community, which started predominately for the iRex iLiad and the Sony Reader. We hope that the addition of the Hub will help you guys to create even more wonderful tools and applications to extend the built-in capabilities of our beloved e-readers.

Feedback is appreciated.

08:51 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

We received word from Scott Redford, president of Diesel eBooks, that his e-book store is now also offering e-books in the Mobipocket format (which must have gained in popularity ever since Amazon introduced the Kindle). From the press-release:

Diesel eBooks (http://www.diesel-ebooks.com) announced today that it is celebrating the addition of Mobipocket ebooks to its inventory by permanently offering over 750 Mobipocket titles for download at no charge. The Mobipocket ebooks add to Diesel's existing Adobe, Microsoft and Palm/eReader formats and brings the current inventory to over 200,000.

Scott also passed us a 15% off coupon which is valid until March 20, 2008. To receive the discount, use this code at checkout: Mobilebreath5347

08:38 AM by ebookreaders in E-Book General | News

Starting today, NRC Handelsblad will be the first Dutch newspaper to introduce a dedicated e-paper edition for the iLiad e-book device. Subscriptions are auto-delivered wirelessly to the iLiad so the latest edition is waiting for the subscriber every afternoon. The e-paper edition of NRC Handelsblad contains all articles found in the print edition, including annexes and extras.

Some noteworthy links:

• NRC Handelsblad ePaper
• iRex NRC homepage
• Order page

More information over at Ebookreaders.nl.

06:40 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Update: Lisa of Netronix joined the discussions and revealed a tentative release date:

• EB-100: end of June 08
• EB-300: end Sept 08

Also, both devices seem to feature 3G connectivity, which would be heaven beyond words for every serious traveler.

Original:
Details are a bit hazy on this one, but it looks like Taiwan-based Netronix Inc. is diving into serious e-book business. On their website you'll find two featured e-book readers, the EB-100 with a 6-inch E ink screen, and the EB-300 with a spine-tingling 9.7-inch screen. The EB-100 looks very much like the other 6-inch e-book readers we've seen coming from the Far East, so let's focus on the EB-300:

• Screen: 9.7" E Ink e-paper, touch-enabled
• Resolution: 1200 x 825 pixels, 170 dpi, 4 grayscale
• Dimensions: 255mm(H )x 195mm(W) x 14mm(D)
• Memory: 4Gbit NAND type (Flash), 64MB (SDRAM)
• Storage: SD Card
• Connectivity: 802.11g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
• Power: 3.7V 2100mAh Li-ion
• Interfaces: 2x USB, 1x stereo
• OS: Windows 5.0
• E-book formats: TXT, PDF, RTF, HTML, BMP, JPG, GIF, PNG, MP3, AAC

Full specs attached.

Adding some meat to this story, earlier this year famed E Ink panel manufacturer PVI bought shares of Netronix with the goal to "jointly enter the e-book market." Now we're yearning for a release date.

Thanks to eagle-eyed lee1234 for the news!

05:45 AM by Donnageddon in E-Book General | News

On his Computer World blog Mike Elgan speculates that Amazon is claiming a shortage of eBook reader Kindle in order to give a false impression of success.

Is Amazon really working hard to ramp up production? Or is the company artificially creating a perception of high demand by playing games with production? If not, why hasn't it been able to fix the problem in four months? And since Amazon can't keep up with demand, why does it devote the very top center of the Amazon.com home page -- the most valuable real estate on the entire site -- to the creation of MORE demand?

His speculation sounds pretty thin to me, but I would be interested in how many units Amazon is shipping, if only to better judge the inability of E Ink suppliers to meet current demands.

Link