E book devices

Being one who spends a lot of time reading in front of a computer I had always wanted to get hold of portable E book device with a good memory bank. It has many advantages. You don’t have to sit and stare at a computer screen for hours on end in an uncomfortable position for one. For the rest mobility, the option of carrying hundreds of your choicest E Books and articles with you where ever you go, reduced power charges, the absence of manual exertion of carrying dozens of hard covers or paper backs with you every time you move may figure prominently.

An E book reading device ideally is an electronic device about the same size of a paper back book and should display the reading matter in paper like quality and should be able to handle different file formats, like HTML, WORD, PDF, etc. They should also have a good internal memory to store many full sized books in it and options to display them in good contrast and font size without wearing the eyes. Well it appears that there is a lot of interesting E Book readers in the market and some of them have novel features too. The prices are a bit high though.

The earlier ones have all been monochrome and weighed a bit too. But things seem to have improved a lot recently. Some of the present ones have optional removable memory cards which can go up to I GB. A Normal E Book reader available now would hold around 160 E books in internal memory and would have options to make use of any number of removable memory cards.

I recently saw something about Sony LIBRIe e-Book Reader on the net and there is another one from Sony too, called Portable Reader System PRS-500. It costs around Rs. 17000/- or so in Indian rupees or that is what I gathered the price tag displayed in US dollars. At their site they have an E Book for around $300/- also. It looked attractive with a red finish and all.
I also gathered that there is a company called IREX which has some 3 E. Readers in their kitty. They are claimed to be light weight and affordable. I do not have any more details on them. It seems that there was monochrome E Books in the market some time ago with lesser capacities and lesser prices. Some say that the E Book device market is very competitive and some of the devices which were around have already disappeared from the market.

Cybook can be the favorite among enthusiasts now. It supports several formats. Support for Pdf is still under development it seems. It claims to be the worlds first multiform at E Book Reader. It comes with added features like MobiPocket Reader, µBook Reader, Boo Reader, Boo Reader Vision, Pocket Word, Pocket Inbox, Internet Explorer, PTab Spreadsheet, Audio Player and what not.

It is I KG with batteries they say. Memory is a bit low. Battery life is also not very good it seems. You need to pay a hefty sum of $ 399 for it. We get computers for even less in this land.
None of these are available in Asia or in India. My searches to find one have been fruitless.

It must be a fast developing area considering the launch of Kindle by Amazon. But there are some real threats ahead too. The netbooks may be one of them. Some of the netbooks are available for around the same price as an E Book device. They have dozens of more features too. If the trend really catches on the E Book devices might disappear altogether. The netbooks integrate several key features and are fast replacing laptops. It is a very fast growing field.

To me the ASUS Eee PC seems to be giving a good fight to every laptop on the scene. It can be also used as an E. Book reader. It has a 7 inch screen and naturally the font size would be small. The product has bee developed for children and children normally have good eye sight.

Yet it is very affordable for adults too with a price of around 18000 rupees. It is almost weightless compared to many notebooks now available in the market. It weighs just below 1 KG and would easily fit into your palms. You don’t need a back pack or special contraption to carry the thing around. For serious computer users its key board and mouse might create some problems though by being tiny.

Another threat to E Book devices might be the Personal Digital Assistants. Most PDAs running the Microsoft Pocket PC 2002 to 2003 come with the Microsoft eBook Reader, if not all. Other operating systems too seem to have included e book reading devices in their systems.