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Thursday, August 7. 2008BeBook reviewThis review is from a technical perspective. I got my BeBook mostly for reading things like RFCs, rather then for reading novels. Most reviews seemed to cover what the device looks like, and where the buttons are, which wasn't very helpful when I looked into buying one, I wanted to know how it preformed. Let me start by explaining that this review is done with a power user in mind, the problems I point out I imagine are specific to power users, and will not effect people buying this device to read 'proper' ebooks. For 'normal' people out there that just want to read the latest Harry Potter or whatever it is 'normal' people read, this review isn't for you! However, This review by the Gadget Show is probably more suited. When watching this review though, consider that the only reason Sony got more points then the BeBook was because the BeBook doesn't yet intergrate with a ebook distributer - hopefully by the time the Sony is out, it will. Here is a short video I made. as a sidenote, the BeBook does not make an annoying chime when you turn it off, that was the postman trying to deliver a package!
For a discounted price on the BeBook, order as normal from BeBook's site, and use '
pookey@gmail.com' as a coupon at checkout.**
I took the reader with me on a 3 hour train trip yesterday, and used it to read the Java NIO book. The ebook was in PDF format, and it worked as expected. The BeBook was easy to use, and it's hard to find fault with it's performance yesterday. I left with a full battery (still showed full bars, even though I'd used it for a couple of hours already), I left it on during the day for several hours, read about 80 pages, and the battery is still showing as full! I expect this device could be used by heavy readers for a full week of commuting without needing to charge, and even then it charges via USB, so could easily be charged from your laptop, or a portable charger such as the freeloader. In the video I said that the image scaling in PDFs wasn't so great, but I've just loaded up that PDF, and it turns out that the PDF itself is pretty low quality for images. So despite what the video says, PDF scaling might be fine. I've thrown emails back and forth with the Marketing Manager, who seems like a friendly guy. From my conversations with him, I feel assured the company is moving in the right direction, and is committed to providing the features required to make this device the winner out of the soon to be released Sony Reader. The problem is that the Sony is only supporting it's own DRM format, which means you'll have to pay whatever Sony want for books. The BeBook is open, and I believe that it will be adopting the mobi format. Whilst I haven't tried the Sony Reader, I believe that this fact is sufficient to justify the slightly higher cost of the BeBook. I also feel that you're more likely to get a useful response for any feature requests/bug reports that you might have with the BeBook - I can't imagine it's easy to communicate effectively with a company the size of Sony. I think.... I hope.... we're about to see ebook readers take off in a big way. Ideally, every morning I'll unplug my reader from my PC, and it will have that days news papers on, my RSS feeds, and an periodicals. I hope publishers realise the power this technology will give them too - it doesn't only help save the planet (less trees, less CO2 transporting dead trees, making ink, etc) - but has real commercial value for them. It will be possible to customise their publications specifically for the individual downloading it, possibly targeting adverts to specific people. Some people might fear this kind of targeted advertising, but if it reduces the cost of the publication, I'm all for it. Personally I'd rather see adverts for beer, computers, cars etc, then I would for the latest line of makeup! To summarise, for the UK market I think there's 3 main options for ebook readers. There's the Iliad, which is bigger (that's up to you to decide if it's a good thing or not), and has a touch screen. But for £450, it wasn't really an option for me. The Sony Reader will be retailing for £199, but has the downsides listed above. The BeBook is £229 (I can give you a discount on that, but I'm still awaiting to know exactly how much). There might be other options I've missed, but I did spend a while looking at the options. Overall, I'm really pleased I purchased the BeBook, traveling for so long yesterday I was pleased to trade in my book for the much lighter ebook reader. Update: I didn't notice this on the BeBook site, but a reader fo my blog pointed it out to me, so I thought I'd make it clear here. From november/december 2008 Bebook will also have RSS news feeds support and Wifi. ** the discount deal obviously benefits me slightly, in a form of commission, but it is in no way reflected in the contents of this article, my review is honest and isn't done in an effort to push sales. I have no associated with BeBook or the company that sell them. Trackbacks
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FYI the new firmware for the Sony (PRS-505) which'll be provided on the UK released models supports ePub too and reflowable PDF, so it may be worth taking that into account
Thanks for the review pookey, that's great. I've been toying with getting one of these, and that there is so much pre-copyright material available for these devices makes them worthwhile on their own, in my view.
The most important thing about this product, from what I can tell, is that it is not heading down the DRM route despite the commercial pressures that encourage the likes of Sony to make, frankly, devices that operate in their best interests (not their customers). I think you're right that things are going to change dramatically - as devices like these are docked and an internet connection is present, news and other timely information could be downloaded automatically. Whether people will tolerate person-specific advertising is a good question: I know I won't, but will others generally? The other thing that's interesting here is that we will be paying a price just for digital data - no physical product. I guess people have been doing this for a while now with music - but I'm rather old-school and am still attached to the idea of a tangible book or CD. If buyers feel they are getting an e-book cheaper than a paper one, they will go for it; however browsing mobipocket.com just now gave me the impression that for standard books we'd be paying much the same as we do for real books now. Will people be suspicious of this, and will this force prices to fall as PDF distribution becomes popular? Anyway I'll keep an eye on this toy. One of these days I'll be tempted...
You make a good point about paying no physical item. Indeed people have been doing it with music, and I wonder if the BeBook can in a way be compared to a Walkman/CD player. 15 years ago people took pride in their CD/tape collection, and when going on the move I'm sure a few people took a handful of media with them, but.. I imagine that's pretty bulky. These days, you can take 1000's of songs with you on one device, you don't get the case anymore, but you go get convenience. Of course, Sony turned the walkman into a fashion item (it's an interesting story if ever your board, they paid people to wear it on public transport to get it to sell!) and apple did the same thing with the IPod. I don't see any of the current ebook readers becoming fashionable, but they certainly have the convenience. I can now carry my bookcase around with me! Personally, I'd like to see books come with access to download it at no extra cost, or ebooks are say... 60% of the cost and you can 'upgrade' to the paper version for a charge should you want to.
As a geek I'm proud of my bookcase, and I wouldn't like to see it empty. But on the other hand, I don't want to carry heavy computer books around with me.
I found your review really helpful, thank you. Could I ask a question please - sorry I am not terribly technical! - the description on the mybebook.com website says it has an internal memory of 512 MB. They say this is sufficient for up to about 1000 books. I noticed on that website that to download a single book seems to be nearly 1 GB. How does this work?! Surely it is not all reliant on the SD slot as that only seems to increase it up to 4Gb max? I must have misunderstood something. Thanks.
You have misunderstood something I'm afraid, have a look at this page for example:
http://mybebook.com/download_free_ebook/sunzi-6th-cent-b-c_ebooks/the-art-of-war/ebook10049.html The art of war is 350kb in text, and 600 kb in PDF format, so you could indeed get about 1000 books of this size on the internal memory, and 4000 on a 4gig card! Some of my PDFs are 3 or 4 meg, but even with 512mb built in, I think there's enough.
Thanks for this review, it really is very helpful. I am still waiting, did talk to Bebook and they told me they would have MOBI support, but rather wait until they do. Have been using MOBI for many years on palm and CE. Also interested int he Mentor, which should be cheaper and the company have told me will do a version that supports MOBI.
I must admit, I'm tempted to upgrade from my old Sony to the new PRS-505 when it comes out over here, mostly as I've already got all my books converted into LRF so it'd save me hassle (calibre is a nice Sony Reader book conversion tool!). Just went to Borders today in Oxford St, the Iliad is bigger than I realised it'd be, not much point for me, I mostly read fiction on mine.
Nice comment, I am almost to buy the Amazon Kindle before I search and found your blog, but I am wander is BeBook support display chinese or Japanese , this is important to me or I still only can read this kind of documents in computer or Palm.
please send me a sample PDF, and I shall photograph for you!
BeBook is in fact just a repackaged Hanlin eReader V3 made by Chinese company Jinke. Both Chinese and Japanese are among the supported languages: http://www.jinke.com.cn/Compagesql/English/embedpro/index.asp
I emailed Bebook about the price of the new machine due later this year.
They expect it to be slightly higher, but not too much. So it should be a good bit cheaper than the Iliad. I'm happy to wait a few months for it with the added features.
I also wanted to buy a Kindle but it appears not to be available in the UK
The Bebook site suggests you can buy it but as this is only thru Paypal who appear not to accept credit cards for this item it is also impossible to buy.The only listed distributer i can find has no stock and no waiting list. I have to stick with paper backs for the time being
I noticed that you find the .chm format reader buggy. This is a concern for me in that I read some chm.
Do you know if they are aware of the issue and are planning on fixing it. What about firmware downloads? Thanks for the review. G
Firmware is made available on the BeBook website,it's a simple case of downloading it, putting it on an D card, and rebooting whilst holding down a button. Apparently the device is almost impossible to break during firmware uploads (years ago, it used to be something that could go horribly horribly wrong - but not anymore!).
As for CHM - it's not so great. Having googled there appears to be ways to convert from CHM to PDF, perhaps that's an option. CHMs are not typically used for ebooks, so I'm not sure it's a huge priority, although I imagine it won't be completely ignored. There will also be un-official firmware available for the bebook which geeks might want to use, which quite possibly will support CHM better - but that will take time. For an example of what I'm talking about google for 'open inkpot'
http://www.processtext.com/abcchm.html may be useful for those with CHM files
Thanks for the review, been sitting on the fence with regards to buying one. Their (bebook) referral scheme looks quite good, rewarding both parties. But now having seen wifi is imminent not sure if I should wait for that!
I imagine the device will not come with wireless, but rather the new firmware releases (released via the offical site) will support a list of MMC based wireless cards - I could be wrong about this though.
If I am right, it means theres not point waiting for wireless to be supported, as it will work once it's realsed 
Are there actually any SD WiFi cards still being made? I remember I used to have a sandisk SD/512mb ram one, but think they're not produced anymore.
Anyway, there's definitely no MMC wifi cards
I was of course talking complete nonsense about MMC - and actually mean SD
There are still SD wireless cards for sale, at least... on amazon. Thanks for the correction!
Hello Ian: could you please clarify for a non-technophile your comments on 14/8. If I buy now will I be able to 'upgrade' to wifi when available?
Thanks
I e-mailed them asking about the new bebook and according to them it will be a new device supporting wifi. Also it will have a slightly better screen and support RSS feeds. There will be a prize difference, but at this stage they couldn't say how big. It's supposed to be available in December.
I would really like some more details about this new device before I decide to get the current bebook 
This is correct - I was completly wrong about the wireless being an upgrade, it will actaully be a seperate device. This device isn't imminent though, it's a few months of at least I think. Personally I bought the ebook reader with the understanding that in 12 months time, I'll probably want to replace it due to better things being out there, so I'm not that disapointed by the lack of wireless. Wireless will seriously shorten the lifetime of the battery, and other then automatic RSS updates every morning, I don't see a huge advantage in it. Plugging in isn't that hard to do!
How buggy is CHM reading?
If it is unusable then I may wait on this. G
Ian hi - I have received by Bebook today! Sadly not working too well on the old laptop! As the only other person I have come across with such a device please may I ask - if it says "Windows does not recognise your device" and "A USB device you have plugged in has malfunctioned" does this sound a bit worrying/unusual??? Help!!
This problem was solved by Marion during private email exchange - she found it was just a dodgy cable!
I am a 64 yr old woman who loves to read novels, regencies, detec & fantasy but finds that our small bungalow is running out of corners for paperbacks which aren't much welcome at charity stores now... So an ereader sounded a great idea - I am prepared to save up for one but when confronted with the frase 'bebooks doesn't yet intergrate with a ebook distributor' - while all you lot above seem to be filling up your readers with lots of books... I don't know what to think. Also you all speak of various methods of incription that also throws me into panic... Its the sort of thing that will make people who use computers but don't 'understand' them or the tecnicalities go for the ease of Sony tie ins. I have imported chapters from an on-line publisher (not Amazon) onto our PC but can\could the BEBOOK do that?
Please - I need help!!!! There is a big market out there for the devise if it didn't scare us so! Angela |
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