Just sharing some of my inconsequential lunch conversations with you... RSS  

Monday, February 18, 2008

Finally got my hand on an eBook reader!

It's about time! My good friend Manuel Fonseca bought an Hanlin eReader, so I could finally get my hands on one of this gadgets. Thank god for China prices!

Here are my first impressions:

  • my real first experience was: it seemed like a conventional device with one of those phony covers showing off features :)
  • great reading experience!
  • the size is bigger than I though; I can comfortably read eBooks;
  • strange as it may seem, though lacking contrast (the background is kind of gray) it is still comfortable to read; 
  • the page swapping is just too ugly to be true - this devices usually flash the screen;
  • half of battery disappeared over the weekend - Manuel did his best to hurry the first battery cycle; the operating time of the rechargeable battery is supposed to be about a month without recharging, based on an average use of 300 pages reading a day;
  • the OS interface is not the most beautiful UI I came across;
  • still buggy - Manuel complained about 2 restarts (over the first weekend) - too much for a non Windows CE device;

For me it is a great value for 300$. But then again, I have no other to compare with.

And here come the specs - from Hanlin site:

  • Hanlin eReader V3  with VizplexTM 
  • Screen:600*800 6-inch e-Ink display (EPD), 4 levels of greyscale
  • SDRAM : 32M Byte, Internal 2M NOR FLASH, SD card slot on the top of the device, memory extension up to 4GB
  • CPU:Samsung Arm9 200Mhz
  • OS: Linux OS 
  • Format Support: PDF,DOC,WOLF,MP3,HTML,TXT,CHM,FB2,
    Djvu,PNG,TIFF,GIF,BMP,JPG.
  • Language Support: English, Chinese,
    Russian, Ukraine, Turkish, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Bulgarian, Estonian, Polish and more is adding...
  • Accessories: 1 charger, 1 USB cable, 1 earphone, 1 battery and 1 hand band.
  • Certificates: CE RoHS is applying
     

Retail Price:$299

1 comment:

André Cardoso said...

I too am eager to own an eBook reader. But I'll wait for the first generation to iron out the bugs and the price to come down, before I consider acquiring such device.

As for other readers, take a look at:
(Wikipedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-book_device#Specialized_devices

(Devices)
http://www.ebook88.com/devices.html

(Comparison - old)
http://www.ebookmall.com/knowledge-collection/device-comparisons.htm

(Kindle $399) http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/01/jeff-bezos-says-kindle-is-outpacing-our-expectations/

(Sony PRS 500 $279) http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=11038811

(Sony PRS 505 $299)
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&XID=O:prs-505%2Flc:dg_ggldf&kw=prs-505%2Flc&lp=8198552921665245740&productId=8198552921665245740

Development Catharsis :: Copyright 2006 Mário Romano