Bebook – reviewing the reading revolution

17 May 2009, 7:45 pm

Bebook. Ordinary name but a most un-ordinary product. I received my Bebook last week and have been playing around for a few days with this intriguing device. Intriguing? Well maybe not in terms of its technical application and sophistication, but intriguing because of what it portends for the future of books and reading.

Why did I choose the Bebook as the first to review. Mainly the price. At AU$400 this is at a price point that the poorer geeks among us would be willing to pay. Competitors such as the Iliad and Sony’s offerings are priced seriously higher.

So what of the Bebook?The Bebook is delivered express post from Europe. It took about two days for mine to arrive. It comes in a neat package no larger that an A5 novel. In the box is the device itself, a battery, a usb cord, headphones and instruction manual.

The Bebook itself sits within a leather cover and is light yet reasonably solid to the touch. It needs to be charged before use and you must do this via the usb cord plugged into your computer. In fact that’s the only way of charging the device short of using an (optional) adapter to plug in to the mains electricity. But to be honest, the charge of the device lasts so long that this isn’t really going to be an issue – this is not a device that you’ll need to charge every day or even every week. I’ve gone all week with the device and the indicator is still showing that it’s fully charged.

It has a fairly simple layout of buttons that works pretty well and enables you to navigate through the device easily. Most menu functions and files are only a few clicks away. On the left hand side of the book are the two arrow page turning buttons – these buttons are repeated at the bottom right of the device just near the OK and ‘Return’ buttons.

The navigation menu is reasonably intuitive and after a few uses you’ll be able to find your way around the device quickly.

At the bottom of the device are the usb and headphone jack, on the side of the device are two volume buttons and on top of the device is the master switch and the slot for an SD card.

The screen uses the new Vizplex E-ink film and is a really good resolutions. It is easy to read in most lighting conditions. What is amazing about the technology is that you can still see the image clearly in strong light or direct sunlight. In fact, the screen looks better when there is more light, such as under flourescent lights in an office situation or outside. My only concern is that in dimmer lighting situations the contrast between the ‘paper’ and the text is perhaps not as great as it could be.

This isn’t a huge problem and it can be easily be fixed by increasing the font size of whatever you’re reading. But with a good reading light the Bebook is great.

Part of the attraction of the Bebook was the range of formats that it will read. These include pdf, mobi, prc, epub, lit, txt, fb2, doc, html, rtf, djvu, wol, ppt, mbp, chm, bmp, jpg, png, gif, tif, rar, zip, and mp3. I have to confess I haven’t tried all of these but pdf, mobi, lit and text all render very well.

It also reads fb2 files, which are a new open source ebook format. While there still isn’t a lot of books around in this format those that have been converted render extremely well using this format but I have to say the proprietory Mobipocket reader renders pretty well.

So all in all I’m enjoying the Bebook experience. If you want a reasonably priced ebook then give it a look.

Stay tuned for more updates as I continue to use this device.

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