Comments on: lBook eReader V3: Going on sale in the Ukraine for 240 Euros in July, reportedly

By: Mike Vlasen

Mike Vlasen — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 08:40:36 +0000

New eBook:

http://www.ectaco.cz/ectaco_dictionary/jet-book/e-Book_Reader/index.htm

Lightweight and super-portable, ECTACO jetBook is the ultimate pocket library. Capable of storing thousands of books in the world’s most popular languages, plus music and picture files, it is a universal mobile library for professional, business and leisure reading. With an easy to scan high-resolution 5-inch display and a viewing angle close to 180°, it is fully customizable. Even readers who have difficulty seeing print books will benefit from its adjustable text size and font face. And weighing in at only 7,5 ounces, this handy device fits perfectly into the palm of your hand.
When reading, jetBook allows text to be searched and cross-referenced using bookmarks which makes it an excellent choice of format for dictionaries and other reference books. And any text benefits from the pre-loaded English Russian, English Polish, and English explanatory dictionaries that allow you to select any word for translation to help build your foreign language vocabulary.

Moderator: Mike, we’ve already run an item about the jetBook, but it is nice to hear directly from Ectaco. Do you think there’ll be a price reduction soon from the $350 here in the states? And what formats does the ECTACO work with? Many thanks. – David

By: Mike Cane

Mike Cane — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 16:30:05 +0000

>>>Update, May 9: A version ?with the sensory screen WaCom and module WiFi” is supposed to reach the U.S. in September or October.

Hello, November!

By: rix.cim.ua

rix.cim.ua — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 08:55:22 +0000

Now In Ukraine starting sales lBook eReader V3

By: Dhamu

Dhamu — Sat, 19 May 2007 22:45:23 +0000

No integral lighting in a device is indeed dumb, Dave, and I see no point in eInk until it fills this obvious hole. Matching paper books’ bad points as well as good ones is silly. I use an eBookwise, myself: cheap, decent battery life, can read most formats after some conversion work, works in the dark. When I bought it a year and a half ago, I figured I’d be able to replace it in a few years with a next-generation unit that could do all it could and more at a similar price. eInk doesn’t measure up yet. Something based on an OLPC screen would be very nice.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 18 May 2007 05:30:30 +0000

Dhamu,

Thank you for that well written reason for lack of backlighting, but as your description assert, you CAN have sidelighting, so why don’t any of these amazingly smart companies bother to offer such? Do any of their engineers bother to actually use the products they design, if they did I can’t imagine that there would not be a V.2 unit with built in sidelighting, ASAP!

So I will wait on the sidelines, watching the blind excitement about E Ink units in the industry kill the market for non-E Ink LCD backlit units like the Cybook. Taking away choice of USEFUL units and creating a market of disappointment in it’s user base (is anyone going to be happy when they realize that >$300 went to buy something that’s only half as useable as the previous generation? Helping to make the concept of eBook reading less and less approachable to the common consumer.

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Wed, 09 May 2007 21:03:22 +0000

Thanks for your further feedback, Dhamu. Of course, I still think that the machine would be better off with a different name; people shouldn’t have to take special precautions. At some point I may have pasted in the name from MR, at least for the headline, and then, like most people I assumed we were talking capital I here. In the States, at least, people often associate i with Apple products. As for l (L) standing for literacy, that could well be a good explanation. Oh, the glories of the Net. Maybe now the makers of the unit will want a different name. Thanks again for your perspective. David

By: Dhamu

Dhamu — Wed, 09 May 2007 20:37:17 +0000

I didn’t mean the site uses sans serif, I meant you, personally, David, used it when entering text. In text entry, it’s worth using a font that makes it clearer what text you’re entering. Most of us can easily override a site’s font/color settings when we have to for the sake of clarity (Shift-G in Opera; I don’t use Firefox enough to recall the hotkey there). With no evidence, I’d suspect the lowercase-L is for some root relating to literacy.

By their very nature, Dave Mac, e-Ink readers can’t have backlights, since the display is sort of like the playing tiles in Othello/Reversi: black on one side, white on the other. No matter which side is pointing up, the dark side will prevent a light shining through. What you can have is integral sidelighting, like a built-in LightWedge .

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Wed, 09 May 2007 11:32:18 +0000

I share your frustrations with the limits of san serif font, but generally the readability is better on the screen than with serifs. As for the name of that little e-book reader, the real question is: Why did its makers use the lower-case l (the letter L) , which could be so easily mistaken for I (as in Ida in the cap version). Thanks. David

By: Dave Mac

Dave Mac — Wed, 09 May 2007 10:10:58 +0000

But did they add backlight? E-Ink is all fine and good, but is quite useless in a dark room.

By: Dhamu

Dhamu — Wed, 09 May 2007 00:51:06 +0000

You use a sans serif font. It’s not uppercase-eye, it’s lowercase-ell. It’s even that most times in the article, if you look at it with a font that can tell the difference. The only time it’s not is when you wrote the name with lowercase-eye. (This often annoys me with sans serif fonts. It would kill the designer to give the uppercase-eye tiny serifs, or bend the bottom of the lowercase-ell, or otherwise make them easy to differentiate?)