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$199 E Ink machine from BE Book—with optional $30 wireless card on the way
May 28, 2009 | 1:40 pm
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By Paul Biba
One of the things I learned at CES was that the best time to really poke around a show is the day before when they are setting up. Of course this isn’t always easy, as press usually isn’t allowed in during this time. However, once you get in you generally don’t get thrown out. So the trick is getting in. Suffice it to say I found a way to get into the show floor here, and was lucky enough to run into Peter Zieleman, Marketing Manager, and Johan Hagenbeuk, CEO, of BE Book. They were just setting up their booth and showed me two new ebook readers that have never been seen before.
The first is the BE Book 2. It is a standard size reader, but it has a touch screen and wireless that will work anywhere in the world. It will read all the standard BE Book formats including EPUB. This is the first direct competitor to the Kindle. It can do everything the Kindle can do, but is not restricted to a proprietary format. It will use the same type of data model as the Kindle, that is the user will not pay anything to download his books. It betters the Kindle in that news feeds will be free, not a premium as on the Kindle. Here are a couple of shots taken on the show floor:
It will be cheaper than the Kindle and will be available sometime at the end of September.
The also have another product that we’re announcing for the first time. This is a small 5″ reader that can fit in your pocket. The exciting thing about this is that it should retail for about $199. In addition the reader will have an SD card slot and a wireless SD card will be available for it and be priced at about $30. Here’s a shot and then another shot of all three together:
Things are getting more and more exciting in the ereader space! The guys had to go and I’ll try to get some more details later.
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Comments:
I love the 5″ device. Do you know how much onboard memory it has? (If ~1GB, one could leave the wifi SD card in all the time, really.)
Yeah, that 5″ mini for just $199 is gonna shake things up some. I haven’t been a BeBook fan but now they’re worth paying attention to. Good for them for sticking it out.
Yeah, that 5″ looks rather nice. And affordable, too. Suddenly I’m going to feel a whole lot less bad about sending back this Sony PRS-700 at the end of my review period.
Excellent pictures and topnotch reporting in this series of posts! Congratulations to Paul Biba and TeleRead.
I have been following the BeBook twitter feed where they occasionally make mention of the features of the new units. I’m curious what DRMed format they will support. The original BeBook supports Mobi-DRM and then a slew of other formats including .lit and .epub in their non-DRM forms.
Will the BeBook Mini support Mobi-DRM? How about the new BeBook 2?
I noticed the new Cybook Opus is moving to the epub-DRM, a change from the Cybook Gen3 which I own that uses the Mobi-DRM.
I have just announced to everyone I know that the 5″ would be a great birthday gift. And so convenient that my birthday comes a few weeks after the release date….
Seriously – these are going to rival the MP3 player as a useful device. Even grandparents walk around plugged into Ipods, next it will be Bebooks.
(And when are we going to see measurements in metric? No-one in my office could find a ruler with “inches”!)
Carol A:
The BeBook mini is based on the Hanlin V5. Herecare the generall specs:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45540
Size: 151.2mm (length) × 105mm (width) × 10mm (H)
Weight: 160gms
Don Brubaker:
The mini is described on their website as “all the features of the large version and more”. (That would be the current $279 model). Based on that, one would expect continued support for:
ebook formats: mobi, lit, ePub, fb2, and docreader pdb
document formats: html, txt, doc, ppt and chm
electronic paper: pdf, djvu, wolf
image formats: jpg, tif, gif, png, bmp
The only suported DRM is mobipocket, though there have been hints from BeBook support on their forums that they are looking into ereader and adobe drm. No promises, but they do seem to be taking their open-ness mantra seriously. They don’t even scream at discussions of hacked firmware loads or alternate firmwares like OpenInkpot.
The BeBook bookshelf interface is file-system based and thus supports nested folders to arbitrary depths and sees zips and rars as folders which provides compatibility (after renaming the extension) for cbr and cbz files.
All-in-all, I’m finding mine to be a fun and useful way of waiting for the industry’s ebabel to shake out.
Whoops!
Forgot rtf document support.
Which, considering it is the best-supported one..
Felix, Thank you… I had missed that. I wonder if anyone knows if the BeBook 2 will stay with Mobi-DRM?
1. If my memory is correct they said the smaller unit has 512 mb.
2. The bigger unit should support all the file types their current unit does.
I’ll be seeing them again later during the show and will try to get some more info. Just imagine – wireless with no DRM. I may abandon my Kindle.
Would be worthwhile to find out how they are going to handle the wireless; a browser or a custom client.
I’m assuming a browser (which I’d prefer) if they stay with Mobipocket, given how Mobi-DRM works. A browser would also let you access at least some of the online-reading sites.
The good news for me is that all I need is the upcoming card and matching firmware update and my year-old BeBook inherits the online access capability.
I love that more players are getting their readers out their so that Kindle does not become synonymous with Ereader as the Ipod has with Mp3 Players. The new models have so much more to offer without the restrictions.
This is exciting news. And the price point is finally within budget range for me. Yay!
Nice scoop. Thank you for the info and great pics!
I would really like to have a closer look at the BE book 2, being an owner of the Hanlin V3 (= bebook) already.
Does the BeBook 2 have WiFi as well as 3G wireless? If not, what does “wireless that will work anywhere in the world” mean? Where in the world will their free downloads work from?
A direct comparison of the BeBook and BeBook 2 screens side by side would also indicate how the touch screen effects the display.
Alan Wallcraft:
A video making the rounds since mid-may shows the BeBook 2 and BeBook Mini in action.
http://www.slashgear.com/bebook-mini-bebook-2-with-3g-get-video-demo-1443826/
Its in Dutch but the word quoted from it is that BeBook 2 comes with a user-accessible GSM SIM card and WiFi compatibility. There is talk of Kindle-like free wireless over cellular in *some* territories with the WiFi being the free route in others. At this point its not clear if the WiFi is built-in or via bundled SDIO card. At the suggested pricing it may be built-in; the thing is likely going to be priced closer to the Sony 700 than to the current BeBook because of the touchscreen.
That’s one reason I’m more excited by the Mini than the BeBook 2.
Plus the Mini has a jog dial! Yay!
Looking forward to the Bebook 2 – although I do wonder if they’re not missing a model – they’ll have the 5″ cheap bebook, and the 6″ with touchscreen at €350-400.
why not a 6″ version without touchscreen as well?
Okay, that’s what the bebook 1 is, but that will be pretty much obsolete when the 2 comes out. Pity we have to wait until september…
I will likely go for the 6″ Bebook2, but I do wonder how pdf will behave. I will use it mainly for my studies, which involves a lot of reading, and I expect to have to use to annotation-function a lot – so I hope it’s more than just a token-feature, it should be fast and user-friendly. I don’t necessarily need to be able to writee in the document, but easy highlighting is a must. Also – I will need to be able to go to a particular page in the *original* document, before any reflowing of content… I wonder if that will be possible.
Marcel: What you are describing for PDFs is the Sony PRS-700. If the BeBook2 continues to have DRMed MOBI support, then it won’t be using mobile Adobe Digital Editions (which is what Sony uses for ePub and PDF). The existing, BeBook1, DRM-free ePub and PDF support is very basic. For examples of a PDF on an EZ Reader (same software and hardware as the BeBook1) see http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=414217&postcount=3
Marcel:
BeBook already sells a 6″ model without touchscreen; its the one I have. Based on the Jinke Hanlin V3ext, it is available from other vendors the world over by a half-dozen different names. The BeBook mini is, similarly, based on the Hanlin V5. The BeBook 2, however, appears to be exclusive to Endless Ideas at this point.
As for the kind of pdf support you want, I would suggest you look in an entirely different direction: no dedicated ebook reader running an ARM processor (and that’s all of them) will let you dothat.
Given the pricing for the touch screen-enabled readers, I would suggest you look into a netbook TabletPC, like the Asus T91 currently in FCC testing.
It should retail for around US$500-600 and it will let you run full PC Acrobat. There are several equivalent products in the same price range at Dynamism.com. Check’em out.
Battery life will be hours vs days but you get color, animation and 100% guranteed support for pretend-paper formats.
Well, it’s been awhile, but I just got an email from Bebook and here’s what they say about the DRM support for the Bebook Mini and the Bebook 2:
Both Models only support Adobe DRM (ePub and PDF)
This is interesting in that there seems to be a shift from Mobi-DRM in the marketplace. I have a heavy investment in Mobi-DRMed books (several hundred) and was going to pick up a second reader. I currently own the Cybook Gen3. But I have noticed that the new Cybook that’s coming out and all of the new readers are moving to ePub. I can transition to ePub, but I don’t really want to buy ePub books because I don’t want to be stuck in that format… and when devices move on to the next format, my library will be history. Is this an issue for anyone else? Should I just pick up an original Bebook at the reduced price? Or should I go with one of the new readers and convert my mobi to ePub? Thoughts?
My sympathies, Don. ePub is supposed to be a permanent standard even though it’ll be evolving. That said, your situation is exactly why I’d prefer that even ePub not be DRMed. You can’t own DRMed books for real. Before you act, I would suggest checking with the stores from which you bought those several hundred books. Will they let you substitute ePub versions, even if they, too, are DRMed? I’m skeptical, but give it a shot. Otherwise, to access your previous buys, yes, you’ll have to stick to a reader that can handle DRMed Mobi. Such are the fruits of DRM. Just wait until people want to move on from the Kindle.
Best of luck! Keep us posted! I am curious, by the way, about the size of your investment in the library, if you care to share it? And what kinds of books? This is a classical DRM/eBabel story I can use in my battles. I just hope publishers will wake up. There are plenty of stores, such as Fictionwise, that would prefer NOT to sell you DRMed books but are forced to.
David
Most of my purchases have been from Fictionwise, and I’ve always been very happy with them. I have also purchased a couple of books from Books on Board. My fictionwise bookshelf indicates that I have purchased a total of 268 books.
To give you a sense of the types of books, here are a few of the authors for which I have multiple titles: Michael Connelly, Jim Butcher, Tom Clancy, Dean Koontz, John Sandford, Brad Thor, Nelson DeMille, David Baldacci, Catherine Coulter, Ted Bell, Daniel Silva, Dan Brown, and Vince Flynn. I could provide more info if you’d like.
I’m not sure I’m wanting to jump to ePub… but what I’ve noticed is that the few dedicated ereader devices supporting Mobi-DRM aren’t supporting Mobi-DRM in their next generation of devices.
Since the topic has been mentioned here before, I go out on a limb and bring it up again for Don’s benefit. There are means to strip the DRM from all those legally purchased mobi ebooks. See the discussion on MobileRead. I won’t get into the right/wrong of this, as the laws vary with country and some people feel that this is fair use in any case.
Once you have a DRM-free mobi file, you can use one of several tools to convert it to epub. Again, this is discussed at MobileRead.
David knows that he and I agree on the need for DRM to disappear. It only really hampers legitimate users like yourself, Don. It also forces the unknowing to spend money buying the same thing they already bought, to the publisher’s benefit.
To Marcel
I would not advise you to buy a normal Bebook (or any other standard 6″ reader to read PDF-files on. The PDF is AFAIK not intended for resizing onto whatever screensize you might have and if you want to use it for your studies… ie. reading articles and academic books, the PDF’s of these are normally in something like A4 format. They would look way too small on a 6″ screen and panning around the screen to watch the whole article is a pain. Do as I intend to do. Buy a 5-6″ for reading novels and (maybe when they have fallen in price) buy a e-reader like the Irex Digital reader. With its 10.2″ display it is just a tiny bit smaller than standard A4.
Best regards
Peter
Wondering if there are any rumored release dates yet, or price for the BeBook 2. I’ve been waiting patiently, but getting to the point where patience is wearing thin. I’ve asked them directly and they will only say Q3 2009.
I’m afraid that time is wearing thin. August is here in two days and it has 31 days – I would honestly like to have one in my hands before the end of August, and I’m re-considering the Kindle now. (And of course, the Iliad as well, even if it is too damned expensive).