Ebook readers

I’m looking at spending anything from several months to a couple of years in Taipei from January on, and the more I look at it the more ebook reader devices that use the new e-ink technology that creates an experience almost identical to reading off a paper page make sense, in financial terms at least.

I’m in the UK, and very often these devices are hard to get here, at least for the moment. The main ones seem to be the Sony PRS-505, and the Amazon Kindle. Now I quite fancy the former, esp. after having looked at the potentially enormous cost of ordering physical books and having them sent over- and I read a lot.

I know from my last visit there are various Sony centres scattered around Taipei, but would anyone who’s spent more time wandering the vast Taipei computer stores happen to know anywhere there that sells devices the same as or similar to the Sony ebook reader? The Kindle is so far resolutely unavailable outside the States. The PRS has some presence internationally, and I just read about a new Korean device called the Nuut.

As to why I don’t buy one through a reseller here in the UK … well, they slap enormous taxes on anything they can here, and as much as I’d like to get one of these things, there are limits to just how much I can bring myself to spend!

For anyone who’s not quite familiar with these devices - these are not PDA’s. The screen technology is completely different; it uses reflected rather than projected light, meaning the display is not backlit. The only power usage is when you change pages, which means you can sometimes go months without recharging. The reading experience is akin to or identical to reading off actual paper. You can read it in full daylight, although like a regular book, you need a light if it’s dark.
The main makes are: the Sony PRS-505, Cyteen Cybook (v3), Irex Iliad and the Amazon Kindle.

It’s the Cybook Gen3 from Bookeen. I ordered it from the Bookeen website together with the “leather” pouch, and with cost of sending it to Taiwan this comes to about 17,000 NT$ at this moment. I expect to receive the device in 2 weeks. I can’t wait!

I highly recommend this little review by a Cybook owner: (in 2 parts)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk4g12seF44
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qwXr5s5gRIc

Pdf reading is not easy on these ‘early’ readers that have a small screen. Pdf is mostly A4 page size and the Cybook’s pdf support is poor I’d say. But there’s a way to work around this: image pdf’s, and splitting the pdf pages. I heard that the expensive iLiad has a bigger screen and might handle pdf’s better.

Still if you buy them now you’re an early adopter, it’s still expensive technology. If you can wait… these e-paper readers will get better & better and there will be newer and better ones soon.

But this is the real deal… real e-paper, manufactured by a company in Hsinchu here in Taiwan.

Right now you don’t see them anywhere in shops here, yet. You have to order them online. Maybe the Sony centres are an exception, I didn’t go there.

I heard rumours 2008 will be the year e-book readers will become vastly popular…

It’s the Cybook Gen3 from Bookeen. I ordered it from the Bookeen website together with the “leather” pouch, and with cost of sending it to Taiwan this comes to about 17,000 NT$ at this moment. I expect to receive the device in 2 weeks. I can’t wait!

I highly recommend this little review by a Cybook owner: (in 2 parts)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk4g12seF44
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qwXr5s5gRIc

Pdf reading is not easy on these ‘early’ readers that have a small screen. Pdf is mostly A4 page size and the Cybook’s pdf support is poor I’d say. But there’s a way to work around this: image pdf’s, and splitting the pdf pages. I heard that the expensive iLiad has a bigger screen and might handle pdf’s better.

Still if you buy them now you’re an early adopter, it’s still expensive technology. If you can wait… these e-paper readers will get better & better and there will be newer and better ones soon.

But this is the real deal… real e-paper, manufactured by a company in Hsinchu (Xinzhu) here in Taiwan.[/quote]Thanks for the information and links. It seems that these machines are quite specialised at the moment. I’ll wait for a year or two before I think about getting one.

What I’d really like would be a tablet PC with an e-paper display. I think quite a few people would be interested in something like that, actually. You could work on your regular documents, but the screen would be much easier on the eyes and the low power consumption would increase battery life.

I wonder if this one will find a market.
youtube.com/watch?v=PMxPYtN5bKU
It’s a rollable display. Kind of neat technology. Just starting to be sold in Italy.


Here’s another good review video for the Bookeen Cybook. Better than the other one IMO because the video quality is better. (Spoken in Czech btw).

http://www.zive.cz/default.aspx?article=140795

Dr. McCoy, that’s the Readius, from Polymer Vision. I like the concept of folding up. But I don’t know if they use the latest e-paper or how it compares to the Cybook, which uses Vizplex and may have better contrast… not sure though. Check reviews or owner forums I’d say.

The iLiad (by iRex) has a stylus you can write with or take notes with.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_e-book_readers

I bought a Sony PRS505 eBook Reader and I absolutely love it. If you search usenet for LRF files you can find thousands of books. PDFs do not work well at the moment unless they have been specifically formatted to the eReaders 4x6ish screen size. The reason is basically because PDFs currently do not support line wrapping, so text will not flow if you try and resize a page.
I make my own PDFs in order to study Chinese with the eReader. It works well.
I’ve also bought gift certificates off of eBay for the Sony EBook Store for a pretty good deal. $30 for $50store credits. They’ve been working fine for me.
I think it is much harder to get the Kindle to work outside of the States. I think you have to use WIFY to buy books, and the WIFY will not work anywhere except the US currently.

So I’m thinking of getting an ebook reader too but have been unable to find any at all. It would be a huge bonus for someone like me who reads on the toilet. Laptops get a little heated on your knees in there.

So any news on getting them from stores here?

This is starting to get interesting.

[quote=“enGadget”]
Later today, Plastic Logic will be showing off its new e-newspaper reader (name, undecided) for the first time. The black and white, E Ink device features a wireless link to download content, room enough to store “hundreds of pages of newspapers, books, and documents,” and a display more than twice the size of the wee Kindle while suffering just half the ugly. Better yet, the device is said to use “flexible, lightweight plastic” rather than glass resulting in a reader about one-third the thickness of the Kindle at about the same weight – the reader itself (pictured left) looks rigid compared to that flexible display Plastic Logic has demonstrated in the past. Expected to go on sale during the first half of 2009…[/quote]

I finally got my hands on a Readius today. It’s a neat little thing. Fits in the palm of your hand. It’s easy to read, but the screen is kind of small. With PDF files, I have to increase magnification and then scroll back and forth to read it. The thing runs pretty slow too. It’s got two buttons and some touch spaces that match up with the screen menu. Sometimes you touch one and then have to wait before it does anything. Text files work pretty good, but it just takes awhile to scroll through them.

The one I saw was a demo model and not fully functional so maybe they will improve the speed before they start to sell it. I hope so.

I got a PDA instead for 1000 nt 2nd hand and it works a treat with any format!! :slight_smile:

I’m in the market for another Sony Reader (my old one had an accident); that previous one was purchased through another forum related to ebook readers, but I was thinking of buying the SOny 505 new from a US website.

However, I came across some entries here and elsewhere that suggested I might get hit with some kind of hefty import duty when it comes through custom; can anyone tell me if that’s happened to them, and if it’s likely to happen to me, and if so, how much it might be? The approximate value of a Sony Reader is between 270 and 300 dollars US.

Sorry Gary, not sure about the import duty but I guess it could be a lot.

Anyway, I just wanted to mention that a new ebook reader was announced recently: the Foxit eSlick reader. It’s a fair bit cheaper than most of the others, including the Sony I think.

Me, I’m waiting until they make ebook readers the size of an A4 writing pad, and about the same price as one, too!

[quote=“joesax”]Sorry Gary, not sure about the import duty but I guess it could be a lot.

Anyway, I just wanted to mention that a new ebook reader was announced recently: the Foxit eSlick reader. It’s a fair bit cheaper than most of the others, including the Sony I think.

Me, I’m waiting until they make ebook readers the size of an A4 writing pad, and about the same price as one, too![/quote]

Import duties are aweome let me tell you.

My parents decided to buy me a notebook for christmas and not tell me about it.
When my surprise arrived, it arrived in the form of a $4000NT fee from the post office that I had no clue what it was for until I went down there with my friend who bitched out the clerk for awhile before I realized what was happening.

[quote]My parents decided to buy me a notebook for christmas and not tell me about it.
When my surprise arrived, it arrived in the form of a $4000NT fee from the post office that I had no clue what it was for until I went down there with my friend who bitched out the clerk for awhile before I realized what was happening.[/quote]

Crap. That’s rough. How did they know it was a laptop in there, and did you end up having to pay the money?

I bought my previous ebook reader privately for a total of about two hundred dollars and a bit from a guy in the states without any awareness of all this stuff about import duty and so on, and I never had to pay anything. I’m thinking instead of ordering one from the UK (where I’m from), having it sent to my mum’s house, and getting her to re-post it to me as a ‘gift’. Ach, I don’t know … it’s all really bloody irritating. If anybody’s passing through the states anytime soon and fancies picking one up for me on the way back here …

[quote=“garygibson”][quote]My parents decided to buy me a notebook for christmas and not tell me about it.
When my surprise arrived, it arrived in the form of a $4000NT fee from the post office that I had no clue what it was for until I went down there with my friend who bitched out the clerk for awhile before I realized what was happening.[/quote]

Crap. That’s rough. How did they know it was a laptop in there, and did you end up having to pay the money?

I bought my previous ebook reader privately for a total of about two hundred dollars and a bit from a guy in the states without any awareness of all this stuff about import duty and so on, and I never had to pay anything. I’m thinking instead of ordering one from the UK (where I’m from), having it sent to my mum’s house, and getting her to re-post it to me as a ‘gift’. Ach, I don’t know … it’s all really bloody irritating. If anybody’s passing through the states anytime soon and fancies picking one up for me on the way back here …[/quote]

Well, my parents insured it and wrote like $3000 usd for the price. It was also opened by customs and I got hit for the digital camera in there too :thumbsdown:

It was all also labeled as gift. So yeah :unamused:

Hmm. I read somewhere - either here or on a forum called mobileread.com - that UPS are often best since they don’t get checked so often by customs. But even so, a quick calculation shows me they charged you about one twentieth of the total value of the laptop. The ebook readers are US$270, so if I do get hit, it hopefully won’t be huge.
On the other hand, apparently they’re for sale in Heathrow’s Duty Free in Terminal 5; now if I can just find someone passing through on their way to Taiwan …

And if memory serves me right: prices are good at the Duty Free in Heathrow! My wife chided me for NOT buying a panasonic videocam for less than NT$10K (card-based), … I haven’t been able to see anything at that price or even close here in Taiwan.

Kenneth

Update: yes, you can buy ebook readers and have them shipped here. I checked out both the Iliad (gotta love the name!) and the Cybook. Both can be shipped here or worldwide.

Now how can I persuade the wife it’s a real investment, not a toy!?..

Someone told me they bought a computer system and had it imported to Taiwan from Malaysia, and they got dinged for 6% import tax, which isn’t too harsh at all. So if I have to pay it, it doesn’t appear to be much.