Ever since Alex got her hands on a Sony Reader I've been dying to try it (OK I wanted to anyway) but now I'm wondering if it would be better to save my cash for a BeBook. It may come in at £29 more expensive, but the features sound like they're slightly higher spec.
As with UMPC's once one brand starts pumping them out, everyone wants to play, and it seems e-books are the next to join in with this craze. The BeBook has an internal memory of 512MB, which means it can hold approx 1000 books. All it needs is a 4 hour charge, which will last you 7000 page turns (quite a while then) and plays a ridiculous amount of formats. At last count it was compatible with 25, including pdf, mobi, prc, epub, lit, txt, fb2, doc, html, rtf, djvu, wol, ppt, mbp, chm, bmp, jpg, png, gif, tif, rar, zip, and mp3. Phew!
The BeBook does come with 150 books preinstalled but they're all fairly old and dull-looking (basically out of copyright!) and there's no colour screen. You do get a SD card slot included for expandable memory, a rather handy section on their site that directs you to OTHER e-book sellers (including free downloads), as well as 20,000 free to download from them. You can also sync your RSS feeds to it, to catch up with the latest news on the go.
So how does it compare to the Reader? Well they both use e-Ink to make the pages bright without hurting the eyes and they're both pretty portable. The BeBook weighs 220g compared to the Reader's 260g and it's also slightly slimmer at 120mm to the Readers 122mm. The BeBook comes preloaded with 150 to the Reader's 100 books, but the Reader is backed by Sony so should have a wealth of customer support and aftercare which the BeBook can't even start to hope for...yet.
As the e-Book race continues the winner is yet to be decided and as the UK STILL doesn't have the Kindle a true comparison is still a long way away. Watch this space!
See here for more book news
Another one being sold by Whsmith at the moment for 180 pounds is the Cybook Gen3 very similar to the BeBook (the Cybook firmware can be loaded onto the bebook iirc) but it's thinner and lighter
Definitely go with the BeBook. I love all the formats it supports and the newest firmware update even supports mobipocket and RSS feeds. I didn't like the look of PDFs on the Sony Reader, didn't seem too readable, while the BeBook showed them well. Sure it doesn't have the name "Sony" on it, but Endless Ideas really did a great job creating a competitor that works perfectly. Most people will never step away from the mainstream product line, but for those that do, go BeBook!
Forget paying extra for it too... just buy from their website (www.mybebook.com) and upon purchasing enter "sirdouglas@hotmail.com" in the discount coupon section and you'll save 25 euros on the thing.
The Cybook would probably be runner-up for me. The main thing I prefer with the BeBook is that it's open source, so firmware developers are constantly developing better things for it. They seem to be quite responsive to what users want. The Mobi/RSS feed update released last week is working awesome!
Good luck:)
Doug
BTW, for a quick video overview of the thing and seeing it in action, check out the youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpxt__xqkBI
Doug
I've just received my bebook and am thrilled with it. It arrived from Europe in a week and looks great in the leather case. Its really easy to use and it will be great for work and leisure reading. At such a great price and with great features and support why would you consider anything else! If you plan to buy one get a 25 euro discount using my email in the discount coupon section: buy from www.mybebook.com and upon purchasing enter in "ann.drummond@princehenrys.org" in the discount coupon section.
Definitely the BeBook - it supports a much wider range of formats, and they are improving their parsers and readers all the time with firmware updates. It also supports Mobipocket format which is probably one of the largest ranges of eBook formats available to buy from sites like fictionwise.com
Also you can get a €25 discount if you purchase the BeBook via their website (mybebook.com) and entering a valid coupon coude during checkout, like this one:
mybebook@hotmail.com
Enjoy!
The BeBook will certainly beat Sony. The big difference is openness. It not only supports almost any format natively like PDF, Mobipocket DRM and Djvu, it is also build on Linux. And Linux means openness. Bebook gives a free SDK for anybody that wants to develop software for the BeBook. The result is that there is already an alternative free firmware called OpenInkpot. It has lots of features I like but it just got released so it's still a bit "rough". Sony, like Amazon, makes you completely dependent from their ebook offerings and the prices they dictate. They will fail because of this. Open ebook readers will take over because nobody wants to get stuck with a collection of ebooks that only read on a specific device. I bought a BeBook and I'm very happy. It has the lowest price of the ebook readers with the excellent eInk display that are open ( unlike the Kindle or Sony... ) as far as I know. Yes, as the others have mentioned there are coupons of 25 Euro. You can use my coupon: bebook@michael.be ( to be honest, I get a kick back when you use my coupon, so please use it ). With the coupon you can buy it for 315 Euro including shipment. Please let me know if you do ( send to bebook@michael.be ). You can order at their site mybebook.com, they ship worldwide.
I recently bought the BeBook and couldn't be happier with it. Feels really good in the hand, nice and light but still feels solid. Easy to use and very convenient.
Lots of firmware updates too so it keeps getting better and better.
If you are thinking of purchasing one please feel free to use my email address to get a 25 Euro discount.
My email is ruthgar@hotmail.com
Cheers,
Adam