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From: Ken James (no email)
Date: Thu May 31 2007 - 05:21:26 EDT
DISCLAIMER; I am not associated with any of the Co's mentioned here,
only a satisfied owner who wishes to report.
It took awhile, but I finally got an electronic book reader.
It is one of the new models that uses the eink technologically, so it is
very, very efficient and has a better display than either palmtops or PCs.
A few notes; this is the Han Lin V8 "BookMan". It is made in China. You
can only buy it online. I bought it because it will read many open
format docs or you can convert them (like PDFs) with software they
supply and then read them. Also it uses less power than most of the
others, so longer battery life, and does not kill the books if you
transfer ownership of the reader, and it was relatively cheap at 300$ US
compared to other eink readers.
But China was a bit of a hassle, or rather the only payment method they
could take was, that being wire transfer. Even though I told my bank to
make sure any costs did not come out of the amount transfered, some
crooked bank along the line took an extra bite. (They were very nice
about not receiving the full amount and sold it to me anyway at the
reduced price.) So the cost to me of 40$ for the wire transfer makes
this method very expensive compared to PayPal or Visa.
The folks at Han Lin are very responsive and bent over backward to sort
the troubles out, but it would have been better for us both if they
could have taken PayPal.
Next, even though my bank supposedly filled out the computer form
correctly it turns out the China bank uses an abnormally long number
sequence which my bank's (international!) program chopped off so the $
went into limbo for a bit. I was worried, but Han Lin and my bank
finally sorted that out, they got the $ in their account, and the
product was shipped.
However, the tracking number I was sent was of little use, since the
Chinese shipping companies website said "sending failed" when I inquired
about the tracking, and I could get no response from them about it by
email.
However, once again Han Lin went to bat for me and tracked the shipment,
so I did manage to retrieve it from my neighbors doorstep when it was
left there incorrectly, this time at fault was US based AirBorn shipping
Co. Shipping took three days from Hong Kong and cost 50$ US, reasonable
esp. considering Customs!
So I did get it and here is what I think so far;
It is a well made unit, and does exactly what it says it does, very
little hyperbola, refreshing for a Chinese product. It is about the
size and shape of a legal pad, has a flip open cover hinged on the left
and with efficient magnetic 'catches' to keep it closed, and it uses the
popular camera SD type memory chip, up to 1 GB, (comes with a 512 MB
chip). It will hold about 3 thousand normal size books on the 512 chip
I estimate, I have several hundred on it already. The 1 GB would do 6-8K
books I think. They include a small SD card reader that plugs into your
USB port, of course any SD reader would work as well.
The screen readability is supposed to be better than a LCD screen or of
course a CRT. I would say that under ideal conditions, a grayscale LCD
(this model reader has a grayscale only display) would look very
similar...but in any other conditions, esp brighter light, this beats a
LCD and in fact I find it to be a very readable display that does not
cause me eye fatigue as fast as other types of electronic displays. This
display does lack the very fine resolution of a good LCD screen, which
you do not notice until you look at details of photos, and sometimes a
'washthrough' effect from previous screens can be noticed faintly at the
edges. It does _not_ have a built in light but unless it is really dim
you don't need one, and even a small LED flashlight works fine at night
with this type of display. There is absolutely NO daylight wash-out.
Due to the display, the battery life is very, very long, weeks rather
than hours or days, (the battery is a common liion cellphone type) and
when the indicator shows you are down to 10%, no panic, that means
sometime in the next few days it would be a good idea to recharge. The
battery charges from an included wall type charger that plugs into the
unit to a USB port. But, I am sure even though they do not recommend it,
any good cellphone charger could do the job as well. Also when you plug
it into your laptop it will charge.
It does have a small LCD screen below the main one, it is a 'touch'
screen to use for various controls such as scanning through a book
rapidly, doing text searches, going to specific pages, setting
bookmarks, selecting music, taking hand written notes, etc, and it also
has a calculator and a few other bells and whistles such as calender,
date book, ect ect. BTW, the online forums said it could not save the
handwritten notes...it does though. I don't know if this screen shuts
off when its cover is closed but would think it does.
It will also store and play audio/music MP3,s although I have not done
that. It also has some audiobook playing software I have not tested either.
I have tested it with wiring diagrams and drivers lic. It did fine with
the drivers lic. and also with the wiring diagram, but in order to read
the fine print in the wiring diagram I had to store it as several pages,
a less than optimum method. That is because this model will not read
pdf's 'natively', that is with pdf reading software onboard but instead
you must first convert them and then the image you get is fixed in size.
The next model, the V2, is supposed to rectify this and has a host of
other features as well, two screens for double sided pages and ect (this
one is only a single screen) but they keep saying it will be out but
then slipping the date so I got this model.
I think if it would read the pdf's natively it would be a big
improvement for storing technical documents, but right now it works fine
for some documents.
I have not tried to scan the documents with a copying machine from the
display, I am sure that would work, but if a copy was needed also the
chip could be removed and the file copied that way...if there was a PC
available. Back up the chip first if you plan on this of course, as
'accidents' do happen...(oops, sorry, just deleted all your files!)
It would be really nice if the next model could read the .lit format,
that one is my favorite book reading format/program. Right now I have to
convert the .lit to text to use the reader.
One negative that I hope to sort out is that it shows a number of font
types you can select, some of them very large, but I cannot get it to
access most of them, and although I have heard that you can upload font
types to it the instructions to do so are not included.
Also although you can store thousands of books on it, it seems that you
must do it by using folders and sub-folders. This is something that
could be annoying if you wanted to load it with a lot of single
books/folders all at once, as you would first need to put most of them
in sub-folders. I am going to check into this problem further later.
But as I now have several thousand ebooks of every type, just downloaded
100 more last night, so this is a very nice gadget.
I have shown it around, and it seems to me that the folks who like to
read appreciate it and would like one, and those who don't read all
that much think it is OK and would maybe buy one to store information
such as boat documents on, but would be less likely to buy one. Pretty
much what I expected. Nearly everybody could read the screen, with one
or two exceptions, and even they could read the screen if they wanted I
believe, but I think they took exception to such a device so just said
they could not.
But truth be told, one big advantage with this thing, besides being able
to have a personal library with you, is that it is so much easier to use
than a big thick book that is always falling or flipping closed or is
just a PITA to keep your thumb in. Of course it is electronic, so I did
put it in a small plastic notebook to protect it and will block off the
ports with tape when it is on the boat, but overall I give it a big
thumbs up!
I think it will do quite well on the boat, but if it DOES go over the
side, oh well I still have all the books and the laptop!
Can anyone else supply a review of a similar bookreader to compare?-Ken
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