Ebooks Galore!
Wonder of Wonders
That’s right, I will be extolling the virtues of this wonderful new technology from these pages in days to come, for I am the proud owner of an Ebook Reader. To be exact, the owner of a HanLin V3 eReader. And it’s worth every penny I spent on it.
Love at first sight
Is it real?
I can confirm that it is very real, and furthermore, that it lives up to it’s promises.
It is slightly larger than a pocket book. It has 10 numbered buttons for various tasks and is easy in use. Uploading files is done via USB, as is recharging. HanLin has been so kind not to add another wire to carry around, it does it all by USB. The battery is compatible with Nokia batteries, so even replacing these, if broken, is simple and cheap.
The screen is of course the most important part of all, and it does what it says on the tin. I really looks like paper and reads the same way. I have showcased my baby to various critical friends of mine and they all were equally surprised about the readability of the screen.
I want it all.
One of the main reasons I chose the HanLin is that it supports most common formats like .doc, .txt, .pdf and also the ebook formats EPUB and MOBI. Most formats work well with it, but pdf is almost unusable, because pdf usually is tailored to A4 format and the HanLin just scales the page down to fit the screen, rendering it unreadable.A pity, but not an insurmountable problem. The HanLin works very well with the MOBI format and using the free application Mobipocket Creator you can easily convert pdf and other formats to MOBI.
BOOKS!
I wanted an ebook reader not for the ability to download recently published books with bittorrent, but the ability to get lots of books from the free domain that, even if they are available in dead tree book form, are very expensive because they are scholarly editions, not printed in large quantities, or just out of print. Here the internet comes into it’s own with fabulous sites as Project Gutenberg, Munseys and Manybooks. A lot of these books have already been transferred to the MOBI format and, as the Hanlin can store aprroximately 20.000 books, I won’t be without a book and a reference library again.
I haven’t delved deep into the possibility to buy books from Amazon, but I will do so in the near future and keep you updated on my findings.
Closing Statement
For me, the Hanlin is a true asset. I am an avid reader, I used to carry at least four books with me at a time and I have a very diverse taste in books. Costing € 300,-, the Hanlin was a good buy which has earned me back the money several times over already. I would advise anyone that fits the same profile to at least check it out.
However, for ebooks really to catch on the market must grow, and I do not think that the HanLin has been priced attractively enough yet for the average reader, who might primarily want it for the holidays, as a way to avaoid having to carry a load of books. To that segment of the market, I think it still is an overpriced gadget.
Having said that, I am still very excited about this trend towards ebooks, not just because it reduced the need for paper and makes you look like you are handling a PADD from Star Trek, but also because it makes lots of works readily accessible. It also has already started shaking up the publishing business in the same way the music and video business have been in the last few years. I will be posting on developments in the time to come.
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 19:19 and is filed under Ebooks, Readers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
