EZ lover
A few of you have asked me to give my opinion of the e-reader I purchased recently.
In short: I love it.
I love it so much that I've been reading every day. That's right, you read that correctly, I have read something every day.
I wasn't too fussed about e-readers when I first heard about them. I had assumed that they had a backlit screen like a mobile and that wouldn't help my reading problem at all*. It wasn't until I saw a section on The Gadget Show when I realised that the e-ink technology produces a black text on a grey background which is damn near perfect for my eyes.
I started researching on the internet about e-readers. I looked at the Kindle, Sony's e-reader, the Cool-er, the Bebook and also the Astak EZReader. In the end I decided to plump for the EZReader 5" Pocket Pro.
The main considerations were:
- It seems that the 20 or so formats that the Pocket Pro can support was one of the most varied. I didn't want an e-reader that couldn't open files I already had or purchased from where ever I wanted to source them.
- PDF reflow essentially takes the words out of a document and word wraps them. This is especally useful when you need to zoom in on a document (which, to date has been every PDF I've openend). It will only reflow a page at a time which means that sometimes you get the odd widow which you get used to but I wonder how many extra page turns it equates to.
- The speech to text function was a fun addition. OK, so it sounds like Stephen Hawking's dream bird but it's pretty damn smart. I'm hoping that in future, they'll supply patches for that so I can concentrate more.
- Long battery life was something I was interested in and apparently over 8000 page turns per charge is the norm.
- It was £150 delivered.
On receiving the Pocket Pro, it came with a brown cover that I instantly hated and bought much nicer black one from Stylz as they produce one for Beboook's and Astak's 5" versions. The unit itself is a soft tactile plastic and has a thumbwheel to the side that I use regularly. There's an instinct to use it as a touchscreen but all files and options are available using the numbered buttons. It came with a 2GB SD card with 400 books on it (some are replicated in different formats so it's not 400 titles, all are free to download in any case).
So yeah. I love it. It stays in my handbag at all times and comes with me to bed. Even I can't believe how much I'm using it.
As an aside: can anyone explain how ebooks are priced? Why am I paying almost full price for essentially a file that would have been created anyway? Haven't publishers learned from the piracy in the music industry?
* I have Irlen Syndrome. Look at the Irlen website to see how text appears to me. I most often experience rivers and to some extent shaky.