modbook - The Tablet Mac

I've stumbled upon this peculiar Apple MacBook modification called modbook by Axiotron Corp, while wondering if there is a good Wacom Penabled tablet PC on the market:

It turns out that for $900 dollars one could get his MacBook converted into a Penabled Tablet Mac. The keyboard is evidently removed, and on top of the screen a magnetic layer for Wacom digitizer technology is placed, finally covered by glass called ForceGlass, that is "designed to replicate the feel of paper". The pen is stored in a magnetic "pocket" of the modbook. This unique opportunity to have a tablet computer driven by Apple's OS X seems to be completely legal, because the OS is still run by the Apple hardware. The Axiotron Corp also sells software useful in a tablet environment - handwriting recognition QuickScript and Kopernikus, a program that allows controlling your system via handwriting. To make things even more exciting, the Axiotron are announcing modbook pro - the same Wacom Penabling modification, but for MacBook Pro!

BeBook Neo July Firmware

Just a note of advice to anyone interested in or invested in BeBook Neo, to stay away from its new firmware (July 2010). It introduces more bugs than features, unfortunately. The new "Notes" section that allows to type in messages using the on-screen keyboard works very slow and doesn't save the message unless you go to the menu and save it manually; the old "Notes" is now called "Scribble" and now that I have a full page of "scribbles", it doesn't save new ones I create. While reading a CHM format document and clicking on a hyperlink, it might not show the new content until you click "Next" button (then it leads you two pages away from the beginning of the chosen section). And if Neo goes to standby while in a CHM document, it will hang upon return so you'll have to turn it off and back on. Can't say if this bug was present in the previous firmware or not, though. But what is definately new is that for a day or two the "Next" and "Prev" buttons didn't work at all, while I was reading an FB2 book (I had to use stylus to turn pages). One thing about FB2 documents that wasn't fixed in the new firmware is that a book is divided into pages dynamically, which means that often you see different text on a page next time you skip to it (that applies to bookmarks, as well). The tablet cursor positioning problem wasn't solved for me in the new firmware either, and above all that, the new design of menus makes it near to impossible to tell which menu section is currently selected. Oh how I wish that all firmware makers would separate bug fixes from user interface improvements and let people choose which to install! But anyway, I can recommend to wait for the next firmware version, hopefully it will fix more than it will break. I would happily downgrade now - if only I weren't so lazy :)

BeBook Neo's Web Browsing on e-Ink

After finding out that I'm able to use the Web browsing feature on my BeBook Neo e-reader, I decided to write a post about it, but it turned out to be quite a long text to add it to the existing article. Thus, I made a separate post dedicated entirely to this fascinating subject.

Ability to browse the Web is one of the most exciting features of Endless Ideas BV's BeBook Neo electronic reader. Its internal browser based on WebKit (the engine used in Apple Safari and Google Chrome) is surprisingly powerful and is able to render even such modern sites as the new Steam games store. This very blog can be viewed on Neo without problems and is as easy to read as any e-book. Despite low refresh rates and relatively small resolution of the device's electronic paper screen (800x600 in landscape mode) it is possible to view many sites designed for computer screens, as long as they are not Flash-based (there's no Flash player on Neo), don't require animation effects to be used, and were made with at least some portability in mind.

Neo would search for wireless networks like any other WiFi-enabled device, letting you choose the network to connect to. It supports popular security protocols, but I had some troubles with them and now stick to MAC address filtering on my wireless router. WiFi module can be enabled and disabled by an external switch on the side of the device, but sometimes it takes an additional "off/on" routine to get it going. The first site opens with a noticeable delay, but further browsing is fast and smooth. You can start your journey at four of predefined web portals: BeBook store, Google, Wikipedia and Adobe's site. Later you can go to any URL by clicking a "www" icon on the bottom "tray bar". Thanks to Wacom "Penabled" technology, browsing using its pen is as intuitive as on any touch-screen device, but without extra glare or visual distortion caused by a touch-screen overlay.


Font size "zoom" is helpful with small print texts, and landscape mode is great for wide sites. Watching Web in black and white is not as strange as it might seem, and I had no problems adapting to it. It would be a nice addition if the browser could somehow turn off animations, because they don't look good on e-paper at all, and distract from reading.

The bugs, however manifest themselves quite soon. There are some problems with text input (sometimes you can't enter text into a form field), scrolling doesn't always work, hiding parts of text, scrollbars doesn't always show (and you can't turn them on or off manually). The browser tries to perform "smooth scrolling" effect when using scrollbars (including drop down menus), which is obviously inappropriate with an electronic paper screen -- such an animated routine takes a long time, drains battery and flickers annoyingly. However, many sites work fine and are fully functional. Partial redraw system works surprisingly fast, but leaves traces of previous content merged with new, which is messing up graphics of the page after scrolling/panning. Thankfully a display refresh icon can be clicked to redraw the screen and clean up the mess when needed.


Overall, Web browsing in BeBook Neo is a lovely feature; whenever you need to read a lot of a online content, Neo can make it easier on your eyes. However, Neo can't be used for "professional" surfing, due to browser's bugs, compatibility issues, screen size and of course limitations of the electronic paper itself. I hope in future Web developers will be making their sites more portable, and such mobile devices as Neo will have less troubles accessing, say, a user's instant messenger or e-mail account. I expect to use the e-reader not only for reading web sites, but my email and instant messages as well.

Instead of making static photos, I decided to try making a video review, that would demonstrate Neo in action. Here it is, and note that it's in HD, so you can catch more details if you take advantage of it.

BeBook Neo by Endless Ideas BV

After searching for an e-reader that would fit my requirements, I've settled on BeBook Neo by Endless Ideas BV, which I have purchased a month ago and using daily since I received the package. It is a rebranded Onyx Boox 60. The choice was made because Neo has a Wacom "pen-abled" 6" screen, supports most e-book formats (FB2 and PDF were my first priorities), supports Russian (and many more languages) natively, has WiFi and allows for Web browsing. All this just for $300. Its neat and sleek design, as well its MP3 player, are nice bonuses. Here's how it looks:

Since it's my first e-reader, I'd like to say a few words about electronic paper technology (E-ink® Vizplex) from my experience. It is really as easy on eyes as normal paper. The differences are:

• the electronic paper is not as contrast; its black is not as black as printed text, and its white is not as white either. Both are more like shades of grey. I like it this way, because high contrast of many books is hard on the eyes in bright light.
• the electronic paper is covered with glass on BeBook Neo (some devices use plastic), which means a direct sunlight would reflect from the screen surface. This obviously doesn't happen with normal paper.
• electronic paper's resolution is not as high as printed text (about 160 DPI on BeBook Neo, and about 200 on smaller screens). This means that when you look closely on the text, you see that it's pixelated. Even though the 16 shades of grey are used for anti-aliasing, you can see the pixels, especially with Times family fonts (which are traditionally used in books, at least in Russia).

Reading a book on an e-reader is different from reading a paper book. The text looks naked without the book cover or edges of the pages underneath. It feels sterile and character-less. Just like MP3s in portable players, compared to CDs and vinyl LPs. Real things can never be totally replaced by their virtual, digitized incarnations, but the latter are handy and easy to use, which is ever so important nowadays. I'd say that e-readers are not to replace real books, but to complement them.

Now to tell about the device itself, I'll start with the packaging. It's very compact and is size of a thick book. It only has the BeBook Neo, a manual and some warranty papers. No books come with the reader; all the classics can be downloaded for free from the web site, specially formatted for the 6" screen.

The case of BeBook Neo is very well made, it feels solid, there are no screws or any visible way to disassemble it. It's front is made of plastic, but it's got aluminium on its back. A bit cold to the touch, but certainly durable and there are less chances it would break. With its weight of 300 grams it's not heavier than a book (lighter than some, actually), but suprisingly thin. The 532 Mhz CPU makes the device work pretty fast, and it's got 300Mb of its internal Flash memory available for users. I prefer to store things like fonts and dictionaries there. SD card slot accepted my 512Mb card without any resistance.

Wacom technology, used in the device to provide the "touch-screen" functionality, does not require any layers or films on top of the screen, which means that nothing affects the screen's quality. A lightweight plastic pen is not as big as standard Wacom pens (which didn't work with the device, by the way), but not as thin as a PDA's toothpick (a good thing indeed). I'd call it electronic pencil, because it feels like one in the hand. Neo is very pleasant to navigate with a pen, due to its fast response, but there are certain problems with calibration: there is a severe difference between the actual position of the pen and where the device thinks it is, in certain areas closer to the edges. I hope it gets fixed in the coming firmware update, as it prevents me from using the Notes feature, which is quite nice actually. It feels almost like writing on a piece of paper, and is actually useful. The only drawback in the Notes is that the sketches are not anti-aliased.

The full list of supported formats is: PDF, TXT, HTML, MOBIPOCKET, EPUB, CHM, FB2, DJVU, RTF, PDB, JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, MP3, WAV. Obviously I didn't try all of the formats, but FB2, PDF, CHM, EPUB, RTF and MP3 are working fine, with the exception of those PDF files which were not formatted initially for the 6" screen. The thing with PDF is that its formatting is hard-coded, and you can't re-flow it without decoding and re-encoding. There are software solutions for e-book conversion. I tried Calibre, but haven't yet managed to get a good result with it. Oh, and zipped FB2 works fine as well.

MP3 player is stable, supports VBR, and only a slight gap is audible between tracks, which is less than what I have on a stand-alone Philips CD/MP3 player, and can easily be ignored. Volume control button is placed on the bottom of the reader, but frankly I would prefer a play/pause button instead. Sometimes the player does not get drawn entirely when you invoke it from the menu while reading. Let's see if this gets fixed in the forthcoming firmware.

At first I thought there was an incompatibility between Neo and my WiFi router (Acorp WAP-G), but it turned out to be a temporary bug, probably related to WiFi security protocol. Now, with only MAC filtering turned on in my router, wireless browsing feature works smooth and flawless.

The page turn speed is perfect. It's exactly what it would take me to turn a page on a real book, and when the screen goes black to clear itself, it does not annoy at all, quite the opposite, it makes it feel more like a real page turn. There is an option to turn full screen refresh off, then the screen won't go black to clear itself; however in that mode some traces of the previous pages' text could be left visible in a brighter color than the background.

The device has an automatic standby and shutdown functions. You can't use both; either device would standby after 3, 15 or 30 minutes, or it would shutdown after 5, 15 or 30 minutes of inactivity. Although it is possible to turn both off in the menu, sometimes Neo would standby despite standby is disabled. Another bug to fix, I suppose.

The battery life is not 3 weeks as reported for some readers like Sony PRS-505, but I guess it's mainly because of the Wacom digitizer technology. Putting it to trial, I was reading, installing fonts, trying books, playing music on the Neo for a whole day, and it still had one slice of its battery indicator left. As I'm writing this article, the Neo hasn't been charged for about a week, with some reading daily, plus occasional music playing, and it's still got two bars of the battery indicator present. For me it's sufficient.

BeBook Neo supports dictionaries, which is great news for me. There's no better way to extend vocabulary of a foreign language than reading a book in that language and translating each word you don't know. It works exactly as I wanted - when a dictionary is on, I click on a word and its definition is shown. I only wish the lookup feature could be invoked from an icon on the reader's "tray bar". Unfortunately, the support is rather incomplete; dictionaries I found on the web are not working too well. Some definitions are shown, some not - and no telling why. I was getting dictionaries from this site: http://xdxf.revdanica.com/down/index.php - in StarDic format. Installing a dictionary is quite simple. On the SD card or in the Flash memory of the reader, create a folder named 'dicts'. In that folder unpack the dictionaries, ensuring each is in its own folder.

One of the most pleasant surprises I got from Neo was support for custom fonts. While such formats as PDF have fonts embedded, plain text formats such as FB2 rely on the fonts supplied with the reader. The standard set included Bitstream and DejaVu, with Sans, Serif and Mono versions. But if you create a folder 'fonts' on your SD card or in the internal Flash memory of the device, and put some TrueType fonts into it, they will appear in the settings menu. Of course, for non-English text you would need Unicode fonts.


There are lots and lots of minor handy features which are hardly possible to list here. For example, when reading a book, you see a progress bar on the bottom line of the screen. Clicking with the pen on a position on this bar would take you to a page there. There are bookmarks. There is a possibility to change the way books presented in the list - as a thumbnail view, simple list or detailed list. Unfortunately, when you change the books list view mode, it affects all the menus, including the main one.

Summary: the device is a beauty. It has exceeded my expectations, and the minor bugs I found can't possibly ruin the positive feeling I get from using it. It's solid and reliable, handy and fast. I like it and its price seems cheaper now than when I was buying it. Endless Ideas BV representative has told me that a new firmware is being worked on right now. I'll post an update as soon as I get my hands on it.

WDTV Live Review

The digital media player WDTV Live, described in this post, is now for some time being used in my home, and I think I got enough experience with it to share it here. And since I think there's enough of advertisement to praise the positive sides, I'll skip directly to the faults and problems. The main of them is its overall software flimsiness, a sign of modern age of software development. When you pause the video and switch an audio track - it might stop the playback. When you rewind and press "play" to stop the rewind, it shows that it is paused, but keeps rewinding. You have to press play again a few times. The font size is too small in all the menus, it's really hard to read. The lack of "search" or "jump" feature disturbs a lot, as this box doesn't let you go to a specific time in a media file. The "remembering" feature works only until you plug the thing out from electricity - as if there is no such thing as flash memory. So you have to fast forward a movie to the place you stopped, as if it's a video tape player, and not a digital device. And another thing is audio quality, which is somewhat poor, comparing to my previous device (KiSS DP-500). Video quality on low-bandwidth files is poor as well.

However, the rest of the features are working great. Automatic update is brilliant, and WDTV Live really does play anything you give it. Only once it refused to play a WMV (Windows Media) file I had. And lack of APE format support is a bit inconvenient, as I'm using it often for my CDs. I'm also planning to try a non-official firmware for external DVD drive support, and will post here the results.

Hanvon WISEreader N518

I've discovered for myself a new company in the e-Ink readers market, Hanvon. It is the founder of the national patented Chinese Handwriting Recognition Technology, and it specializes in OCR and handwriting technologies, as well as electromagnetic tablets (similar to Wacom). Their new WISEreader line of electronic paper reader products include one that seems most interesting to me: WISEreader N518.

Not only it has a stylus, it also offers on-screen handwriting recognition, and it runs Windows CE 5.0, which might be good news. While I'm not a big fan of Microsoft, I do like Windows CE, as it was designed with performance and optimization in mind. There are lots of applications for Windows CE, and once I almost wrote one myself for my PDA. If that reader allows importing and running standard Windows CE application, it would be quite a powerful and multifunctional device, limited only by its processor speed and very low display refresh speed (it's e-Ink, after all). I'd love to see a possibility for a e-Reader to allow solving a crossword puzzle or playing chess. And with Windows CE there are more chances to see that in reality.

It supports ePUB (Adobe DRM), PDF, TXT, HTXT, HTML, Microsoft Word formats, it plays back MP3, WAV and WMA, and can record WAV. It shows photos in JPEG, TIF, BMP, PNG, and GIF. Document languages supported: German, English, Italian, French, Spanish, Polish, Russian, Portuguese, Chinese and more.

The device costs 279.90 Euro (about $400 USD) at a German dealer Hexaglot. It has German user interface, but seems like the language can be changed via firmware upgrade. Sounds good to me, I think about giving it a try.

Its only drawback is its small screen. 5" is comparable with a PDA (my Acer n311 has 3.7"), and for a comfortable reading experience I'd like something larger. However, in a recent press release Hanvon announced a model N800, which is also run by Windows CE, but has a 8" screen. The price is unknown, but the device should become available in the US this year.

iRex DR800S for Europe - does less, costs more?

Today IREX Technologies unveiled a European version of the DR800SG electronic paper reader device, that is promised to be available from January 18th in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK. The new DR800S device has the same design and set of features as its American brother DR800SG, but it doesn't lack one letter in its model name for nothing. It also lacks a 3G module, which probably means that iRex gave up its plan to offer 3G connectivity all over the world. However, if you would expect that without 3G it would cost less, you are wrong. It costs 499 Euro or 449 GBP, which on this day roughly translates to 717 or 726 USD respectively. So, iRex reader is once again too expensive for me.

However, the new device has one big advantage over DR800SG - it is listed on the iRex corporate web site, and it will be available in their online shop. While mythical DR800SG, that was supposed to appear in BestBuy in December, seem to exist only in press releases and blog posts such as mine. I'm sure the new device will be great to use, and frankly I don't think 3G is a vital feature, I only wish iRex would manage to make it cheaper, as I simply can't let myself to spend half-a-Mac on a device that I will only use for reading.

Things I hate about USB

I grew up with a DOS-driven PC AT computer, and frankly I never had problems connecting peripherals to it. For those unfamiliar with the PC AT machines, on the motherboard itself it only had a special socket for the keyboard. An additional controller (or controllers) expansion card would carry COM (serial) ports for a mouse or a modem, an LPT (parallel) port(s) for the printer, and some also had a game port for the joystick. Anything more sophisticated (like a scanner) would come with its own add-in controller card. I always knew which device is connected to which port, it felt like there is some order in the universe, and I never experienced a sudden unhealthy urge to unplug my keyboard from the computer while it's working and thrust it lustfully into a printer port, just for a change. There was no plug'n'play, there was pure plug'n'work. And then came the Universal Serial Bus (best known as USB), which was so tied to Microsoft's Windows, it couldn't even work without it. No wonder, since Intel and Microsoft, the infamous Wintel duo, are among the authors of the USB standard.

In theory, USB was a great idea - a universal port for connecting any external peripheral to a computer, allowing safe hot plugging. However, for the first years there were not many devices that would support it, thus it didn't seem too useful. When I finally got enough things to plug into it, the theory was put to practice, and flaws in the USB design started to manifest themselves, showing their ugliness without any modesty.

First things first, let's take the connector itself. While making up a new universal connector, why didn't they (or him, or she, or it) make it round, so you wouldn't care which side up should it go? Or at least, it could have some difference between its top and bottom sides, like the Firewire connector, so it wouldn't be such a pain sticking it in, especially when the socket is not situated right in front of you.

Next thing is what happens when you plug something into the computer. Whatever they say about plugging and playing, it's never as simple in reality. I'm never sure when to do it with a new device. Should I plug it in before I turn on the computer on? Or after, but before Windows has started? Before I installed the drivers, or after? Before the required reboot (plug'n'reboot'n'play scenario), or after? It seems like something irreversibly dramatic will happen if I don't perform the steps of this almost religious device connection routine in the exact order, and this order is never the same for all the devices (because, in fact, devices ARE different). My printer, for example, used to refuse to work when I plugged it in while Windows was running - until I changed its cable. The cable was alright, it came with the printer, and worked perfectly with a different device. So much for a standard, huh.

When I plug something while Windows is running, the device won't start to function immediately. No, the driver must be installed first. Even if I have just unplugged the bloody thing from the neighbouring socket. And sometimes, when it does install that driver, it will ask the user (me) to allow or confirm this installation procedure. The most funny case is when you are plugging in a keyboard or a mouse... with what am I supposed to click on the "next" button? And wait a minute... why does a keyboard require a driver at all? It shouldn't, and it didn't - in the glorious medieval days of the DOS. So, all in all, this might be called "plug'n'play", but it's certainly not "plug'n'work".



Now let's talk about unplugging. There are certain situations where I'd want to turn a USB device off without unplugging it. An external hard drive, a web camera - anything I use rarely. Despite the assumptions of the system designers, the computer case's backside is not facing the user. Quite the contrary, in fact. So it is NOT convenient to unplug a device just to turn it off. And plugging it back in the moment you need it, is hardly easier. In Windows I can do a "software unplug", but I can't do a "software plug in". If I disable a USB device, I'll need to actually unplug it and plug it back in to re-activate it. If you'd tell this to computer users some 20 years ago, you'd cause a lot of laughs, but today it's a reality many people don't even question - they take it as the only way it can be. I know that that's probably the Windows' fault, not the USB, but you can tell both were backed up by Microsoft - it's so hard to differ one from the other when it comes to bugs.

Next thing is the Hubs. More and more things these days are made for USB, and it is impossible to have enough ports for all the things you'd use. Mouse, keyboard, display, external drive, flash drive, card reader, web camera, photo camera, PDA, scanner, printer, copy protection dongle... There are lamps for USB. Soon coffee makers would roll out USB-equipped. And since you can't chain-connect USB devices like you would with SCSI, you need hubs, as if it's a local area network. A hub itself looks harmless and pretty cute, but that is until it is wired up. With all the cords sticking in and out of it, it would certainly want to fall off your table, and plugging in and out of it is never a pleasant process. And of course, you must have an extra AC adaptor for it. How convenient. I just love to see all those AC adaptors around me, don't you? There just can't be too much. Yes, I am being sarcastic.

The biggest problem with hubs is that they are mostly made by "third parties from the third world", companies you've never heard about before, and so many of the hubs you find are cheap in more way than one. If you browse through user reviews of USB hubs on the 'net, you'll find such negative experiences as problematic Windows boot up, system freezes, blue screen errors, or even devices got permanently damaged by a faulty or low-quality USB hub. I myself often get booted up with my mouse off. I have to plug it out and into the hub to reanimate it. If I plug certain devices into the hub, some of the others stop functionaing - and I never know how to tell if the hub will "pull" the thing I'm going to plug, or not. So, a hub looks like a mess, and feels like a mess.

Another disadvantage of USB I found out recently is connected with professional level keyboards, which allow handling of multiple simultaneously pressed keys (important for typists and gamers). It turned out that with PS/2 connector those keyboards can handle unlimited number of keys pressed at the same time, but with USB they are limited to 6 keys maximum. So much for a replacement.

A huge disadvantage of USB over traditional connectors such as COM port is its drivers. Older system have no built in support for USB, and until Windows is boot up, anything USB won't work, which is especially sad with hard drives and keyboards. Modern systems come with limited "legacy" support for keyboards, mice and/or external media via USB without drivers (via BIOS), but it's still not as straight forward, simple or reliable as it was with legacy connectors, that required no drivers, no bulky firmware, and would be natively supported in the operating system. With COM you could make your modem dial a number just by sending a simple text phrase right from the prompt. So, I don't think that USB will ever replace connectors like PS/2 or COM, just because it can't.

So, USB, so nice in theory, in my practice always turns out to be not reliable, not simple to use, and not completely universal. It can't replace all legacy peripheral connectors, and it was co-designed by Microsoft. This is basically what I hate about it. Otherwise it's a truly inspiring technology, for sure. After all, it did inspire people to make USB electric blankets, toothbrushes, electric shavers, coffee heaters, fans, and even this mysterious device.

As for alternatives, I quite enjoyed working with Firewire, never having problems with it, although my experience is very limited; there aren't many devices for it. A recent announcement of Light Peak technology developed by Apple sounds promising. I'm looking forward to seeing a solid replacement for USB, especially if it is designed by Apple. I only hope it won't be as expensive as a Mac ;)