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.
Monday, 28 June 2010
Thursday, 3 June 2010
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:
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.
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).
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.
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