BOOKEEN OPUS eREADER - REVIEW

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This latest eReader from the French company who were among the first to produce an eReader lives up to their reputation for innovation and style (they are French after all!!!) and glories in the name of  Bookeen Opus.

This new eReader has been received with generally positive reactions from users and other reviewers and appears to be a solid and worthy successor of earlier models from this company I am happy to be able to report.

FORMATS:

As with most good eReaders this newest one supports all the normal formats,  so you can buy books from hundreds of online eBook shops and happily read them with this eReader.  I shall give the technical specifications at the end of this post, as always.

SIMPLICITY AND PRICE:

This is a very basic eReader, so it will not appeal to those of you who need all manner of special functions obviously, but for people who simply want to be able to carry a lot of books around with them and read them in comfort, then this is a very interesting machine.  And as an added attraction the price is also perfectly reasonable and in line with other eReaders of similar specs at around 250 US Dollars

EXTRAS:

Going a bit against the trend, they haven't included WiFi support to download books or given it a touch screen and keyboard, thus you cant make notations or in any other way do much more than simply read your books.  But, transferring your downloaded books from your computer to this eReader is a very simple matter,  via the USB cable.  The same method is used for charging the battery, which is amazingly efficient by the way - you can go on reading for about 8000 page turns, which makes it a bit like a small moped rather than a Harley Davidson motorbike... very efficient fuel use thus.

COMPANY BLOG:

As you will see, if you visit their blog, which is in English and French they are continuously busy with updates for the operating system, increasing the possibilities at your finger tips.  This is an approach I appreciate a lot, not only is it fun to know that, for example you can read comics on it, but that they have taken the trouble to keep in touch with their customers in this way, as well as a free newsletter that one can subscribe to in order to keep completely up to date with developments.

MEMORY:

As is now almost standard on eReaders, it has the normal compliment of memory expansion slots, to enable you to use memory cards, so that if you wish, you can carry thousands of books around with you at all times, though to be honest, I have never really understood why anyone would want to carry so many books around with them. I find having 70 or so books in mine more than enough, and regularly clear them off my eReader and store them on my computer.... but we all have our needs and having the possibility to carry a complete library around is obviously important to lots of people.

SIZE AND WEIGHT:

The size and weight of this one is something that has attracted a lot of very positive comment out there, most people feel that it is an ideal compromise in those respects, and love it for them, also attracting positive comments is the relative simplicity of navigating around your library in this eReader.

It is simply a very good and user friendly eReader, well supported by a lively and friendly company, no more and no less.

Now for all the technical stuff and contact links to them.

PRICE:

Around 250 US Dollars. 

CONTACT THEM:
Bookeen Blog:
Company website:
Bookeen eBook Store

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS:

Dimensions

Height 151 mm - 6"
Length 108 mm - 4.2"
Width 10mm - 0.4"
Weight 150 g - 5.3 oz

Electronics

Samsung ARM, 400 MHz

Memory

• RAM : 32 MBStorage 
• (NAND): 1 GB
• Storage card : Micro SD

User interface

G-sensor for motion detection :
automatic screen orientation

Keys

• On/Off
• Reset
• 5-way navigation
• Menu button
• Back button
• Page forward/page backward

Display

• E-Ink screen 5" (3" x 4" - 76mm x 101mm)Resolution 600 x 800 - 200 dpi 
• Black & White 4 levels grey-scale
• Daylight readable
• Portrait and landscape mode
• Memory interfaces

• Micro SD slot
• Mini USB slave

Power

Rechargeable and replaceable Internal Battery LI-Polymer (1000mAh), 8 000 page flips - 2 weeks battery life

Software Suite

• OS : Linux 2.6
• Adobe® ePUB/PDF Reader
• Multi-format reader
  HTML, TXT, JPG, GIF, PNG
• Bouton Retour
• Folder support
• USB driver

SHARE WITH US:
If you have one of these eReaders, and have any comments about it that you would like to share with the rest of us, please send them to me, and I shall post them.  As always I shall credit you with the post, of course!



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eBOOK READER DISCOUNTER - AN ONLINE SHOP THAT WILL DELIVER eREADERS TO THE WHOLE WORLD

In my wanderings I have come across an on-line shop that is happy to send eReaders to anywhere in the world.  Always an interesting plus point in my experience.

This site, based in Amsterdam, but with contact addresses in various other European countries and the US too, offers a wide range of eReader models for immediate shipping to anywhere in the world and their charges for shipping the eReaders are very reasonable too.

I shall put the various models and their links later in this small post, so you can get directly to the page there that relates to the model you are interested in.

ACCESSORIES

Apart from the actual eReaders, they also stock an enormous range of accessories for the various eReaders, so you can happily deck your eReader out with covers, lights and probably even water proof covers that would enable you to read whilst scuba diving..... anything is possible after all!

PAYMENT

Payment couldn't be easier here as they seem to accept just about every payment method one can imagine, about the only form of payment they wont accept would be sending a small boy there with your money stuck on a split stick... come to think of it, they would probably cope with that too, with the utmost urbanity.

NAVIGATING THE SITE
 

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As you can probably see,navigation is simple on this site as well, not something that can be said of all such places, here there are clear links to every product they have, and it all looks friendly and approachable.

Finally, a real plus point for me, is that they actually answer emails, and not with some some sort of ready made reply form, but with an actual personal email from a real person, so one knows one is actually dealing with human beings.  Such a refreshing change from the normal impersonal communications one normally gets from on-line shops.

So, that is a brief description of what these good folk have to offer us, now  follows the promised collection of links to the various parts of this excellent site.   Go there and have a happy wallow around in the store, you will surely find what you are looking for there.

LINKS:

The shop itself:

BeBook

Bookeen

Onyx

Cool-er

Hanvon

iRex

iRiver

A LIST OF ALL THE eREADERS OUT THERE THAT I CAN FIND

As there are already dozens of different eReaders being made by loads of companies, I thought perhaps a list of all of them (or at least, all that I can find) might be helpful to you.  At the very least, it will give you a good broad selection to choose from, and surely a number of them can be purchased either online or in shops wherever you happen to live in the world.

I shall list them in no particular order, give a link to the manufacturer and model (if there is an apart link to the model) of each eReader, so that you can easily surf around and get the more specific information you will need in order to make your choice.   Thus this will be a post of links, and no comments about the qualities - or otherwise - of the various eReader.

In due time I shall be contemplating all of these eReaders in some detail, and reporting on what I find, what others have thought of them and any other information that I think might be of interest to you.

Almost all of these manufacturers also supply a wide range of accessories for their eReaders, covers, reading lights, reading stands and so on, and a number of them have even gone so far as to produce their eReaders in a wide range of happy, if slightly alarmingly bright colours.  This last I suspect is aimed chiefly at the South East Asian market, as I discovered whilst living in Beijing, people there love to have their electronic things in all manner of bright colours... I was astounded to see bright pink laptops, purple DVD players and so on... the brighter the better seemed to be the rule.   Quite fun really some of them.

If you come across any models that I have missed, please do let me know, and I shall amend this list of links accordingly.

Remember when looking at the specifications of any model that interests you to pay especial attention to which formats it can read, to avoid tying yourself in to a particular internet eBook supplier.  The ePUB format is currently the one to go for, as almost every eBook shop or free eBook site supports this format, and even if you have to download your books as HTML or TXT or PDF, you can always convert them to ePUB with Calibre.   But even the wondrous Calibre cant convert to the Amazon format, for example.

So, here we go!  Simply click on any link you are interested in and you will be taken to the relevant site.

italica GmbH ereader

Condor Technology Associates  eGriver Touch

Onyx   Onyx Boox 

Sony   Reader Daily Edition PRS-900   Reader Touch Edition PRS-600  Reader Pocket Edition PRS-300   

Barnes & Noble  nook

Iriver   Story

Hanvon    N518  N526  N520

PocketBook  PocketBook 301

Bookeen    Cybook Opus  Cybook Ge

Endless ideas  BeBook

Interead  COOL-ER

Samsung  Papyrus

Amazon  Kindle DX  Kindle  Kindle 2

Foxit Software  eSlick

iRex Technologies  Digital Reader 1000

Jinke   Hanlin V3  Hanlin V5 

So there you have it, the fruits of rather a lot of surfing on my part, but I hope it will be of help to you as you attempt to find your way around the rapidly growing jungle that is the eReader world.   For my part I am still perfectly happy with my Sony PRS-505, it does everything I want it to, apart from making me a decent cup of coffee.

All I look for in an eReader is the ability to use ePUB documents and to have the basic function set needed to enable me to read my books comfortably and simply.  But there are many people who for a variety of good reasons, need all manner of other functions in their eReaders, and these requirements are rapidly being addressed by almost all the makers of eReaders.