Ebook Readers, eReaders

SEE OUR eREADERS BELOW THIS FEATURE

Everybody is talking about ebook readers but very few of us have seen them at this point. At last, we are pleased to presenta range of ebook readers with e-ink screens and an ability to read a wide range of formats. Let's start with the basic questions:


What is an ebook reader? Ebooks are the next big thing in publishing. What they do is enable you to carry your entire library in electronic form. Most ebook readers are about the size of a standard paperback but much lighter. Today you can get hundreds of thousands of e-books free online and you can buy today's best-sellers at prices considerably below the cost of paper versions. E-book readers make sense in a world where essential resources are being pillaged and despoiled. Why cut down a tree when you don't need to? E-book readers are the answer.

If you want to see what e-books are all about, try some of these sites:  Free-ebooks.net, The eBook Directory and www.gutenberg.org/. Kiwis, take a look at Activity Press. Auckland-based ebook guru Martin Taylor tells you that 1150 ebooks are available or on the way from the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre.

You can also buy ebooks from a huge number of bookstores online. We suggest you try eBooks.com, where you can get thousands of hot sellers such as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (US$9.99) and The Lovely Bones  (US$9.99).  Try doing a search and you will find dozens of other ebook commercial sites.


What is e-ink? Wikipedia will tell you that e-ink is a type of electronic paper. Most ebooks use e-ink displays. E-ink mimics the appearance of ink on paper. The text is solid black against a  near-white background. It's as easy to read as a book, except that you don't have to turn pages. Many people find e-ink easier to read than conventional LCD displays. To flip a page you click backwards or forwards on a button at the side of bottom of the device or -- if it is a touchscreen version -- just flick your page on the screen to progress forwards or backwards.


One of the great things about e-ink is that it consumes very little power. You can read your ebook for days and still have life left in your reader's battery. That makes it extremely useful for travellers. Even better, you just need one lightweight ebook reader to access all your books. It's much more convenient than lugging heavy books around with you. Imagine being able to store you entire library in compressed formats on a single memory card. If you're heading overseas you could even use it for your favourite travel guides, if they are available in ebook formats.


Why should you buy an ebook? For starters, an ebook is typically lighter than a paperback. Then there's the fact that you can carry your entire library with you on tiny memory cards. You need never lack for something to read, no matter where you are. Ebooks based on e-ink have a huge battery life. You can read for days before you need to recharge your ebook. Ebook readers are durable and easy to read. Free books are available online in the thousands. If you want to pay for the latest books to hit the marketplace, you will find that they usually cost less than their paperback counterparts. If you are a big reader it won't take long for you to recover the cost of your ebook reader.

What is DRM? When you buy an ebook reader, you need to be aware of DRM (Digital Rights Management). DRM is is the publishing industry's way of halting unauthorised use or duplication of any publication you have downloaded. Most publishers want you to pay for their titles, and this is their way of making you do so.  If you want to buy latest commercially sold novels you will need an eReader with DRM. Without DRM you can't access latest commercially sold titles but you can get vast numbers of free titles. In other words, you can have the best of both worlds. Read more about DRM HERE.

What ebook formats must you have? Unless you are locked into a publisher with your device, you will find that most ebook readers  support a number of formats. Most ebook sites tell you what formats they support. Here are most of the usual formats you will find: If you have an ebook that supports EPUB, PDF, TXT and HTML you will have no trouble finding vast numbers of ebooks to read. Each ebook format has its own qualities and advantages. Read more about ebookformats HERE.

 Which ebook reader (eReader) should you buy?  There are many different brands of ebook readers. Some have faster processors than others. Most have e-ink screens, although some use standard LCD colour screens. Some have touch screens and others use buttons. Some offer the ability to write your own notes on the screen. Most do bookmarking and lookups. Some are bigger than others, although most units have screens about 6in diagonally. Most quality smartphones are capable of displaying ebooks, although with a limited range of formats. New devices such as Apple's iPad can also be used as ebook readers, although their battery life is rather limited for serious readers. Ebook readers are advancing constantly. Many of the newest eReaders now offer WiFi and touchscreens. Our latest models, shown below, are from BeBook (the WiFi-equipped Neo) and PocketBook Global. These are all very good performers with a wide range of formats available. The PocketBook products also feature a range of games and useful tools such as a calculator. The PocketBook products do an exceptional job of displaying black and white photos, although they can never be as good as a full colour LCD product. For that you should look at products such as our extraordinarily low-priced iRobot Android computer pad with WiFi.

All of these products, brought to you from Europe, are of excellent quality and will have a long life and have DRM installed. You will immediately find more than 20,000 free books  available from the BeBook website. The BeBook One supports a huge range of formats, so you need have no concern there. You can sort through your books by title filename or file size. You can also play MP3 files and audio books. It comes with an attractive leather case or you can buy fine hand-tooled leather cases in a range of colours. The BeBook Mini, also shown below, is a little smaller.

We present our range below.

 

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