Ectaco jetBook e Book Reader Burgundy Red
E-books have been around for a while but it is only with the ECTACO jetBook that they have truly come of age. The newest generation of handhelds offer all the latest advances in the world of e-reading including the most advanced display technology. jetBook not only turns pages but provides a crisp, clear image on a larger display screen that is easier to read than any paper book ever was. jetBook also offers everyone incredible opportunities for translation and learning with its pre-loaded translating dictionaries. An mp3 player rounds out the advanced features to let you listen to your favorite audio files as you read. jetBook is fully compatible with both Mac and Windows-based PCs. The ECTACO jetBook e-Book Reader supports .txt, .pdf, .fb2, ePub, Mobi, PRC, RTF and .jpg file formats.
Lightweight and super-portable, ECTACO jetBook is the ultimate pocket library. Capable of storing thousands of books in the world’s most popular languages, plus music and picture files, it is a universal mobile library for professional, business and leisure reading. With an easy to scan high-resolution 5-inch display and a viewing angle close to 180 , it is fully customizable. Even readers who have difficulty seeing print books will benefit from its adjustable text size and font face. And weighing in at only 7,5 ounces, this handy device fits perfectly into the palm of your hand. When reading, jetBook allows text to be searched and cross-referenced using bookmarks, which make it an excellent choice of, format for dictionaries and other reference books. Readers can begin reading as soon as they download a book without needing to visit a bookstore ever again. And ECTACO jetBook is eco-friendly too, because it doesn’t consume the paper, ink, or other resources that are used to produce printed books. Moreover, e-books downloads are always less expensive than the same books on paper; with hundreds of thousand available online for fre
User Ratings and Reviews
1 Star Forget’bout’it
I bought this thing for my girlfriend about a year ago, and though it does TECHNICALLY work, I wouldn’t recommend it for anybody for a number of reasons:
- The only file type it can read is TXT, which means everything you read will have to be converted. It claims to read Acrobat files too, but it sees all the text as an IMAGE, so you can’t comfortably scroll up and down, which makes it unusable.
- Tons of memory issues, both with the onboard memory and the SD card, I’ll copy a file and it won’t be on the device, another file I delete, and for 2 months it was still saying it’s there
- NON EXISTENT SUPPORT – the company that makes this thing is russian or something, and you can forget about them returning your emails or answering the phone
- MP3 Player is unusable, very slow to work and has interferences in audio (beeps and gaps)
- Don’t even think about pictures, they look horrible on this monochrome screen
3 Stars Not as Advertised
I bought this to read current books. It is well built and easy to use – BUT – if you want to read current Authors, it’s very difficult to find these books in .txt or the old .pdf format that isn’t the new Adobe Digital Ebook!!! Adobe Digital Ebook won’t work with the Jetbook.
I also find the screen darker than shown in the picture!! It’s more brown.
I ended up getting the Sony PRS 505 and now am very happy!!
For strictly reading Best Sellers and New Released books – this doesn’t make it!!!
If you want to read classics (Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, etc.) than this will work!!
I suggest before you buy any ebook reader, check out the websites and see what books are offered in the formats for each reader!!!
No matter which Ebook you purchase, the prices are the best at Amazon.com!!!
3 Stars A good first try
For the most part the Ectaco jetBook works OK on paper, but once you start using it on a day-to-day basis like I do, then it starts to show its weakness. Here are the biggest weaknesses, in no particular order:
1. No serif font for text files. To truly emulate the experience of reading a printed book, I feel every ebook reader should provide a serif font such as Georgia or Palatino. I have a modest printed book library and most of the classics are printed in a serif font. I’m used to reading books in serif font — it just feels “warmer” than Arial or Verdana to me (you can only choose between Arial or Verdana in the jetBook). A sans serif font like Arial or Verdana is OK for technical documents, but not classic literature IMHO.
2. The built-in English dictionary is sorely lacking, which is the greatest euphemism I can think of. Compared to the dictionary in my Sharp PW-E550, this dictionary becomes a bit of a joke. Unless you’re reading 6th grade books, you’ll likely get annoyed that many of the words you want to look up aren’t in the jetBook’s built-in dictionary. My reading experience is almost a ritual — to settle into a novel I usually have three other things by my side: my trusty dog-eared 1080-page Oxford pocket dictionary (before upgrading to the electronic dictionary mentioned above), a notepad or yellow sticky notes, and a pen or pencil to jot things down as I read (e.g., page number of first introduction of a character). My OCB requires that I look up every single word I don’t understand and write down that word. Having an ebook reader reduces all the things that I’d have to carry to just one item (the ebook reader) instead of four, but this requires that the ebook reader can search within books (checked) and comes with a built-in dictionary at least as good as my Oxford pocket dictionary (so far unchecked). If I keep having to carry my Oxford or electronic dictionaries around, then this defeats the purpose of me getting an ebook reader. In all fairness, I don’t think any ebook reader’s built-in dictionary would satisfy me, so I’ll end up dragging along my external dictionaries no matter which device I purchase.
3. To make the word lookup experience even worse, every time you look up a word you have to re-select the English dictionary. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but my dictionary selection setting isn’t saved across sessions. This adds too many keystrokes to look up a word when you’re reading in the jetBook. You might as well carry along an electronic dictionary to do your word lookups.
4. If you search or rely on the built-in dictionary a lot, or do any kind of text entry at all, you will quickly become frustrated with the jetBook’s text input system. T9 doesn’t work the same as it does on a mobile phone. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: when I tried to search for the word “robber” by using the T9 input method (7-6-2-2-3-7), I ended up with only the word “soccer” in the list of potential matches even though “robber” is defined in the built-in dictionary (maybe it’s not in the T9 dictionary?). If T9 is a trademarked name, I wonder if Ectaco should even be marketing their input method as T9 because it’s obviously not true T9. In fact, it is giving T9 a bad name because their implementation is much more user-UNfriendly than the T9 used on mobile phones. Even if you choose the regular text input method, you won’t be too happy because its behavior is also not the one you’re used to on your mobile phone. For example, instead of pressing 7 three times to input “r”, you have to press 7 once and then press the number 3 (this requires looking at the screen to see what number “r” is mapped to). This makes text entry a chore no matter which text input method you choose.
5. The jetBook has a nice screen with good contrast and clarity that I found easier to read than some other ebook readers based on e-ink technology (e.g., Astak EZReader) when I put the two side by side. HOWEVER, there is still a perceivable .5- to 1-second lag whenever I turn pages, especially in large books and when panning in PDF documents. Many people have praised the jetBook’s LCD screen latency as compared to an e-ink screen, and they would be correct, but the page turns and PDF panning are still a bit too slow for me. Am I expecting too much when I want near instantaneous page turns? I’d like to be able to hold down the next/previous page buttons and have the pages turn as fast as I could flip through a physical book.
If the five issues above aren’t a bother for you, then you may enjoy using the jetBook. My jetBook is now back at Frys, or in the hands of someone who I hope is enjoying it more than I did. Just because I returned it doesn’t mean it should be avoided like the plague — it just didn’t didn’t meet MY needs, that’s all. All in all, the jetBook is a good first try from Ectaco, an authority on language translators, and it’s slowly improving as they release updated firmwares for it. The jetBook is definitely a decent ebook reader for the price, but keep in mind that you can also get a Kindle1 for about the same price on eBay. If you want to save money and don’t mind lugging around something a bit heftier, the cheapest ebook readers on the market are the GEB-1150′s. You can upgrade these to be equivalent to an EBookwise-1150 by updating the firmware, which would allow you to use this reader with Fictionwise ebooks.
Happy e-reading!
4 Stars Good for plain text
I bought it in June 2008.
The good: it’s very small, so you would take it where only the smallest printed book would go. Stylish. Plain text works very good.
The bad: it’s not e-ink technology, so it uses up the battery in a couple days of active reading. No formats for advanced text supported (except for PDF, which is mostly unusable on a small screen anyway).
The bottom line: a nice companion you can take anywhere, as long as you are comfortable with plain-text-only limitation.
5 Stars Easy to use ereader
I am new to the ereader technology and hoped to find an easy-to-use, relatively inexpensive reader. I found this and a whole lot more with the Jetbook. This reader has a slightly smaller screen than some of the others I looked at; this makes it very comfortable and easy to hold and transport. Although it does not have backlight and does not use E-ink, I find it very easy to read even in dimmer light. Several font sizes are available, so I can enlarge the print. The menus are very easy to navigate and self explanatory. Jetbook has a great feature that allows you to file your books in category folders; you can even delete a book from the device menu. You can create and name your own folders. I really appreciate that the on/off button is very small and somewhat more difficult than the other buttons to get to—the device will not be accidently turned on by bumping!! Jetbook has a lot of buttons on the side that make navigation very simple-just pick the correponding number to the item you want on the menu. These buttons are on the front/side and are not easily bumped. Yhe forwards and back button is right at the thumb, making this simple. The device has an auto page turning option that I am not using right now. It also has bookmarks, several dictionaries and display controls.
The device takes a 2G SD card as well as having internal memory of its own. It comes with many nice classic books already installed, including the CHOICE of having a King James Bible pre-installed. It has a drop and drag technology for placing the downloaded books onto the card or reader, or you can do it by copying.
As delivered, the device does not accept Mobi and some other more popular formats but does have a beta firmware upgrade available on the website. I have not done this; I am going to wait on the final version. I have LOTS of books to read in the meantime!
The Ectaco website is running a special right now as I write that includes the reader, a decent carry pouch, USB cord, adapter, CD, instruction manual, earbuds and free shipping. (It will play MP3′s, which I have not done, but this is available) It not as expensive as the other main ereaders. It feels very sturdy and substantial in the hand; I expect it to hold up well under normal conditions.
I am excited about this ereader and plan on upgrading fhe firmware. The company responded promptly and courteously to all my pre-buying emails and seem very supporting. I don’t think you can go wrong with this one!
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