E Ink machine: The Walkbook—repackaged HanLin, sold out of Turkey
Ok, gang, here’s a new one for many readers, at least—a linux-based E Ink machine, sold out of Istanbul, Turkey, and called the Walkbook V3.
The Walkbook now goes for US$310 and apparently is a repackaging of of the similarly priced Jinke Electronics’ HanLin eBook V3. In an earlier version, the Walkbook went on sale last year, not just over the Web, but also in stores in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Bursa, among other places. Talk about a sign that E Ink is catching on far beyond the usual techno-centers! The Web site itself is in Turkish, English, French and Magyar. Now imagine the scene five years from now, in terms of an expanded market for e-books when hardware prices are lower and both E Ink and LCD alternatives are better.
Handy controls for page-turning
The six-inch 800-by-600-pixel screen displays four gray scales, fewer than machines such as the Sony Reader and the iLiad, which can do more justice to, say, comics. Also, here is a standard reminder about E Ink—that it offers no backlighting, and text-background contrast issues arise for many people, including me, although I suspect the Walkbook uses the improved Vizplex favor of E Ink.
Unit size is 184mm x 120.5mm x 9.9mm; weight, 220 grams with battery included. Oh, and notice the handy controls for page turning–in fact, two sets of them? Processor is a Samsung Arm9 200Mhz. A 1G memory card is shipped “as a standard accessory with the product package. The device supports up to 4GB memory cards.” Battery life is rated at 9,000-10,000 page turns “or 9-10 hours MP3 playing,” and charging time is said to be three hours.
Common formats supported
Natively supported formats include “PDF, TXT, DOC, HTML, MP3, WOL, IMAGES.” Conversions are said to be possible from Word, PowerPoint and Excel files.
Walkbook—well, the actual name of the vendor is Uğur Bilgi Teknolojileri (UBIT)—says: “We are also planning to provide books with different font sizes at our website.” Actually the instruction manual does mention a zoom control. Plus, you can read books in the landscape mode. FAQ is here; spec sheet, here; the informative instruction manual, here (PDF alert). Connection with a desktop is via a USB connection, although the reader won’t work while you’re connected. UBIT offers free books (in .WOL?), there’s a store, too.
Important detail and question: My mentioning machines does not necessary mean my recommending them. I’m curious to hear from people with either Walkbooks or HanLins. What are the pros and cons? Here’s a link tucked away within a MobileRead HanLin forum. So what are your impressions of the most recent versions of the Walkbook and HanLins?
January 26th, 2008 at 12:27 am
I sorry. E-ink will never go very far unless they have some sort of back-light, front-light or whatever-light. Otherwise, it’s just DULL no matter the contrast.
August 30th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
I’ve lived in Istanbul for 6 years and have never seen a sign of this ebook reader ANYWHERE in Istanbul. You can order it online only… I’ve never seen anyone talk about it, never seen it nor any advertising for it. In fact, many of my friends who work in the tech sector haven’t heard of it. So much for Walkbook’s business…