TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

The Cybook: A 10-inch color screen for Madame Bovary–and a $499 bargain for serious readers

By David Rothman

Emma Bovary, a denizen of the French provinces, was fed up with the selection of romantic novels from lending libraries. Might electronic books be a solution?

But she disliked the small print and all the scrolling needed on PDAs. Nor would she buy one of the e-book devices designed by Gemstar; even beauties like the RCA color machine lacked sufficient resolution for her. She almost purchased the Sony Librie. But the E Ink screen was monochrome, and in keeping with her artistic tendencies, she wanted color.

Then the town druggist told Madame Bovary about the Cybook, perhaps the most stylish of the e-book devices on the market. The machine offered 800×600 resolution and anti-aliasing for maximum sharpness of characters; and the LCD was a ten-incher. Clearly magnifique! Madam Bovary bought a Cybook immediately.

Dr. B and the Cybook

Intrigued, her husband, a doctor in search of suitable reading for his professional development, ordered a second for himself. Dr. Charles Bovary thus was able to operate successfully on a club-footed stableman employed by the local inn. The good doctor would have botched the procedure had it not been for all the articles he pulled down from databases and displayed in full glory on the screen of the Cybook. It could show medical illustrations in far greater detail than the typical e-book machine.

Meanwhile, thanks to the Cybook’s ability to work with Mobipocket-format books from places such as eBooks.com and Fictionwise, Madame Bovary could read financial self-help guides and marriage manuals. She learned to control her spending and even to love her husband.

The other upshot of all this, alas, was less of a stellar literary career for Gustave Flaubert, whom critics ridiculed for writing about such a boringly happy and faithful couple.

* * *

All right, so that’s not how Madame Bovary and the life of Flaubert turned out; but you get the idea. For those thriftier than Emma–and I’d hope you’d be among them–the Cybook is especially worth considering right now. Price of the Win CE machine is $499 over the holidays. That’s a major drop from the customary $738, itself just a fraction of the cost of the typical Tablet PC. No, the Cybook is not as technologically advanced as the Sony or as powerful as a TPC, but it could be just the ticket for serious readers of e-books who would rather not settle for a monochrome screen, even one as sharp as the Librie’s. Librarians and educators would do well to try out the Cybook. The color screen should be a hit with younger readers even if some elementary schoolers may find the machine to be a little too large. While $499 is a bargain by today’s standards, the K-12 community and many others would undoubtedly like for the price to decline still more. May mass production make this possible in the near future!

Significantly for users of most all varieties, the Cybook may be the most adept of the current dedicated e-book devices at coping with the Tower of eBabel. It can read files not just in Mobipocket, one of the better of the proprietary formats, but also in HTML, TXT, at least some version of Word, and nonDRMed PDB. Software to handle nonDRMed Adobe format will be on the way–help for professionals who want high-fi displays of illustrated scientific and technical material. And Bookeen, the Paris-based company behind the Cybook, is negotiating with Microsoft in hopes of picking up Microsoft Reader format. No promises. But let’s root for Microsoft to understand the business advantages of such a deal.

With or without Microsoft’s LIT format, the Cybook has plenty going for it. The Boo Reader developed in-house will even display files based on the production standard from the Open eBook Forum. Bookeen offers a proprietary version of the format, but Laurent Picard, the head of the company, is also gung ho on the nonproprietary OpenReader format that will build on the OeBF specs. Beyond the desire for exposure on the blog circuit, OpenReader is one of the reasons why Laurent graciously sent me the Cybook I’m among OpenReader’s ringleaders and am eagerly looking forward to the time when I can see OpenReader in action on that ten-inch screen. Like the Cybook, OpenReader will excel for display of sophisticated layouts in scientific, technical and mathematical publications.

On top of everything else, Laurent and colleagues share OpenReader’s eagerness to aid the visually impaired, and the Cybook shines in that respect. Not only does the large screen help, but the machine includes other accommodations such as extra-thick letters on the virtual keyboard. In Boo Reader, large fonts are especially easy to conjure up.

The screen–in greater detail

With that whopper of a screen, you may well be a more efficient reader no matter what software you use. The number of words displayed at once will depend on the software in use and the settings, but several hundred will not out of the question–a far cry from the maximum of 150 words that a high-res Sony Clie or similar PDA might show you.

Even a hand-held fan like me–I love Mobipocket’s audio scroll feature as run on my Clie–will be reading faster. The tradeoff for those ten inches is increased weight and size. I won’t be toting around the Cybook for a wait in the doctor’s office, not when the Clie tucks nicely into my back pocket. But most of my reading will be done in my work space or elsewhere at home, so, as a flagship e-reading machine for people like me, the Cybook wins out.

Screen resolution is 800 by 600 pixels, as noted, or 100 dots per inch compared to 170 for the Sony Librie. But the screen is far bigger than the six-incher on the Librie, and the sharpness still will leave most competing products in the dust. The RCA color eBook REB1200 with an 8.2-inch 640X480 screen beats many e-book readers in viewability but lacks the Cybook’s contrast; and the characters look a tad too much like the output of an old dot-matrix printer. Besides, it’s a discontinued model, meaning that Madame Bovary would have had to buy it off eBay. Given the quality of the Cybook’s screen, I wish the more sophisticated machine had been available for Ball State Univerity Prof. Richard Bellaver to use in his valuable research showing that children’s comprehension of e-books is virtually the same as of paper books. Who knows? Maybe some of the students would have absorbed more with the Cybook than off paper.

The Cybook’s 256-color capability isn’t the best, definitely not, but should suffice for the overwhelming major of corporate executives, consultants, writers and others who need to view documents in detail. That’s not all. Recently I read of a blogger who, with last-minute requirements for a business presentation, turned PowerPoint slides into images that the Cybook could digest. Try doing that with your typical Gemstar-type e-book reader (yes, the color ones might be an exception if you have the right software).

In the display department, another positive is that the Cybook display will show either portrait or landscape, the latter of which can be handy either for some presentations or for reading Russian novels with interminable paragraphs. Why, the Cybook would even be up to Faulknerian paragraphs. Alas, not all Gemstars have landscape capability. The Cybook’s can happen through Mobipocket (no rebooting needed) or otherwise (rebooting necessary)

As for screen-related nits, let me say that I observed a very slight flicker. But adjustments of the contrast and brightness controls took care of that, and I’m told this is the case with other users. Another nit is the fact that only software–not physical controls–can change the brightness and contrast. But so what? Most PDAs also rely on software controls, as do the typical Gemstar machines–the RCA’s mechanical ones are an exception. A third nit is that the characters fuzzed up slightly wwhen I used Mobipocket’s autoscroll feature. But then again, with a screen this large, I doubt I’ll autoscrolling as often as with my Sony Clie NX60/U, whose display is a fraction of the size of the Cybook’s.

One other nit is that the LCD must be aimed precisely enough at you to eliminate dark areas–the angle of viewing just isn’t as wide as I’d like, perhaps because the technology isn’t quite current. Here again, however, even though improvements would be welcome, I can nicely live with the existing machine, thank you. The angle issue just isn’t important for me. As a final nit let me observe that the smaller font sizes will still look a bit dot-matrixy, but they aren’t of interest to me anyway.

The really painful fact is that with exceptions such as the Librie, the Cybook’s screen represents dedicated e-book readers at their best in late 2004–even though the technology is several years old. Bookeen, using Hatachi-designed hardware originally introduced by Cytale, for which Laurent Picard once worked, is blameless. Even today, e-bookdom is still reeling from the aftermath of the dotcom bust. If the Cybook proves itself, then Laurent will have the capital to move on to newer technology. Meanwhile he has done a splendid job of updating the old in such areas as screen sharpness.

Other physical aspects: Size, weight, form factor and related usability

Dimensions are 8 by 10.1 by 1 inch, and weight is 35 ounces–this baby dwarfs my Clie and is even bigger than the RCA color e-book. Lots of people, however, would still consider the Cybook to be compact, just a fraction of the size and weight of typical laptops. Besides, remember what you get in return, the 10-inch screen. The Cybook, moreover, is comfortable on my lap at home or the office, or when I am stretched out on a couch. Do keep in mind two of features of the Cybook’s included Mobipocket format. Mobipocket is crossplatform and the DRM lets it run on more than one machine, so that I can keep the same book on both my Clie and the Cybook.

The Cybook’s shape is that of a classic tablet with the lower right part slanting outward slightly for an easier grip. A removable black cover of real or imitation leather protects the screen, and the tablet itself is of gray. Madame Bovary would like the elegance of the physical design.

Page Up and Page Down buttons are on the side and are small. I myself would have preferred an arrangement similar to that of the Gemstar 1100, with these two crucial controls being large rectangular buttons built into the main surface rather than off to the side. But this is strictly an individual preference, and I’m still very happy with the Cybook’s existing arrangement.

One other negative is that because of the size of the screen and of the machine in general, the Cybook is probably not as rugged as the RCA eBook and certainly not as durable as, say, the rubberized Gemstar 1100. Beyond the size, that is one reason why I would prefer a PDA for casual toting around.

Yet another downside, rather minor, is the risk of dust getting under the screen. The solution, as noted in a helpfully illustrated Cybook review from “aRMiTaG3,” is to always keep a stylus in place so dust cannot enter through the stylus hole. No big deal. Simply use a second stylus.

I’ve just described the existing Cybook, with hardware is based on Hitachi’s old design from the year 2000. Now look ahead. Imagine Cybook continuing to sell the present machine but also moving on to smaller, rubberized models and lowering the cost of the latter to $299–perhaps aided by mass purchases. Voila! This economy alternative to a Tablet PC could be catnip for schools and libraries, especially if Bookeeen can make the Cybook work better in interactive applications, which currently suffer for want of a keyboard connection. Back in the 1990s I suggested a “TeleReader” for mass sales to schools and libraries, and a modified Cybook could be the realization of this vision of an e-book-optimized machine that also served other purposes.

The operating system

Get ready to be nostalgic. The Cybook uses Win CE 3.0 rather than the Pocket PC-type OS found on most handhelds. That will limit the range of programs the Cybook can run. But some great news just may come in time. Bookeen is hoping for a linux port to the machine in the future, and meanwhile you get far more functionality than you would with a Gemstar-style device. See the software section below.

Processor

Once again, we’re talking nostalgia. The processor is a Motorola Power PC MPC823e running at 66 megahertz, a fraction of what processors can do in the latest PDAs. But except for, say, searching, you won’t notice the lack of speed. The Cybook would have been more expensive if Bookeen had had to start over again–the company made the right choice to go with here-and-now tech to keep R&D costs down until enough business came its way.

RAM and storage

The Cybook comes with 32 MB of RAM and a flash memory of 16 megabytes. You can buy CompactFlash cards of up to 128 MB from Bookeen (cost: $36.90). The cards work with a PCMCIA slot. You’ll need to buy a CompactFlash-PCMCIA adapter. With 128M, you’ll be able to hold well over 100 books in a compact format such as ASCII.

As an option, for $123, the Cybook store offers a BibliCard collection of 123 French classics. Normally I would protest the price tag, but I’ll go easy on Laurent because, unlike the old Gemstar crew, he is pro-choice and lets readers obtain their own content in a variety of formats shop around for the best price–perhaps even $0.

What books you can read

The Cybook gives you an unlimited choice of books readable for Mobipocket or Boo Reader–or in popular nonproprietary format such as HTML and ASCII. In Mobipocket alone some 20,000 titles are available, a fraction of the books published but still good by the less-than-satisfactory standards of e-bookdom as a whole. I have not used the Cybook to buy proprietary content, but another blogger, Kevin Tofel, reports a satisfactory experience with content from eBook Mall, a California-based store with 100,000 titles. You may also want to read his other impressions of the Cybook.

Of course, your reading won’t be limited just to books, given the ease of reading HTML pages with such included programs as uBook, or of calling them up directly via the Web browser.

The applications software: From e-books to e-mail and Web browsing

At Gemstar, the software mindset in essence was, “Hey, you’re stuck with a standard way of doing things”; but the philosophy at Bookeen is just the opposite. You an read a book in MobiPocket, a Cybook-optimized version of uBook, the homegrown Boo Reader, or Boo Reader Vision. That is why the Cybook is able to handle a variety of formats.

Either approach–the Gemstar one or the Bookeen one–has advantages. With one software reader well integrated with the buttons on the case, a Gemstar machine will be easier for novices to master. Gemstar’s approach, however, limits the possibilities for the interface, at least without a firmware upgrade, which, most likely, will still reflect the manufacturer’s limited choices for you.

I prefer Bookeen’s approach, given the horrors of the present Tower of eBabel. Some documents may work best in Mobipocket, some in uBook. Beyond that, Bookeeen’s CE-oriented approach means that in one swoop it can present users with a wide variety of applications: the aforementioned ones as well a Pocket Word, Pocket Inbox for e-mail, ActiveSync for communication with your desktop or laptop, the PTab Spreadsheet, an audio player, and Web browsing that can be optimized for the visually impaired. I have not yet had a chance to explore the software to the extent I’d like (better to do the review while the sale is on), but already I am highly impressed by the clean interface of Boo. Especially I like the search capability, which lets you simultaneously see multiple occurrences of a phrase in the text. The big negative I’ve found so far is that Boo can be a tad slow in bringing material up and performing some other operations such as searching, at least when a phrase appears often. I’d also like to see text, not just icons, associated with various options, although, given the multinational nature of the machine, I can understand the reason for this.

Please note some app-related limitations that Bookeen plans to address in the future. You cannot plug a keyboard into the USB port, for example, nor can you use a Microsoft ActiveSync with your desktop to browse the Web via Internet Explorer. Browsing can happen only through the Cybook’s 56K modem or, I suspect, a plug-in Ethernet or Wi-Fi card. I, for one, will especially appreciate the ability to use a keyboard–a “must” for most users with heavy email requirements.

Communications

The Cybook offers the following choices: a built-in 56K V90 modem, a USB port (1.5 Mbps), an IRDA infrared port (115.2 Kbps), a serial port (115.2 Kbps) and the PCMCIA port, which you can devote to either storage, Ethernet or WiFi. Another USB port in the future would be welcome. Both the USB port and the serial port work with ActiveSync. Via ActiveSync and Mobipocket Web companion, which I already had running on my Dell Optiplex, I was easily able to transfer files.

Battery life

The Cybook uses a lithium-ion battery, and the charges will last three to five hours–it depends on how far you crank up the brightness. You can call up the battery status by tapping an icon in the lower right of the screen–if you you already have the appropriate program loaded, a requirement I’d like to see eliminated. A somewhat longer battery life might also help, just as it would the RCA color eBook I own. Keep in mind, however, that I view both as machines mainly for home and office use, with the PDA being better for the road.

Documentation

My appreciation to Bookeen for at least including a written manual of at least moderate length. Wasn’t it a bit of a Catch 22 when at least some Gemstar machines came with a brief quick-start manual but nothing else on paper? Just how helpful was this for novices in need of information locked up in the machine? As with the Gemstars, I would prefer a yet more detailed manual that covered such information as the lack of AcuSync capabilities for Web browsing. But the manual is perfectly adequate. Some of the usages are strange to American eyes (for example, a battery-related mention of “4 hours of autonomy”), but in general, the manual is in plain English. What’s more, it contains helpful screenshots.

The bottom line

If you’re a serious reader of e-books and especially if you’re a professional with heavy reading requirements, you’d do well to consider the Cybook at the present price and maybe even at the usual one if your budget allows. The real issue for many users isn’t just money up front. It’s time. If the larger screen lets you read more efficiently and if multiformat capabilities can help you reduce the hassles of the Tower of eBabel, then the Cybook may well be for you. What’s more, when the hi-fi OpenReader format become the industry norm and you want to appreciate complex typography, the superior display will serve you well. Don’t let the older technology in the Cybook put you off–it’s not as if we’re talking 1995 here. Besides, the question isn’t the age but usability. In that area, for serious e-book readers, the Cybook already excels. Just as significantly, the Cybook has a future. Laurent assures me that firmware upgrade will be easy for existing owners, and this Linux talk intrigues me.

Follow-ups: Your opinions cherished

I’d love to hear from other Cybook users–both present and future ones. What do you agree with? Where do you disagree? This machine will be an ongoing project. Email me at dr@teleread.org.

Update, 2:15 pm.: This is a beta version of the review. I’ll be proofreading further, perhaps adding links and doing other tweaks. Speak up if you spot any atrocities. Now off to join Carly in some last-minute holiday shopping in beautiful Statesville, North Carolina.

Update, 7:15 a.m., Christmas Day: I’ve made yet more tweaks. Meanwhile a response has come from Morpheus at mobileread.com, who does not share the overall enthusiasm that aRMiTaG3, Kevin Tofel and I have after actually trying the unit. Thanks for the heads-up, Morpheus. I’d urge you to keep in mind the big picture, as opposed to smaller issues such as screen dust, a solution to which seems to exist. I will be following up with Bookeen for its take on the dust question.

Update, 6:40 p.m., Dec. 26: I modified the headline–originally “The Cybook: A 10-inch color screen for Madame Bovary–and a $499 bargain for other serious readers.” The word “other” is now gone, lest people think that her reading fare itself was always serious. But I believe she would have cared about the means by which the books were displayed. In that sense she was indeed “a serious reader.”

Update, 10:56 a.m., Dec. 27: Looks as if the screen dust issue is a nonissue for the Cybook screen. Also see a post on the uBook program as displayed on that ten-inch screen.

Update, Jan. 29, 2005: Cybook passes Raccoon’s screen test, but complexity annoys her.

Update April 16, 2005: Price is now $399.