Jetbook Color Updated – iPad Still a Better Value
Ectaco rolled out another in their series of monthly updates on Monday (download it here). While the update does add a few minor improvements, the Jetbook Color is still not worth buying.
It’s been just over a month and a half since I last covered the Jetbook Color, which means I missed an update. It was still on loan at the time, and I just got it back a few days ago.
So, the update adds a faster page turns, several new workbook templates, and optional delayed refresh on page turns (3rd or 5th turns). Text to speech is finally working, and it sounds nice. Of course, this is one of Ectaco’s expertise, so I’m not surprised. The Jetbook Color is also supposed to gain speech recognition in this update, but I don’t see a way to enable it. And just to confirm, the page turns are faster, this is true. But they’re still slower than on the Kindle DX.
Those are some nice features, but they don’t amount much when you consider what this device cannot do. For a quick summary you can look at the front of the box. This device cannot do anything pictured there, not the highlighting, attached notes, underlining – nothing. Oh, and the screen image is a lie. The actual screen is far grayer than pictured.
Wifi was enabled a couple months back, but it doesn’t like my network. Also, Ectaco still hasn’t enabled the web browser so even if the Wifi worked I still wouldn’t be able to do anything with it. There’s still no sleep mode, so I consider myself lucky that Ectaco boasts about the battery life.
All in all, the Jetbook Color is not worth getting on 3 May 2012. This may change as more updates are released, but my opinion right now is that the iPad is the better buy.
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