I finally got my hands on one of the Next2 ereaders I showed you a couple months ago. This is a pretty decent ereader, and it was slightly better than I expected.

Read on for my review.

Hardware

This is a minimalist ereader based on an Android tablet. It has a 7″ (800×480) resistive touchscreen, 2GB Flash, a SD card slot, Wifi, accelerometer, a headphone jack, and 2 page turn buttons. It runs Android v1.5. It ships with a reversible case, USB cord, and power supply.

You can’t swap the page turn buttons, but I didn’t find that to be such a problem. And TBH, I’m pleased just to have the buttons. I have the feeling that this was a hybrid design. They took a tablet and changed it just enough to make it a usable ereader.

The resistive touchscreen is the good kind (trust me, there’s a difference) and I thought it was easy to use and more responsive than some I’ve had my hands on. This tablet lacks the 3 standard Android buttons, but that’s okay. They’re on the taskbar at the top of the screen.

Apps

Since the Next2 runs v1.5, you will have trouble installing apps. So it’s good that it ships with certain basics such as a file manager, web browser, email, an app store, as well as a Youtube app. All are the basic apps you’d find on any Android tablet and they work fine, with the exception of the Youtube app.

Update: The Next2 got a firmware update early this year. Current models should be running Android v2.1, a much newer version of the OS.  it should be a lot easier to find and install apps.

As you might know, the Youtube app for Android can’t play all Youtube videos. But this one might be kinda funky. I’ve searched for my standard test clips and I can’t find them. This is rather odd. I’ve found them with other versions of the Youtube app, so I really don’t know why they don’t turn up on the Next2.

The app store is one I’ve seen before. It’s okay, but it’s one of the smaller stores and the selection isn’t very good. It also doesn’t help you screen for compatible apps.

Sidenote: if you’re interested, one of my test videos on Youtube is "High on Firefly". I use it for an audio test because there is one particular word that poor speakers will screw up. Play the video and listen for the line "he lives by one law – Murphy’s". If the last word sounds like "herpes" then the speakers are poor quality.

Video & Audio

It ships with video and audio players, yes. I don’t have the hearing to judge audio, but I watched the included  clip and it was shown full screen at 30 fps without dropping any frames. For a budget tablet, that is impressive. But then I played a couple clips I shot myself. The Next2 can’t handle MOV 720p at 30fps.The video and audio don’t stay in sync.

I don’t expect it to play full screen, but I think it should at least be able to handle the file and gracefully downgrade it. I have other tablets that can do that much.

Reading Experience

The Next2 is tied to the Borders ebookstore, and the registration process is a pain. They want me to enter my Adobe ID, which tells me that this isn’t using the borders/kobo app, just the Borders ebookstore. Fortunately, you don’t have to have a Borders account to read your own ebooks.

Sidenote: I usually don’t bother to authorize my ereaders. I will do it sometimes in order to make sure a particular device can or if I’m helping someone troubleshoot. But it’s generally too much of a nuisance. As a rule I download an ebook and strip the DRM right away. It’s much less hassle to just get rid of it right away. DRM is a pain in the ass.

The only annotation option is bookmarks, and the only font option is font size (5 sizes). But it does at least have TOC support and a jump to page option.

Page turn speed was okay for both Epub and PDF (when not in zoom mode). When you zoom in on a PDF, page turn is quite slow. But on the upside you can use the touchscreen to scroll around each page of the PDF.

The Next2 can’t reflow PDFs, only zoom. This isn’t much of a problem for a 7″ screen, but the Next2 also can’t crop the PDF (remove the white space around the edges). That is a shortcoming, because on 7″ screen the standard PDF is quite readable if you can crop it.

Opinion

All in all, I’m rather pleased with this ereader. It’s comfortable to hold and page turns are reasonably fast. But it’s also rather heavy, and I’m concerned about the battery life when it’s left in standby. Be sure to turn off the Wifi when you’re not using it. I didn’t and the Next 2 kept trying to stay connected to my home network (even though it was in sleep mode). This drained the battery in only a few days.

 

The UK publisher Dorling Kindersley have just announced the launch of their app store where they now sell Android apps to the public. You can also vist their store to find links to Tunes so you can buy iOS apps.

Technically, the store is being run by Handango, not DK. Not that I’m criticizing; it makes sense that they’re using someone’s platform (it costs less than developing their own).

The app store currently has 2 sections, one for the US and the other for the UK. DK are also planning to add more sections for Canada and Australia, but I don’t understand why they’re hamstringing themselves this way. A digital market is a digital market; geographic restrictions shouldn’t matter.

ALso, I spent a few minutes looking at apps for phones that DK don’t have apps for  (Symbian, Blackberry).  DK aren’t doing a very good job of excluding other company’s apps from their app store. I suppose that’s okay, but how is it a DK App Store if it has everyone else’s apps?

DK App Shop via The BookSeller

The Open Library have just announced an updated version of their BookReader. This web baed reading app is designed to work with Open Library’s ebooks as well as the Internet Archive’s collection.

You know that the Internet Archive, the patron saint of deceased websites, try to archive everything, right? Well, the IA have a pretty extensive collection of scanned pd works converted to PDF as well as a large library of CC and user uploaded titles. That’s what the BookReader is for.

Some of the improvements include:

• Redesigned user interface that maximizes the amount of space given to the book. Click the down arrow on the navigation bar to hide the user interface. (The Origin of Species)
• Navigation bar that helps show your location in the book and navigate through it. Search results and chapter markers (if available) show up on the navigation bar.
• New Read Aloud feature reads the book as audio in most browsers.  No special software is needed – just click the speaker icon  and go!
• Tables of contents are being automatically generated for most books and can be edited or added manually through the Open Library site.  The chapter markers appear in the new navigation bar. (Launching Out Into The Deep in Wake of the War Canoe)
• Vastly improved full-text search.  Search results are shown on the navigation bar and include a snippet of text near the matched search term. (Search results for “hawk” in book of birds)

The read aloud isn’t that bad (Blio is much worse). If you’d like to see a live demo, click here:

The AAP have released their report on book sales in the US market for October 2010.  I don’t have a opy yet, but GalleyCat uploaded one to Scribd (thanks, Jason).

Ebook sales for October were $40.7 million, which is only slightly different from sales in September, August, and July. I’ve said it before, so I won’t bore you with a repetition. But sales have plateaued.

BTW, do you remember that chart I made a few weeks ago? One prediction I made was that the NC would cause a jump in sales.  It didn’t, but it also turned out not to be as popular as anticipated.

AAP Reports October Book Sales

It looks like no one noticed that Kobo announced their ebook gifting yesterday.

From the Kobo blog:

Give the gift of eReading…

Now you can easily share and give eBooks to your friends and family.  This is a great way to send a personalized, thoughtful gift, while avoiding the holiday rush and the crazy mall madness.

Kobo offers Kobo eGift Cards in a selection of fun and festive eCard designs to select from and send by email. The eGift Cards are delivered instantly (or by scheduled delivery) and can be redeemed anytime.

Kobo also offers the ability to gift an eBook! Have you just finished a book that you love and know that your friend would absolutely love the same book?  Now you can purchase and gift that book to your friend, so that they receive it on a special occasion – or just because!  eGift cards and eBook gifting are both great ways to send a gift to a friend or loved one who is far away to let them know that you are thinking of them during the holiday season.

I’ve been watching the tablet vs ereader debate for some time now, and I decided that it’s time to take a position. Tablets will probably never replace ereader for one simle reason:

COST.

Take an ereader with a 7″ screen. Add a touchscreen, a faster CPU, and Android OS (don’t forget the increased dev cost). Put it all together and you now have a tablet – which costs $50 to $100 more than the ereader. The cost will be even higher if you also wanted a camera, GPS, or any other extra features.

As it gets cheaper to make tablets, ereaders will also get cheaper. And they’ll stay cheaper simply becuase ereaders have fewer hardware components.

But wait, you say. There’s already a $150 tablet to compete with the $139 Kindle.  True, but does that tablet do the Kindle’s job as well as the Kindle?

Now, when we get a decent $100 tablet, that’s when the ereader market might start to feel the pinch. The profit margin will be so thin by that point that tablet features might show up on ereader becuase there is little money  saved by leaving them out.

By that point, though, I’m not sure we’ll still be calling them tablets or ereaders. The market will have changed to much.

Smarthouse, an Australian blog,  discussed yesterday’s Google bookstore launch with the managing director of Borders Australia (part of Redgroup Retail). He gives basically the same opinion as what I told you yesterday; Google can’t run an ebookstore becuase they suck at customer service.

James Webber, Managing Director of Borders, said that at this stage they do not see themselves as being threatened and that what Google is offering is not a legitimate bookstore.

"They could become a legitimate bookstore. They aren’t today," said Webber. "They tried to sell telephones too. They failed," added Webber.

He’s more worried about Amazon, with good reason. Amazon have already taken a bite out of Redgroup’s market share since the Kindle came to Australia in May.

Smarthouse

If not for the valid Archos email address given as contact, I would have thought this was another knockoff.

Archos are planning an ereader, and it just cleared the FCC. We can’t tell much from the FCC docs, but it looks like it’s based on a 7″ touch screen and runs Android. It has Wifi, a SD card slot, and ships with the basic abilities (like web browsing).

I do find it interesting that Archos are going down the same path as everyone else. Look at the manual, and you’ll see they’re using a custom home screen. But the thing is, it looks pretty much like everyone else’s custom home screen. Interesting.

FCC

Do you recall that big story last week about Amazon charging for public domain ebooks? Did you nootice how much publicity it got? Well, apparently Amazon noticed, and according to Morris Rosenthal of Foner Books, Amazon has started bouncing pd ebooks from the Kindle Store. He got this email from Amazon:

We’re implementing a new policy that addresses the customer experience problem caused by multiple, undifferentiated copies of public domain titles in our Kindle catalog.

Our vision is to have high-quality editions of every public domain title in the world available on Kindle, including a free edition of each, and to avoid the confusion that is caused by having a large number of undifferentiated (or barely differentiated) versions of each.

To protect the customer experience we have decided to stop accepting and selling duplicate, undifferentiated versions of public domain titles where there is a free edition already available for sale.  As a result, we are removing the following title(s) for sale on our web site:

Charles Dickens Tale Of Two Cities (The Works Of Charles Dickens) by Dickens, Charles, Digital Item ID: 847429

Don’t take this as a criticism of Morris; he’s been following this issue for a while and only submitted that ebook as a experiment. He’s not trying to profit off pd ebooks; he just wanted to see what would happen.

I’m hoping that if we draw enough attention to the fact that Amazon is pruning the Kindle Store, we might see other stores follow suit.

Now this is a weird one.

The lens manufacturer  Quantaray have decided to start carrying an Android tablet. It runs v2.1 and is based on a 7″ resistive touchscreen with a 720MHz CPU, 2GB Flash, a miniSD card slot, Wifi, camera, USB Host, speaker, microphone, and 3 hours battery life.

You can buy it from Ritz Camera for $199.

BTW, I want you to take another look at the picture. Can you see the ripple in the bevel around the screen? The screen contents are an obvious photoshop on top of an actual photo of the tablet. That ripple pattern is a sign of poor manufacturing.

Also, if this really does have a minSD card slot then for that alone you should pass. miniSD is the size in between microSD and regular SD. It’s not all that common anymore; this is the first in a very long time that I found a device that used it. (Good luck trying to find a cheap compatible card.)

Ritz Camera

I decided to get a head start on all the pundits that tomorrow are going to post  stories with titles like "GE will Kill the Kindle". I’m not going to discuss the obvious format issue (I don’t think it’s that important). But I did find a problem. I’ve been looking over GE since it launched this morning, and I think it’s missing a critical component.

Customer service.

This is Google’s biggest failing.

I recall back when Google  were selling movies online, and what happened when they canceled the service.  Anyone who’d bought one was simply SOL. Google only reversed their position after a public outcry.

I recall when Google killed a bunch of music blogs without warning, and I recall how several never did get back online (in spite of following Google’s procedures).

I recall a bunchaton of stories about owners of Google phones asking for tech help and the only response they got was a link to a FAQ (if that).

And then there is Google Books, where Google are letting claim a copyright on pd titles.

I’m looking over the GE website today, and there’s no clear way to reach out to Google if you have a problem. (Okay, there is one, but it’s hidden at the bottom of the page. You’ll only find it if you know it’s there.) Google are good at building monolithic systems, but they’re not good at catching what falls through the cracks.

On the other hand, Google could prove me wrong.

Overdrive announced another library ereader cheat sheet last week. This one, like the last, shows ereaders that are compatible with Overdrive’s ebook library system.  But this one differs from the last in that it was made for the user, not the librarian.

There’s a big problem with it becuase it is woefully incomplete. leaving aside the fact that it shows only one of the Pandigital Novels and only 1 of the Literati, it’s missing 3 manufacturers.  Pocketbook (6 models), Bookeen (3 models), and Bebook (4 models) aren’t listed, and that’s just the big guys.

Folks, you can’t claim that this is for everyone when you forget to include half the market.

PDF

P.S. Here's another ereader cheat sheets I’ve blogged about in the past.

I’m in the middle of a very unpleasant experience with Dell, and I’m tired of this shit.

My issue with Dell stems from the fact that I have a Next Business Day service contract with Dell and what exactly that means. If you visit Dell’s website, you will find "Next Business Day Service" defined literally. Contact Dell on Monday before 5m and you will get a service tech out on Tuesday. That detail is on Dell’s website in any number of places.

But if you ask Dell tech support, "Next Business Day" means that they’ll send a part to the tech and he’ll contact you the day after he recieves the part.

WTF?!?

There are a couple serious problems with that statement. I’ll start with the obvious. First, what their tech support describes as "Next Business Day Service" is the ordinary service I would have expected with a service contract. That was an option when I bought my laptop, but I chose to pay extra for faster service.  Second, when I bought my laptop from Dell I checked and "Next Business Day Service" meant just that. I paid extra in order to guarantee that I would have as little downtime as possible. I know what the contract said when I signed it. "Next Business Day Service" meant exactly that.

Leaving aside my issues with Dell, here’s the larger issue. Dell say one thing on their website and have their tech support say another. At the very least this is duplicitous, but I think it would be more accurate to simply call it lying to their customers. I wonder if it rises to the level of fraud?

Now I did eventually get the service specified in my contract, but only after 6 emails demanding they honor the terms on their website and after it was escalated to executive customer service. So it is possible to get Dell to live up to their side of the deal. But it’s too much effort, so I’m going elsewhere for my next computer.

BTW, I’ve had this laptop for 4 years now and I can say with reasonable certainty that Dell have not been honoring the warranty for at least the last year. It probably goes further back, but I cannot find emails to support it. About a year ago I killed my keyboard again (I go through them every 8 months or so) and requested a replacement from Dell. They mailed me one and told me to install it myself. HAHAHAHA Um, no. I have the service contract so I _don’t_ have to do this myself, not to mention the fact I don’t have any experience with repairing laptops.

Has anyone else caught Dell trying to cheat them?

P.S. Now I understand why there are so many Google search results for dell sucks. I thought they were just malcontents. My apologies.