Do you remeber the old Choose Your Own Adventure books? Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing have decided to revive the concept with book apps. They’ve released one title so far, Return to the Cave of Time, with more titles coming in the fall.
It’s unfortunate that they took so long to release this. It doesn’t have to be done as an app and could quite easily have been done in Mobipocket/Kindle. I know that I could have designed it.
As someone who read CYOA books back in the 1980’s I couldn’t resist.I immediately downloaded and read it. I’m kinda glad that this is an app. They’ve taken advantage of the possibilities of a book app and integrated some interesting backgrounds and sound into the story.
It’s worth getting. You can find it in iTunes for $3.99.
If you’re thinking about getting this tablet then this review will definitely make up your mind.
Verdict
The GenTouch78 was never going to be a powerhouse or the most desirable tablet this side of the iPad, but even at $149 it’s a waste of money. The Archos 7 Home Tablet, which was no prize in itself, is a better choice, as the company at least includes media codecs. Yes, having the Android Market (assuming Augen can get it working) and core apps on a tablet is a treat, but they don’t make up for this slate’s awful resistive screen, awkward button placement, and other deficiencies. We can see hackers and tinkerers potentially gravitating toward the GenTouch78 as a cheap Android testbed, but for general consumers, it’s not worth the investment.
Yesterday I reported on remarks about tablets made by Rupert Murdoch. I mentioned that I thought tablets were a fad, and a friend sent me an email and asked why.
Fad isn’t the quite the right word, but I think the hype exceeds reality. I have this feeling that tablets are about to go through the same cycle as netbooks (or ereaders, for that matter).
The original netbook niche (7″ to 9″ screens) is dead. What’s left are actually underpowered laptops (which aren’t terribly different from ones being made before netbooks became hot). What killed off netbooks was the small screen and keyboard. They weren’t all that nice to use, so people went back to laptops.
I think tablets will fail for much the same reason. I don’t think most tablet advocates have really thought through whether a tablet will be pleasant to use. The short of it is that a lot of people will jump into making apps for tablets. Most of the apps will suck and the user experience will be poor. This will cause most users to go back to using something else. We’ve already seen how a poor UE affected netbooks.
Basically I’m expecting the average user to walk up to a tablet display at Best Buy next year, try to use a tablet, and walk away dissatisfied. TBH, that was my experience with an eee701 at Target.
In fact, I’m not even sure tablets will get big enough to warrant a display at Best Buy. If you’ve been following tablet news for the past couple months then you know that both of the splashiest releases (Pandigital and Augen) didn’t go so well. The tablet market has jumped past the high end models and gone straight to the crappy knockoffs. Long before the big name manufacturers can get their tablets out the door, the word tablet will have a negative connotation.
P.S. Laptop Mag reviewed the Augen Gentouch78 yesterday. That’s one of the 2 splashy releases I was talking about.
So B&N are thinking about putting the company up for sale and try to go private. From the press release:
Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller, today announced that its Board of Directors intends to evaluate strategic alternatives, including a possible sale of the company, in order to increase stockholder value. The Board came to this decision based on the price of Barnes & Noble shares in the marketplace, which the Board believes are now significantly undervalued.
There’s a lot of talk about who should buy the company, and I’ve decided to take the radical position: no one. I think B&N should rebrand themselves as a web retailer. The income generated by the stores has gone down for the last 3 years in a row. Only the website is doing well. I think they should give up on the brick and mortar presence entirely.
Of course, the Kindle doesn’t work well with textbooks so that’s not saying much.
I’ve spent the last couple hours with NookStudy and while it has a number of usability issues, it is still the best desktop reading app on the market. It also fills a need. It’s the first decent desktop reading app that supports Adobe DRM (I loaded ebooks bought elsewhere). Yes, I’m familiar with Adobe DE; I think it’s crap. You should use NookStudy instead.
NookStudy is better than either the Kindle4PC or Adobe DE becuase it provides so many more annotation and search options. It also has a better looking design than the fugly one used by Adobe DE.
With NookStudy you don’t just have the basic highlights, notes, and bookmarks. Instead, you have multiple types of annotations (highlight, asterisk, question) and you can do asterisks and questions in 7 different colors. You can also attach text notes as well as search Wikipedia, Google, Dictionary.com, Wolfram Alpha, and Youtube. And I just noticed that you can attach a link to the webpage you just found through the search. Attaching the link isn’t easy, but it can be done.
Now I’m really impressed. I love that I can search Dictionary.com, Wolfram Alpha, and Youtube. I think this might be the killer feature for NookStudy (like indexed search was for the Kindle).
Some of the other neat features include having multiple ebooks open in tabs, and a second TOC for annotations. They’re rather straightforward so I won’t go into detail.
Do you know what I think? I think B&N just made themselves the leading textbook platform. Aside from the niche textbook platforms, this is the best on the market.
David Carnoy over at CNet sat down with Ian Freed. There’s nothing really new aside from this one question:
CNET: Well, Apple’s saying it’s got 20 percent market share and I’ve heard Barnes & Noble saying it’s got 20 percent as well, so that would leave you guys with…
Freed: Honestly, something doesn’t add up because we’re pretty sure we’re 70 to 80 percent of the market. So, something, somewhere isn’t quite working right. I encourage you to do some more research. Obviously, from the beginning of Amazon we’ve been very metrics-focused and we don’t typically throw out numbers we don’t firmly believe in. Take that 70 to 80 percent number and add up all the others and something somewhere isn’t going to add up.
Footnote: The 20% claimed by Apple was a deliberate obfuscation on the part of Steve Jobs. What they 20% really means is that the 5 big publishers reported that 20% of their income comes from iBooks. Obviously that’s a lot less than 20% of the market.
For sometime now Mike Cane has been saying that Kindle is the de facto industry standard. I have to agree with him. I’m sorry, but there’s no other way to look at it.
There was a rather interesting story on the GoodGearGuide blog Saturday:
The nonprofit organization One Laptop Per Child wants to join forces to help develop the Indian government’s planned US$35 tablet.
In a congratulatory note to the government, OLPC Chairman Nicholas Negroponte said the world needs the $35 tablet, and he offered the country full access to OLPC hardware and software technology.
I snickered a little at Negroponte, a man who never accomplished any of his pricing goals, offering the Indian program assistance with something he has failed to do. Heck, the only way he accomplished the $100 tablet was by co-opting a Marvel design.
Admittedly, we don’t know that the Indian tablet will succeed, but I think it has a better chance than OLPC.
So I was sitting last night, pondering the Kindle announcement, when I realized that the ereader price war was over and the company who started the war shot themselves in the foot.
You see, unlike most people I don’t date the beginning of the ereader price war to when B&N announced the Nook Wifi. No, I think Kobo started the war when they announced their ereader back in March. They priced it over $100 less than the other leading ereaders; basically they were selling it at cost. Now that they aren’t selling as many as they expected, they are likely losing money on each sale.
The problem with pricing the ereader that low is that it forced everyone else to respond. I don’t think B&N would have set the Nook Wifi at $149 if the Kobo had cost more. I think B&N would have been happy to price it higher and make more per unit.
Here’s my point: Kobo isn’t an unfortunate victim of the price war; they are their own worst enemy.
I stopped by my local Kmart store Monday night, and much to my surprise they had The Book in stock. I bought one, and I opened the box before before leaving the parking lot. I have to say I’m rather impressed. It’s not perfect, but in the sub $100 price range it’s fairly good.
decent battery life (I’m expecting at least 15+ hours)
can be used one handed
decent build quality
accelerometer
works in sunlight
Low points
poor keyboard
few annotation options
it keeps forgetting the SD card
really bad Wifi reception
In the box
Normally I’d skip this part, but I wanted to point out that there is a user manual with a CD. It has the calibre install files on it on it. I just find that rather amusing, that’s all. You also get the following in the box:
The Book ereader
case
USB cable
power supply
user manual
The Book also comes with 150 ebooks from Project Gutenberg. I would delete them if I were you. You can get much better copies elsewhere for free.
Hardware
It’s a Kindle clone, obviously. I’ve covered the specs before (here), so I’ll just give a brief description. It has a 7″ LCD screen (not a touch screen) and there are 4 buttons to the left and 2 buttons to the right of the screen. Beneath the screen is a keyboard, joystick, and several extra buttons (menu, back, symbol). All the ports and card slots are on the bottom edge and the battery is not user accessible. On the bottom edge we have power jack, USB port (mini-B), headphones, SD card slot, and power button.
My first concern was that the long screen + keyboard would make the ereader feel big and awkward. Nope. It is bigger than the Kindle, but I think it has just the right proportions. It’s difficult to explain the aesthetics, but they work.
The screen wasn’t what I was expecting, though. It is completely usable for reading or browsing, but I don’t think a video buff would be happy. It’s backlit, and you can adjust the setting. I spent some time outside, and I’d say that this screen is definitely usable in full sun.
I like where the page turn buttons are placed. They are at just the right height so this is one handed ereader for either hand. The keyboard OTOH isn’t very usable. You might not want to use it to take extensive notes because all the punctuation is accessed with the alt key (rather like some smartphones). But if you’re used to typing at length on a smartphone, you might not mind. BTW, the punctuation is printed in a really tiny font. I have to hold The Book about 6″ away from my face before I can tell which button I want to push.
The way you select the punctuation is kind of funky. Take the exclamation point, for example. It’s printed above the letter q, but alt+q doesn’t work. Instead you have to do shift+1. I wish they’d stuck with one or the other.
It comes with a basic black pocketbook style case. Even though it has a cheap feel to it I’m still glad to have it. When closed it looks good, and when open it makes it easier to hold The Book. The case is a plus.
Software
It has a browser, music & video players, and a Notepad app as well as the reading app. You can also buy ebooks from the device, and it supports Adobe DE DRM. I’m going to pass on the video and audio players; they’re adequate extras but they aren’t good enough for them to be the main reason you get this ereader.
BTW, while you can buy ebooks from the The Book, I wouldn’t. The ebookstore doesn’t have good prices, so you’re better off buying elsewhere.
Browser
I tried the browser, and the The Book found my Wifi network on first try. Load time for Google was good. Then it choked when I tried to get it to load GMail (that wasn’t fair, I know).
Curiously enough, opening the browser the second time didn’t cause the The Book to reconnect to my home network. I had to turn on the Wifi and connect manually. But it did remember my password.
Unfortunately, I have to say that this is not a usable browser. The Wifi range is shorter than any of my other gadgets. I couldn’t do a demo video because The Book couldn’t see the router 15 feet away in the next room.
It also takes too long to scroll the screen. You have to use the joystick to maneuver the cursor from the top of the screen to the bottom. Each time the screen refreshes the cursor will be back at the top of the screen.
And the browser is also very slow at loading pages. But the upside is you can download ebooks from Feedbooks and the like (if you’re close to the router).
NotePad
This app is very basic. It’s strictly a note taking app and it doesn’t have any formatting options. Even so, I have the feeling that if I used the The Book for any length of time I could adapt my 4 finger typing style to the Notepad app. I think I could get used to it (if not for the punctuation issues).
Library
This had a number of bugs and was short on features. It has folder support, which is good. But that’s all it has. It doesn’t have any sorting, search, or index options. It kept forgetting the SD card. Also, it insisted on using folder icons for all files. I had to guess which icon was the ebook.
Reading Experience
I tried both Epub and PDF. The Book supports Adobe DRM so I assumed that these formats would have the best support. PDF was a major disappointment. There was no reflow option, nor could I auto crop the white space. All I could do was zoom in. I also couldn’t rotate the screen (some of my PDFs are wide, not tall).
There were 5 fonts offered for Epub, which is good because the default is ugly and it added extra spaces before punctuation. Aside from bookmarks, I didn’t see any annotation abilities or a dictionary. Boy is that weird. Why else have a keyboard if not to add notes?
You can set the margins and justification for Epub, and that’s a plus. It also has TTS, but it’s rather mechanical. It’s not as good as the Kindle’s, but I was expecting that.
Conclusion
Augen The Book has solid hardware, a nice case, and it meets my minimum requirements for reading ability. Even though I had problems with the Wifi, this is still a very good ereader if you can get it for $89. I would not get it at the $139 price; for only $10 more you can get the Nook Wifi.
EDIT: This post combines several posts about Sharp and its ereader effort.
Sharp just held a press conference and announced their intent to sell ereaders and open an ebookstore. You can see their 2 models at left; specs for the 5.5″ and 10″ device were not released. They also mentioned that they were in discussions with Verizon to enter the US market (as well as Japan).
Curiously enough, Sharp are planning to use a custom ereader format. It sounds like they picked this over Epub because it has better video and audio support.
Update: PCWorld have more details on Sharp’s ebook format. Sharp already have 29k ebooks in this format from major Japanese publishers, as well as reading apps for Windows PCs, cell phones and Sharp’s own electronic dictionaries & Aquos televisions.
With 5.5-inch and 10.8-inch versions the reader can also play audio and video as well as show words and pictures. The multimedia reader is referred to as an Next Generation XMDF device because it is an advance on the 2001 original XMDF that was sold for Japanese novels and manga comics. Later this year Sharp will launch a digital platform to promote e-book distribution.
Next Generation XMDF is described by Sharp as a "core technology". As well as video, audio pictures and words the next-generation XMDF allows publishers to set the layout of a downloaded magazine automatically. The reader was unveiled in July at a Japanese press conference.
I’m looking forward to the new format, actually. It fills a need that Epub and Kindle formats can’t.
Sharp to End Production of the Galapagos eReaders
Sharp just announced that they were killing the 5.5″ and 10.8″ Galapagos ebook readers. Sharp launched these gadgets last fall in Japan and had also planned to launch them in the US, although there is no sign that any were ever sold,
Sharp will stop accepting orders for the tablets at the end of the month. There’s no mention of why they’re being killed, but they are last year’s model.
The ebookstore that Sharp launched to support the ereaders will stay open and it looks like Sharp plan to follow through on the 7″ Galapagos A01SH model they announced last month, though no release date has been set. It will have a high resolutions screen (1024×600), a pair of cameras (5MP and 2MP), Wifi, and it will be running Android v3.2 Honeycomb a Nvidia Tegra 2 dual core CPU. Battery life will be in the region of 7 to 8 hours.
I’ve been waiting for for more detail on this ereader for some time now, and it just popped up yesterday.
When I first heard about the Wink, I thought it would be just an ereader. It turns out that it will be a family of (ereaders with screen raging from 5″ to 9″) by EC Media, a Bangalore based tech company.
Details are still sparse, but I do know that DC Books, EC Mdia’s publishing partner, have already signed HarperCollins and Penguin to supply ebooks for the Wink. Also, the ebooks will be encumbered by Adobe DRM.
There were 5 models listed, and they’re supposed to be available in mid July:
6-inch screen display with WiFi priced at Rs. 11,499 ($246)
6-inch screen display with WiFi, GPRS, Text to Speech (TTS) for Rs. 13,499 ($289)
6-inch screen display with WiFi, 3G, TTS to be made available at Rs. 15,499 ($331)
9-inch screen display with WiFi, 3G, TTS and Touch Screen for Rs.17,499 ($375)
Augen’s The Book (a Kindle clone) very quietly appeared at Kmart this week with a retail of $89. FYI: that price is a lot cheaper than the $129 we’d seen previously. The supply seems to be rather limited, so you might want to hurry. My local store only received 2, and both went fast. Also, the product page has been removed from Kmart’s website.
I don’t have one, and I don’t know when I will be able to get one. I had contacted Augen just over a month ago, and after exchanging a few emails they promised to lend me one to review. Well, that didn’t happen. By the time I found out that they weren’t going to send me one, my local Kmart store didn’t have any left.
P.S. If you get one, I’d like to hear from you. It looks interesting, and I really wanted to see it.
EDIT: This post combines a number of posts about the discount grocery chain Aldi.
Do you want to know how to tell when a market niche has gone mainstream? Well, one sign is that the discount grocery store chain Aldi start carrying it.
According to ereader nieuws, Aldi stores in the Netherlands will soon be selling the ProMedia ereader for 229 euros. If the picture is correct then this ereader was made by Benq, and you can find it elsewhere in Europe for 260 to 330 euros.
This ereader has a touch screen, 2GB Flash, a microSD card slot, web browser, and supports Adobe DRM.
Aldi Launches the Medion LifeTab Android Tablet – $99, 7″ Screen, Dual-Core CPU
Having sold PCs, cameras, laptops, and even the occasional ebook reader, the German-born grocery store chain Aldi is no stranger to selling budget electronics. And today they are selling a tablet.
Would you like a budget tablet with your discount groceries?
I have just learned that the Medion LifeTab E7312, which had previously been launched in Aldi’s UK, Dutch, and German stores, is now available in the US with a retail price of $99. This tablet sports an unnamed dual-core CPU with a pair of cameras, a decent resolution screen, and otherwise eye-catching specs.
Like many other current budget tablets, the Medion LifeTab E7312 runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. It has a 7″ screen with a resolution of 1024 x 600, a dual-core 1.4GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, Bluetooth, and Wifi.
It also has a g-sensor, a single speaker on the back, 2 cameras (a VGA webcam and a 2MP rearcam), 8GB of storage, and a microSD card slot. Retail price is $99, and it’s in stores now.
It’s often difficult to prejudge a tablet just based on the specs, but I can tell you that hardly any tablets at the $99 price point have 2 cameras, and more than a few only have 4GB of storage. Just on those 2 points alone the Medion LifeTab E7312 comes out ahead.
But will the performance live up to the specs? I don’t know, but I can say that Aldi has a reputation for providing a good value for the price. I think there’s a good chance they’ll keep that reputation.
Aldi is now carrying a budget ereader in its stores in Belgium. It doesn’t look like much, and frankly we don’t know much about it, but it does offer a new option for readers.
The Billow BK6031L has a 6″ E-ink screen with touchscreen and frontlight. It packs in 4GB internal storage and a microSD card slot, but there’s no mention anywhere online of Wifi, audio, or the actual screen resolution. So of course buyer beware.
Lesen.net is saying that there is no Wifi, and my gut says they’re probably right. If that is true then a reader is going to have to transfer ebooks over USB (both Epub and PDF are supported, including DRMed ebooks).
Some would say that this is beyond the skills of most ereader owners, and that they would be better off with the basic Kindle (which is 20 euros cheaper in Germany), but there have been any number of budget ereaders launched in Europe (especially in Germany) with similar limitations and they did well.
With a retailer that operates in as many countries as Aldi, I regularly read of its first offering of a product. But in the case this ereader from Billow, what we have here is at least the third ereader sold by Aldi. I know of a model with a 7″ LCD screen which was sold in Australia in 2012, and Aldi also sold a 6″ ereader in the Netherlands in 2010.
Aldi Rebrands a Budget Onyx eReader in Belgium – 79 Euros
The European branches of Aldi have been slapping the Aldi brand on other company’s ereaders since 2010. Last year it was an unidentified model from an unknown Chinese company, but this year Aldi is going upscale.
Aldi Belgium is now listing an unnamed 6″ ereader for 79 euros. It’s going to be in stores next week, and comes with a case.
Based on the screen contents, the Aldi ereader shows every sign of being an Onyx model. It has a 6″ screen, frontlight, and touchscreen.The screen resolution is not mentioned, but the listing does say that it has 4GB internal storage and a microSD card slot. There’s also no mention of audio, and given the price I would not expect it.
If you get your hands on one, let me know what you find. I’m curious which Onyx model we’re looking at.
Aldi to Open eBookstore in Germany
Over the past six years the grocery store chain Aldi has released branded ereaders and tablets in the UK, Australia, Germany, and other countries.
Now it is getting into ebooks.
Starting on 20 October, Aldi will be selling ebooks in its home market of Germany through a new service called Aldi life eBooks. The service will offer a paltry million titles which can be read through a matching Android app.
There’s no mention by Aldi of an app for iPhone or iPad, but the announcement does say that you can read on a PC. (SeveralGermansites say there will be an iOS app, but it’s not clear whether that is true or an assumption.)
Aldi will be bundling the new app with an Android tablet which launches next Thursday. The Medion E6912 E-Tab is a 7″ tablet which cost 129 euros and runs Android 6.0 on a quad-core CPU with 1GB RAM. It will be carried by both parts of Aldi (Aldi Nord and Aldi Sud) and will come with a 10 euro credit for Aldi Live eBooks.
Aldi is getting into ebooks rather late, but this venture is less about ebooks for their own sake than a more general move into digital content and services. Also also offers prepaid phone cards under the Aldi Talk brand, and it has a streaming music service: Aldi life Musik.
In a way, Aldi is copying Tesco’s failed attempt to launch a digital content sub, Blinkbox. That effort included ebooks, videos, and music, but it shut down last year after it was sold off for parts and the ebook customers were handed off to Kobo.
It would be easy to assume that Aldi’s venture into digital is as doomed as Tesco’s, but it’s worth remembering that Tesco spent a lot of money buying and building Blinkbox and then shut it down when the company did not provide the expected return. We have no similar evidence that Aldi hs made a similar investment in a money-losing property.
Aldi Opens eBookstore in Austria
Last October the discount retailer Aldi launched an ebookstore and digital music store in Germany. Now it has brought the same service to Austria under Aldi’s Hofer brand.
Hofer Life features a music service supported by Napster and an ebook service supplied by an unnamed company.
The Hofer Life eBooks app has not been released yet, but we do know that the Aldi Life eBooks app was developed the by Lenovo subsidiary Medion.
Localreports say that Hofer Life eBooks offers over a million ebook titles, including 400,000 German language titles. All the major publishers are on board, including comic book publishers DC and Marvel.
Hofer Life eBooks will have Android and iOS apps, and in the hardware department, Hofer is complimenting the ebookstore with a matching Android tablet. Launching tomorrow, the
Launching tomorrow, the Medion E6912 E-Tab is a 99 euro table with a 7″ screen. It runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow on a 1.3GHz quad-core CPU with 1GB RAM and 8GB internal storage.
This tablet also has 3Ah battery, a microSD card slot, Wifi, and a SIM card slot for cellular connectivity. It comes bundled with a 10 euro credit for Hofer Life eBooks and a 60-day ps the music streaming app Hofer Life Music.
Digitimes are reporting that China’s ereader market isn’t growing as fast as they previously predicted, and they think it will total around 1m ereader sold in 2010. China Mobile have only ordered around 40k ereaders to be sold under their brand instead of Digitimes' predicted 1m units.
China Mobile Communications originally planned to procure one million e-book readers for subsidized sales in the China market in 2010, but the company actually only purchased 30,000-40,000 units in the first half of 2010, Digitimes Research noted.
Digitimes prediction is rather interesting given that Hanvon have boasted about sales of 100k ereaders each month, with the vast majority of the sales taking place in China. See, this is why I don’t trust analysts.
Mike Cane found a pair of tablets this morning from a company called Velocity Micro. Based on thei rsite, I’d say that this is a custom PC builder, and these are their first tablets. The Cruz Reader and Cruz Tablet are 7″ Android tablets that will retail for $199 and $299 when they are released in August.
Mike suggested (and I agree with him) that the Cruz Reader is running on the same hardware as the white Pandigital Novel. Look through the gallery, and you’ll see that the upper edge of the Reader is identical to that of the white Novel. The dimensions are also very similar.
Velocity Micro have already announced that the Cruz Reader will ship with the Borders/Kobo app. I wish they would include more reading apps (this is an Android tablet after all), but at least it won’t be using Pandigital’s crappy Home Screen & Reader app.
See, I thought the Novel had decent hardware, and once I bypassed the software I discovered I was right. BTW, it looks like the Cruz Reader won’t be locked down, so you will be able to easily install more own apps.
The Cruz tablet, on the other hand, is based on a7″ 800×480 screen, with more RAM, Flash, and a muli-touch screen. It’s also running Android 2.1. Check out the specs.
Do you remeber the old Choose Your Own Adventure books? Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing have decided to revive the concept with book apps. They’ve released one title so far, Return to the Cave of Time, with more titles coming in the fall.
Aldi is now carrying a budget ereader in its stores in Belgium. It doesn’t look like much, and frankly we don’t know much about it, but it does offer a new option for readers.
Mike suggested (and I agree with him) that the Cruz Reader is running on the same hardware as the white Pandigital Novel. Look through the gallery, and you’ll see that the upper edge of the Reader is identical to that of the white Novel. The dimensions are also very similar.
The Cruz tablet, on the other hand, is based on a7″ 800×480 screen, with more RAM, Flash, and a muli-touch screen. It’s also running Android 2.1. Check out the specs.