January 25

REVIEW: Bookeen Cybook Gen3
Posted on January 25th, 2008 at 4:52 PM by slm4996
Category: Uncategorized


The Bookeen Cybook Gen3 is an eBook reader with an ePaper display that rivals paper books for readability. Because the display consumes no power to maintain an image (only to change the image) the battery life isn’t measured in hours, like that of PDAs, it’s measured in page flips — 8000 page flips, to be exact. I got mine in the middle of December, gave it an initial three hour charge via USB cable, and was halfway through my fourth book before I had to recharge it. The nature of the display leads to an interesting “failure” mode: many people who received eBook readers for Christmas are reporting them “locked up”, when what’s actually happened is that the initial battery charge has run out and the unit is dead, but the page is still displayed!

What can you read? The Cybook supports the Mobipocket format, plus common formats like HTML, PDF, JPEG, plain text, and even MP3 (yes, you can listen while you read). With that choice of formats, you have access to everything from current bestsellers to free books from Project Gutenberg or ManyBooks. It has one SD card slot in addition to its built-in 64MB memory. When you plug it into your computer via USB cable, it mounts as a USB Mass Storage (UMS) device, just like a thumb drive; if there’s an SD card inserted, it mounts as a second UMS device. Loading content onto the Cybook is as simple as dragging it to the appropriate folder.

The UMS feature and support for common formats were deciding factors that made me choose the Cybook over other eBook readers. Some other readers have proprietary formats, or require support software that runs only under Windows; the Cybook works perfectly for me under Mac OS X Leopard and Windows XP without having to install any drivers at all.
Unlike its main competitors, the Sony PRS-505 and the Amazon Kindle, the Cybook takes a minimalist approach to its controls. The front of the unit has only a four-way joypad with a center “OK” button. One common complaint is that the joypad, which is used to flip pages, is very stiff. This leads to a second common complaint, that sometimes the page doesn’t flip when you press the joypad, even though the Cybook “wakes up” briefly. There are two buttons on the right edge for volume up/down, and four buttons on the left edge for Menu, Music, Back, and Delete. The Cybook doesn’t have a keyboard like the Kindle; to lookup words you bring up the menu and select Lookup mode, then move the cursor to a word and press OK. After reading one or more of the definitions you can press Back to resume reading where you left off. The on/off button is on the top edge, and the USB and 2.5mm headphone ports are on the bottom edge, protected by a rubber cover.
The firmware that’s currently shipping leaves somewhat to be desired when it comes to certain tasks like viewing PDFs. You can select landscape or portrait orientation, and “fit to page” or actual size, but there is no zooming capability. For ordinary book text you can select the desired font size. Another limitation is that you can’t organize your books into folders; the Library is just a flat list of files. These limitations are widely expected to be addressed with future firmware updates.
Having used my Cybook for a little over a month, I am quite happy with it.

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