The eBookwise-1150 eBook Reading Device from eBookwise, (a fictionwise company) is certainly priced to sell. At $115.95 with free U.S. shipping, it looks like a nice starter unit at first pass.
It has a backlit screen, and from the image provided is reminiscent of those old handheld video games. So, it’s anybody’s guess how that would be for extended reading. (These companies really have to start leaving a few of these devices around for people to play with…)
The 1150 eBook Reading Device boasts 4MB ram, 64MB internal Flash for program and content storage. Which, keeping today’s memory hungry designers in mind, must be a tight fit.  An indicator of this is the expanded content storage option on SmartMedia Memory Cards, up to 128MB. That looks like a cap on storage, but it still equates to a hundred books or so, which at today’s eBook prices represents a thousand dollar library, yah. Wow! Don’t want to lose track of these babies.
I say it ‘looks’ like an excellent starter unit, because they do not offer a currently supported method for transferring Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format files to the eBookwise-1150. I don’t know how anybody could market a device that does not offer this. You can’t swing a dead digital cat these days without hitting a PDF formatted file.
SUPPORTED CONTENT TYPES:
Rich Text Format (.rtf)
Microsoft Word (.doc)
Plain Text (.txt)
Rocket eBook Editions (.rb)
HTML (.htm or .html)
OEBFF Half-VGA (IMP)
Has anybody out there tried the 1150? The price is right so that has me worried.
I’m not cheap, just realistic. eBook readers will not take off without reasonable prices for books and readers. It’s early in the story, so we’re bound to see some wild price fluctuations. Considering the amount of R&D going into handheld devices these days, it’s amazing they haven’t broken the $99.95 line yet.
Oh, and we need an eBook reader that’s omnivorous–able to crack any eBook format. Anything else leaves too much power in the manfacturer’s hands. They’d get to call the shots on what we read, how much it costs and where we can get it. I like options. The digital age is all about options.
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