Confessions of an Overworked Mom: Ectaco jetBook mini portable eBook reader

"Summer in my home is the time for spring cleaning and decluttering. We go through the house from top to bottom and get rid of things that we don't need or things that create too much clutter. With two teenagers, I'm sure you can understand how clutter accumulates faster than I can deal with it. Living in a small house, one of my largest issues is having enough storage space. The kid's rooms tend to be fairly small because the house was built in 1865 and they just didn't need the room we do today. Once you add in a bed, bureau, desk and bookcase, you're done. You're lucky you can turn around." - read the entire review

All described products can be purchased at www.ectaco.com or national distributors. You are welcome to send your questions or comments to PR@ectaco.com

PocketBook vs JetBook mini

Probably, not the most professional review, but a really good attempt.



All described products can be purchased at www.ectaco.com or national distributors. You are welcome to send your questions or comments to PR@ectaco.com

ECTACO jetBook Kourtney

All described products can be purchased at www.ectaco.com or national distributors. You are welcome to send your questions or comments to PR@ectaco.com

And yet some more amazing videos from our customers

Our giveaway campaign goes on and our customers keep sending us the video reviews. They will be granted with prizes, of course. Enjoy and stay tuned. 





All described products can be purchased at www.ectaco.com or national distributors. You are welcome to send your questions or comments to PR@ectaco.com

Some more amazing 15 sec. video reviews!

Our giveaway campaign goes on and our customers keep sending us the video reviews. Some of them are just adorable.
















All described products can be purchased at www.ectaco.com or national distributors. You are welcome to send your questions or comments to PR@ectaco.com

Thoughts on eBook Reading

We continue surfing the Web for interesting posts that mention jetBook. Below you can find another one from ElectronicBookReviews

"I think we need to take a step back and imagine what it means that such a thing as an e-book reader even exists. Samuel Johnson exalted in his hosts' private book collections, however little; to him they were a man's greatest possessions. What we're talking about here is a small miracle. If you're like me and you relish Gutenberg and hoarding all the Chesterton, Johnson, Shaw, Shakespeare, et al this thing is perfect and the price tag is nothing compared with what educated men for most of recorded history would have done to get their hands on one. I still like having my books, of course--these things do take some of the poetry out of reading poetry. But it's great and we should all be thankful, especially now that it's available in places for 149.99.

Again, think of the fortune this would have been worth (considered only in terms of its function) for almost 100% of human history, sans our little self-conscious "partition". Unfortunately the technology that brings us the miracle is also the instrument of the propaganda that deadens us to it."

Source

All described ECTACO products can be purchased at www.ectaco.com or national distributors. You are welcome to send your questions or comments to PR@ectaco.com

jetBook via the Geek Realm

Roberto Sedycias wrote an article on 4 ebook readers of his choise. JetBook was one of them.

"The JetBook reader is a popular mobile library for compelling reasons such as multilanguage ebook support, translating feature, easy navigation, auto page turning, MP3 music and unlimited e-library. It has the feature of storing a mammoth collection of books and is expandable through memory cards. This is a portable gadget in a palm fitting size, weighing only 7,5 ounces, and the VGA screen allows reading easily even in low lit areas. Being a mobile library, the translating dictionaries makes uninterrupted reading easy, besides the JetBook reader comes with a free pre-installed ebooks collection.

The SD card slot facilitates expanding storage up to 2 GB, thereby making the JetBook a significant resource library. The in-built search engine facilitates searching the entire e-library and bookmarking, besides auto page turning. The rechargeable battery offers active use for 20 hours and can be conveniently charged in 4 to 5 hours using AC/DC power or USB. It is priced at U$ 200."

Source

We would like to add that jetBook works with 16GB SD cards now.

All described products can be purchased at www.ectaco.com or national distributors. You are welcome to send your questions or comments to PR@ectaco.com

New reviews for the jetBook

Two new good reviews were fetched out from the internet by our team of web-browsers: a classical 'the good, the bad and ugly' one from The Straits Times Digital Life and a true story of a new owner from a personal blog. Here are some bits. You are welcome to follow te stories back to the original sites. Enjoy!

It is easy to pick up the jetBook with just two fingers - it is as thin as a paperback novel.

A handy button lets you flip its 5-inch greyscale display from landscape to portrait mode, which works for photo viewing too.

The made-in-China gizmo's acumen lets the display successfully mimic the look of a printed page along with crisp and clear text. It makes for comfortable reading for hours on end in a room with decent lighting. But a dim room will leave you scrambling for a lamp as the screen lacks a powerful backlight.

The jetBook comes preloaded with dozens of free e-books such as Sherlock Holmes novels, which saves you the trouble of downloading these classic titles from Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org), for instance.

As a bonus, you also get the CIA World Factbook which lists tons of facts and figures of countries.

Read on

Nose buried in an LCD screen

I have had a quiet time recently. Instead of devouring books like there’s no tomorrow my wife has had her nose stuck in her new ebook reader and now she wants to give a review of it.

......

I had wanted an ebook reader for ages and between waiting for the perfect design to come along and not wanting to get sucked into anything proprietary, I finally settled on the Ectaco JetBook Lite. I say settled because it didn’t fulfill all my nitpicky design desires, but as I got it on sale for CAD$129 I figured it would do until something I liked better came along. However, after about three weeks of use, I could not be happier with it.

At about five by seven inches wide it is perfect for holding in my hand, not too heavy or too light. In fact, as this version runs on four AA batteries, the battery pack makes the whole thing nicely balanced to be held easily in the left hand, and the slide bar allows for one handed page turning, in both directions (there is also a button on the bottom for turning pages). The screen is LCD but is very easy to read for hours at a stretch. The slow page turns and ‘flash’ when you turn the page that you get with e-ink are not a problem here. There’s no wi-fi on this thing, so you have to load your books off your computer. And it doesn’t play MP3s, but who cares. That’s why you have an iPod. If I had to make any criticism at all, I wish it came some sort of cover to protect the screen so I could shove it into my purse. Or one of those rubber scuba suit things that people put on their iPhones.

Read on

All described ECTACO products can be purchased at www.ectaco.com or national distributors. You are welcome to send your questions or comments to PR@ectaco.com

Impressions of a new Jetbook Lite owner

We have been posting recently impressions of new owners of ECTACO jetBook Lite. And somehow it just doesn't get boring and we keep doing that. So, here's another message of a proud new owner. Enjoy! And thank you, dsbruce!

"I just got my Jetbook Lite and spent some time reading. I think this is a great reader! The menu system is very well thought out. It's nice to press a number button to choose an item instead of having to scroll. When I change viewing to landscape I was surprised to find the assignment of the arrow pad buttons to page forward or back changed as well. Finally, I love the number button/shortcut key assignments for settings and bookmarks. Very cool!"

Original message

All described ECTACO products can be purchased at www.ectaco.com or national distributors. You are welcome to send your questions or comments to PR@ectaco.com

Ectaco Jetbook – a brief review via Nate's Ebook News

Nate's Ebook News have published recently a nice, independent and frank review on the ECTACO jetBook. That´s what we realy like about our customers andreviewers: always frank and independent. Please, do enjoy!

The Jetbook has been out for some time now, and it has been reviewed endlessly. But I’ve never explained why I like it, and I think that merits a brief review.

Ectaco released the Jetbook in early 2008. The hardware was designed by a Chinese company called JCNIP, and is sold in China (under the original firmware) as the M218. BTW, I’d avoid the M218 unless you already know how to convert to a format it uses, or you know how to replace the firmware. The Chinese firmware is for the mainland Chinese market. The ebook formats it uses are rather funky.

Hardware

The Jetbook has an unique 5″ LCD screen. This grayscale screen was designed by Toshiba as a low power alternative to traditional LCD. it has buttons for 0-9 to the right of the screen and a slider bar to the left of the screen. Below the screen are the page turn buttons (to the left), and a D-pad, OK button, and 4 menu buttons to the right. The purpose of each button is obvious, so I won’t discuss them here. But I will say that I like the design; very rarely do I press the wrong button.

Reading Experience

This is one of my preferred ebook readers because the abilities it lacks are more than outweighed by the very low cost (I found it on sale at $150). The current firmware is limited; highlighting, annotation, TOCs, and hyperlinks don’t work. I didn’t realize until I bought it that there are times when I don’t care if I can use those features. I have any number of ebooks in my collection that all I want to do is advance one page at a time.

I also like the Jetbook because it uses FBReader, and does a decent job of displaying Epub. I prefer to read in landscape mode. This lets me hold the Jetbook in my left hand with my thumb next to the page turn button. I feel I have a firm grip, and turning the page is easy.

Pros:

cost
weight
ergonomics

cons:

limited features
no DRM support

Availability

The Jetbook can be bought at Fry’s, Newegg, and BB&W...

read on


All described products can be purchased at www.ectaco.com or national distributors. You are welcome to send your questions or comments to PR@ectaco.com

An Independent Video Review of ECTACO jetBook LIte

YouTube User MANZANOADRIAN has posted his own independent video review of ECTACO jetBook Lite titled proudly "etaco jetbook lite beats kindle and ipad. best and cheapest ebook reader". The review is not what you would cal professional, but very frank, which is why we feel inclined to promote the video. Hope you enjoy it!



All described ECTACOproducts can be purchased at www.ectaco.com or national distributors. You are welcome to send your questions or comments to PR@ectaco.com

Pocketbook 360 vs jetBook

We came across a comparison Mobert YouTube user has made of Pocketbook 360 of Brain Plaza International, LLC vs jetBook of ECTACO Inc. It is basically a video with no audo - the viewers have to decide for themselves what are the advatages and disadvantages of each device. Enjoy.



All described ECTACO products can be purchased at www.ectaco.com or national distributors. You are welcome to send your questions or comments to PR@ectaco.com

"Ectaco JetBook E-book Reader Full Detailed Review!"

Associated Content has posted a nice and detailed review on the ECTACO jetBook by Lawrence Hughes. Enjoy!

"Most of the e-book reader market has been dominated by Amazon Kindle e-book reader and the rest of the competition is shared by Sony and other such big companies. But nowadays new companies are coming up with their e-book reader. This is a good thing for consumers as this will increase the competition in the e-book market and ultimately benefit the consumer with lower prices and many more features.

One of the latest e-book readers to be released is Ectaco jetBook. I have used both Amazon Kindle and two of the Sony's e-book readers. After getting my hands on Ectaco jetBook e-book reader, I have to say it is downright impressive. The best thing I like about it is that it feels quite natural when you're reading something from it. It is very thin and comfortable and also seems very strong and durable from the built. The screen of Ectaco jetBook e-book reader is 5 inch high TFT screen and is crystal clear and easy on the eyes while reading, even for long hours.

One of the good features I liked about Ectaco jetBook e-book reader is that it comes with a built in MP3 player so that you can also listen to your favorite music while you're reading your favorite book. It is always a good idea to have a soothing background music when you indulge in reading a book. This adds to the fun and excitement of reading through this e-book reader. Apart from viewing and storing electronic books, you can also easily view pictures as this e-book reader supports the JPEG format. As far as the format of the files goes Ectaco jetBook reader can handle these file types: txt, pdf, fb2, jpg, epub, mobi, prc and rtf formats. There is also an SD card slot which allows you to expand the memory and store even more books, music and photographs on your e-book reader.

Another feature which I really liked about Ectaco jetBook e-book reader is that it has the very easily Nevi Gabel dictionary that is quite simple to use and can be accessed just by pressing the menu button. Users can also control the size of the font the e-book reader displays.

Another good point about this Ectaco jetBook e-book reader is that it supports multiple languages. Ectaco jetBook e-book reader also has many translating dictionaries for several languages which makes it a perfect e-book reader if you're going around the globe. One more big advantage is that Ectaco jetBook e-book reader comes loaded with the CIA world factbook which has plenty of information and can prove very useful in the world in which we live."

The original here.

All described products can be purchased at www.ectaco.com or national distributors. You are welcome to send your questions or comments to PR@ectaco.com

ECTACO jetBook was called "the sexiest ebook reader"

HAK5 made a presentation of the ECTACO jetBook. Here's what they have to say. The original here.

Another User Video of ECTACO jetBook from CES 2010

Would you buy a Jetbook Lite Again?

Such was the question posted by a user on Mobilread. And the answer was mostly "yes", which is very pleasing. To read the comments, please, follow the link.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly about ECTACO jetBook

A customer of ours has posted on Mobileread his honest review on ECTACO jetBook Lite. It is quite honest, so we have to share it with you.


"I also received my Jetbook Lite today.

Good: the screen is quite readable and clear even in weak light. I looked at a Sony PRS-300 last weekend and I honestly think that although its e-Ink screen was good, it was not as sharp and crisp as the JBL's reflective TFT screen. I loaded several books (TXT, ePub, pdb, and PDF) onto an old used 2 GB SD card I had sitting around. I popped in the SD card and was able to read my books without much fuss.
I also like that it works with plain old AA batteries; I can travel with it and never have to worry about adapters or charging.
The photo display feature isn't that great. I can see carrying a few fave photos around, but I see it being useful for viewing street maps I captured off the internet with a web browser.

Bad: I do not like the left-side slider switch - it is fairly stiff and difficult to slide. Fortunately I find I just ignore it and use the chrome left-right buttons anyhow, so not a biggy.
I also don't like the fact that locked books do not seem to let me adjust the font size. Other books I prefer 18pt font, but I can't seem to make that work with the locked books.

Ugly: I find that it seems to miss some of the words on the page breaks when viewing locked books. I've seen this mentioned by others a few times, so I am hoping that Ectaco is working on fixing this in a firmware upgrade."

Original here

Note: We have been listening to our customers, and in the latest update the "ugly" part has been solved.

Jetbook Lite vs Sony PRS300

Our customers have discussed the advatages and disadvantages of the ECTACO jetBook Lite in comparison with the Sony PRS300. I must admit, the reviews are rather favourable for us. I cannot but share them on our blog.
"I just received the Jetbook lite (JBL) today And I want to provide a brief comparison between it and the Sony PRS300 I have only held in my hand at local stores.

I do not own a Sony PRS300.
The JJBL is $149 or less
The Sony PRS300 is $179 or more.

If the Sony were priced at $99 I would still by the JBL at $149.
Based on the short time I have had the JBL and played with the sony I think the ease of navigation on the JBL, the quick screen change, and the file system are the first reasons that come to mind.

I did not have a chance or ability to use the Sony in low light conditions. The JBL does require a book light in a low light room. Im not going to go into detail on this since I really only used the sony a few times.

But to sum up based on quick first impressions, book and menu navigation, page turn options, page turn rate, and file system won me over.

For the record, this is an honest opinion and not a self suggested sense of happiness with my purchase as described in the PBS Series "This Emotional Life" which is excellent by the way."

by P.X. Fort

"Before I bought a Jetbook Lite, I went to a Sony vendor and took a good look at a PRS-300. The screen was good, but it wasn't perfect. I also didn't like the e-Ink's black inverted 'flash'.
I couldn't find a local vendor for Jetbook, but after watching some videos on Youtube, I decided to take a gamble on ordering one online.
I am glad I did - I can honestly say that I think the Jetbook's screen is actually superior. Both are about as readable as the other in the same lighting conditions, and the JBL's TFT screen refreshes much faster when turning pages, and without the annoying flash.
I transferred over several books I had in TXT, ePub, and PDF format without incident. I also tried copying over a couple of DRM PDB files, and they are quite readable.
Overall I am happy with the Jetbook, and the total cost with taxes and shipping was $145 CND from Newegg.ca The price for a Sony PRS-300 locally is $239 CND plus taxes, so I figure that I saved over a hundred dollars - money that I can put towards buying some new eBooks!"

by LS650

Original here

"Affordable eBook Reader with Some Shortcomings"

Here's an honest review of the jetBook Lite with its advantages and disatvantages. Great read of one professional writing. Enjoy!

"Yahoo - I have been waiting for an eBook reader with excellent readability and ergonomics for $ 150, and here it is: the Ectaco JetBook Lite.

No, not the JBL wireless communications, and no, it does not play mp3s. I have a small device called an mp3 player that does exactly that!

What does the JBL Serve supports a variety of ebook formats, including mobile format of the New York Public Library, together with eReader DRM FictionBook, plain text, PDF, EPUB, and others.

The JBL not e-Ink technology. Instead, sport a very readable LCD screen with the added advantage over E-Ink screens of fast Turn the page: as fast as possible to apply a sheet of paper, in fact.

The JBL-screen provides high-contrast black text on white background, similar to the Nook unity and better than the Kindle, from the photos I've ever seen.

I read "The Mysterious Island" on the JBL for several hours without eye fatigue. Although light in my dark apartment on the first floor is not the best, take it nice on the background.

There are two page-turning controls, one on the left side of the device, the other on the front below the screen. Both are well suited for use in the left hand while his right hand free to hold on a subway pole or the band.

The JBL sports several built dictionaries, makes it easy to look up words in English or translate them from other languages. The device also comes with a number of classics on board, including Shakespeare, Dickens, Joyce, the Bible, and much more.

You can also plug an SD card, the expansion of space to hold an enormous number of ebooks - enough for even the longest holiday abroad or the longest journey!

The JBL also "plays well" with Windows XP. My computer immediately recognized it (well) after a pause for the obligatory reboot, and it is easy to copy files to my computer.

I had created a little trouble finding Mobi some books which I copied to the Mobipocket Reader on my computer, I found her with the unity file manager routine in a second folder, it was for the purpose. I later used the workplace to these files in the original book of the unit folder that the resumption of reading much faster and easier when the device-making move.

The JBL is rated to run for more than 20 hours on four AA batteries. I have is with high-performance NiMH rechargeable batteries and the power meter reading, still in full after several hours of reading. This certainly had better, the Franklin eBookMan, I have - and the JBL does not lose his memory when you change the batteries!

You can not see in the photos, but the device has a bulge to accommodate the back of the left hand side to the battery chamber. That actually makes the reader comfortable in your left hand to hold, and it serves as a handy stand, if you switch to landscape mode while you eat on the table.

Finally JBL fits nicely into my back jeans pocket.

What can I say? If you do not care about wireless capabilities ... If you already have an MP3 player ... and if you have better things to do with your money than to spend more than two hundred shells on an eBook Reader ... Check out the ECTACO JetBook Lite.

It is important and shows an entire library of ebooks with first-class readability and ergonomics, and that's where it really counts!..."

read the rest

CES 2010 jetBook LITE Hands On Demo

One of our fans has placed a video on Mobileread with an ECTACO jetBook Lite Presentation directly from CES 2010. Enjoy!








The original here