back to article Bookeen Cybook Odyssey e-book reader

Reg Hardware Mobile Week Amazon's brutal drive to bring down the price of e-book readers to 89 quid has made buying one of these gadgets easy. If you're disinterested in e-book DRM formats – they're all bad, IMHO – there's little reason not to opt for this cheapest-of-the-lot model. I'd like to be able to say the Cybook …

COMMENTS

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  1. L.B.

    Why such a high score!

    You point out a number of failings and gripes yet still give it 80%.

    So its got a metal back plate, but the extra £40 over the Kindle or Kobo-Touch could buy yourself some nice accessories those others. If you don't want a touch screen, buy the Kobo basic at £70 (I always add the penny to these prices).

    A question about accelerometers, the only feature this has that the others don't bother with:

    What do they do when your being bounced around on the train?

    PS: I finally gave in and got a Kobo-Touch a little over a week ago (from WHSmiths £89), works very well. The only niggles that I would say could be better are:

    You can only display PDF's in landscape, not a problem for books but it would be a good addition for the browser as most non-mobile sites expect users to have wider screens.

    Sometime the touch screen is a little slow and you end up turning two pages.

    The web browser sometimes does not react to clicking links (not a big deal as this device is WiFi only so it's not going to be used extensively)

    1. I'm Brian and so's my wife

      Re: Why such a high score!

      It seems to be the time to take the plunge with eReaders - I bought my Sony PRS-T1 last Saturday. I had a look at the Kobo and I was tempted, but the Sony pipped it.

      i) I'm not sure if the Kobo had a dictionary, but it wasn't as easy as the Sony's to access

      ii) I inserted a microSD card with some PDFs and the Sony just displayed them. There seemed to be some faffing required with the Kobo.

      iii) Crop feature with PDFs

      iv) Slightly lighter

      *Still* no Sony reader store, but I'm working through the 100 classics that I downloaded when I registered the device.

  2. Hollerith 1

    still torn betwene Kobo and Sony's

    But will look into this, as I like a touch screen.

    However, I am postign to say that 'disintersted' does not mean 'uninterested' or 'not interested', it means 'altruistic', as in 'I have nothing personal to gain'.

    I know we are fast losing the correct meaning of 'disinterest', as people think it is a posh version of 'uninterested' -- and perhaps the original meaning is not much required these days.

  3. Steve Crook
    Stop

    Animation?

    Sliding menus, expanding boxes? Really, is that the best they can do? The first thing I'd be looking for would be the option to switch it off...

  4. Sean Timarco Baggaley

    So...

    "Bookeen boffinry allows it to update often enough to permit low-framerate animation"

    So, someone's finally worked out how to do delta updates on Pearl displays then? They certainly took their time: the technique has only been around since (at least) the 1970s.

  5. thomaskwscott

    Animation

    I've got a Kobo touch and when i zoom in and drag i see an animated moving block of test/pictures, same when i am on a webpage, i am able to see the scrolling. How is this different except that it does it in the menus? The Kobo is £40 cheaper, less DRM restricted, better supported and (bar the ridiculous accelerometer) has all the same features. Why does it only score 5% more than this?

  6. Ian Chard
    FAIL

    Every time my eyes see 'Bookeen'...

    ...my brain sees 'Broken'.

  7. Jonegerton

    Not sure about the name

    Every time I see the name of this thing I have to double take, as I read it as "Broken" first time.

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