By Joseph Andrews
In late August, ZATZ editor-in-chief David Gewirtz wrote How a mediocre iPad knock-off could foretell Steve Jobs' eventual doom on his ZDNet blog.
In that article, he described a $159 nobody-branded digital e-reader sold by the Dillards department store, shown in Figure A. As it turns out, I'd bought the same device, but I got mine from Bed Bath & Beyond. And, surprisingly, the device isn't half bad and even includes an SD card slot and a USB port, both of which are lacking on the much more expensive iPad.
FIGURE AImage may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Here's a novel idea, the Novel. (click for larger image)
There's a zoom, and you can also set the font size depending on what you are displaying. Changing the font on the PowerPoint I was reading made things look goofy, though.
The bigger issue is the touch screen. To keep the costs down, the touch screen is not of the technology that the iPad or even decent smart phones use. I got frustrated at times trying to get things to recognize where I was pointing.
The Web browser is OK, but the keyboard on the screen is hard to use. The Novel can also play music and video, but I did not try out the music. Video was decent for a $150 device. I have not tried the SD card slot yet. The slot is supposed to accept up to a 32 Gig SD card. The Novel has a separate charger port from the USB port (so you need to use their charger). Also, the Novel seems a bit heavy (the battery, I think).
The screen display is OK for reading. I'm studying for the TOGAF 9 Part 1 exam. Using the USB cable, I copied all the documentation I needed to study to the device. The client I am working for had their own training course with a nice 150+ page PowerPoint to review instead of the original 900+ page official PDF. The PowerPoint displayed just fine.
The reader would hang every so often, though. Finger gesturing through 25 pages after restarting the reader did suck. I had a little issue with small text, but I was stubborn last time at the eye doctor and did not get bifocals (plus making the font bigger looked goofy and the zoom was hard to get to with the touch screen).
For $150, I don't know.
I know the Kindle is a better reader, but that is all it does well. With that said, I did not originally buy the Novel as a reader. My girlfriend had got an LG Ally running Android and has been going insane as she can not get a handle around making it work. As I have a Palm Pre, I thought I needed my own Android device to figure things out.
I hacked the Novel out of the box. I have all the other readers available for Android loaded and PandaHome as the operating theme. I have not needed to read anything since studying, so it is now sitting next to the coffee table in the living room.
As my girlfriend got frustrated with her Android phone, but with the basic interface that came with the Novel device I think I would let her use it. With the hacked interface, I would not let her touch with a 10 foot poll unless I was right there. I am starting to see and understand her issues with her phone.
