Bookeen answers regarding Cybook review

[Colin Dunstan]

Last week I mentioned that I did not entirely agree with Teleread's positive review on the Cybook reader. In response, Michael from Bookeen contacted me; he also gave me the permission to republish his letter:

1)For the time being the dust problem has been reported by Armitag only (Sorry Armitag for this issue).
2)We checked all our screens before shipments and we never noticed any kind of dust under the screen.
3)None of our other customers have complained about this kind of problem.
However we will be very attentive to this potential issue.

For the price :
The Cybook is shipped with a PCMCIA adapter + a 64MB Compact Flash which is enough to store at least 100 books.

The Cybook is an e-book or e-document reader, all the add-ons are here to answer to the people who want a bit more.The Cybook's goal is to render as well as possible e-books on a portable LCD screen and propose the best e-reading experience.

All our customers agree, reading on a Cybook is really different from reading on a PDA. The Cybook brings something more than a Pocket PC because of the size of its screen.

Personally I have tried to read on a Pocket PC but never succeed to read more than small articles or short novels on it. On a Cybook I have read with no problems many big books in a very immersive way.

The price is highly correlated to the size of the screen. Being less than 400$ seems to me quiet difficult. You can consider also that if people are loving their tablet PC for reading then for a fraction of the price they have a light product with instant on and dedicated software readers (very responsive and fast) that allow them to bring with them many, many books and really read them.

Our processor seems quiet weak on the paper, but all our ebook readers run fast on the Cybook. Believe me, when your source code is well optimized and when you masterize the video driver you can do huge things with not so much megahertz.

For example you can read a 2000 pages book from a CF card and listen your MP3 file at the same time with no problems.

Last thing we are porting a PDF reader on the Cybook, in order to read complex documents (datasheets, manuals, technical books...). Have you ever read any "complex" PDF files on your PDA?

The fact that Michael contacted us promptly and that he took the dust issue so seriously shows me that he works for a respectable company. I personally hope that Bookeen will be successful with its Cybook product and that it will have the time and money to develop further e-book reader products!