Revolutionise your reading !E-book readers

Introduction

E-books are as comfortable to read as paper books. With simple user interfaces, long battery lives and a huge choice of books available, these devices are revolutionising the way you read.

Thanks to their compact design, e-book readers make the perfect portable companion. In fact, at less than 2cm thick, they’re barely larger than the average paperback! Most of the space on the device is taken up by its screen, which can measure anything from 6’’, 8’’ or 10.2’’. The weight of an e-book will vary from model to model, with the lightest weighing around 150g and the heaviest models — usually those with the largest screens —weighing no more than 600 grams.

E-book readers are great for taking with you when you're you on the move. Thanks to their high storage capacity, you can take hundreds of books, newspapers, documents and news feeds with you wherever you go, without being weighed down or cluttering up your bag!

File formats

As soon as any media goes digital, the question of file formats arises. Several publishers have chosen to use the Mobipocket format, an exclusive data-encrypted format that protects the books’ authors against digital piracy. E-book readers aren't restricted to this one file format however; they can also read pdf, html, text, drm text, TIFF and BMP files. Most devices are also compatible with JPG, PNG and GIF picture files, as well as MP3 audio files. These open formats are readily available to download from the internet and seriously boost your entertainment possibilities. In fact, with so much choice at your fingertips, your e-book is the only pocket media device you’ll need to stay entertained wherever you go.

Transfer content in just a few clicks

Before you can start reading, you'll have to transfer an electronic book to your e-book device. It couldn't be easier to do this: you won’t need to install any drivers on your computer, and no file compression, conversion or synchronisation is necessary. Simply connect your device to a computer and then drag and drop the files you want to transfer to its internal memory. What's more, most e-book readers have a memory card slot, so you can transfer files to a memory card and then slot it into your device for instant access to even more content!

It’s all about battery life!

As with all mobile devices, battery life is important. Thanks to their reduced power consumption, your e-book device will keep you entertained for hours on end!

Battery life is important for any mobile device. Manufacturers know this only too well and have been fine-tuning their technology to keep your e-book reader powered up wherever you go. As well as benefiting from ever-smaller batteries, e-books use a type of technology known as e-paper, or electronic paper, which doesn’t require much battery power to run. Thanks to this technology, reading from the screen is just like reading on paper; and as no backlighting is required, it uses up considerably less energy.

Reduced power consumption

As well as using e-paper to display text, e-books display images using technology known as e-ink. This also helps boost the battery life, as power from the battery is only used to load up a page. This means you can display a picture or text for as long as you like without affecting the battery life at all. Most e-book readers have a battery life that lasts for 4,000 to 8,000 pages, giving you days of entertainment!

A library in your pocket !

Services like Mobipocket are online libraries packed with all the latest releases, classics, dictionaries, textbooks and more

Websites such as Mobipocket are the iTunes of the e-book world – online libraries where you can stock up on all the reading material you need to keep you entertained. There’s something for everyone, with novels, encyclopaedias, comic books and poetry, as well as RSS feeds and magazines. Over 10,000 titles can be downloaded for free and over 45,000 copyrighted titles can be downloaded for a fee. Mobipocket even offers foreign-language titles in French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Italian, Polish and Russian.

A one-stop shop for reading material

It takes just a few minutes to set up your e-book reader and start enjoying a new book. The first thing you need to do is install a reader application, such as Mobipocket Reader, on your computer. You can download this for free on the Mobipocket website, and in just a few clicks, it’ll be installed and ready to use! You can use the search engine to find exactly what you’re looking for, but if you’re not sure what you want, you can also browse books by theme. Once you’ve found something you like the look of, you can read a free extract of the book before you decide whether or not you want to download it. Before you use these online services, you’ll have to create a customer account. Then, all of the books you buy or download will be stored in your customer account and available to access if you lose or delete the contents of your e-book device.

Huge storage capacity !

You can find content on all kinds of websites, most of which use the Mobipocket format. It couldn't be easier to download books and articles to your e-book reader. Files are automatically sent to your customer account, and in a few clicks, you transfer whatever you fancy reading to your handheld device. E-book devices have an internal memory for storing all kinds of content, and most are even compatible with memory cards for an added boost in capacity. With just 512MB of memory, you can store up to 1,000 books in Mobipocket, HTML or text formats! Once they've been transferred to your e-book reader, your files are stored in a library, where books are kept separate from picture and music files to make it easier to find what you’re looking for.

Read in comfort with e-ink

Thanks to e-ink technology, reading an e-book is just like reading from paper.

E-ink is a fantastic technological development that makes the e-book screen as comfortable to read as the pages of any book or newspaper! This is all thanks to two innovations: magnetic ink — made from millions of tiny spheres — and electronic paper. The result is so realistic it has to be seen to be believed! You can turn pages forward or backwards, zoom in, and bookmark a page just like a real book. Some models even allow you to add notes or comments.

Natural contrast

E-book devices are comfortable to read, and because the screens aren't backlit, you needn't worry about eye fatigue. In fact, the natural black-and-white contrast comes only from external light sources, so you can read comfortably even in direct sunlight!