eBook Reading Devices by Khurshid Alam

eBook Reading Devices by Khurshid Alam

In the last month’s editorial I talked about the growing space of electronic media. Realizing the growth of electronic presence, electronic manufacturers are deigning devices that help us in reading books on the electronic gadgets as well, so eBook reading devices have been introduced. An eBook reading device is an electronic gadget specially designed for reading books, journals, and magazines available in electronic media. It is a portable gadget very much similar to a mobile device or tablet computer. eBook readers may be basically of two types – eBook readers powered by e-paper technology that helps to display the text even in very bright sunlight. And the second is non-paper technology based. Many other devices such as smartphones, iPhone, Laptop, and other non e-paper technology based devices fall in the second category. Most of the eReaders are enriched with grayscale levels, audio formats, image formats, text-to-speech feature, apps, email, Internet surfing to mention a few. EBook reading devices are specially designed with “a faster screen capable of higher refresh rates which makes them more suitable for interaction.”

Now-a-days eBook readers are being trimmed for having good storage capacity, supporting color text and images, and at more affordable prices. With some reservation with color text and images the books are being formatted in a certain format but with color supporting technology, the books and periodicals will be as luxurious as they can be in hard paper.

EBook readers provide us high convenience. We need not go to the book shop instead we simply log in to the online book portals, pay for a book and download it on the device and read it wherever we are on the go.

Imagine you are travelling on a long journey on a train and you want to read a book of your choice. You just log in to the website on your Laptop in the train, make a payment through paper money, download a book, and start reading it. You enjoy the valuable time. You can also download many eBooks available for free as well or you can log in to the online libraries if you are a member or want to become one, and read the books. Interestingly all the eReaders have features to manage books that you borrow from the online libraries.

Typically eBook readers have great capacity to store hundreds of books. This means you can actually carry a library of books along with you without the weight that can trouble you. Wow! As you read a book on the eBook reader, you can highlight your favorite lines, quotations, and make clips and notes without the use of papers and pen.

Some of the popular eReaders are Libre Ebook Reader Pro (Aluratek), Kindle devices (Amazon.com), Nook devices (Barnes & Noble), Cybook Odyssey devices (Bookeen), eGriver (Condor Technology), Agebook eBook Reader (EBS Technology), BeBook devices (Endless ideas), eSlick (Foxit Software), WISEreader devices (Hanvon), Hanlin devices (JinKe), Kobo devices (Kobo Inc.), Boox devices (Onyx International), PocketBook devices (PocketBook), Papyrus (Samsung), and Reader devices (Sony) among others.

Khurshid Alam,

Editor, CLRI, May 2012.

Forthcoming Topics

Best Selling eWriters

India’s Stand in Digital Publishing

Challenges in Digital Publishing

Book Formats for Digital Publishing