Cybook Gen3 e-book reader on sale now for $350

Those sitting tight for Cybook's Gen3 e-book reader can finally do something other than just wait for it. That's right, Bookeen's latest is finally on sale, and just as promised (the second time, that is), it's available now (read: in October) for $350. If you're wondering what all that coin will get you, you can look forward to 8,000 page flips without a recharge, a daylight-readable 800 x 600 resolution display, 2.5-millimeter stereo headphone jack, 64MB of storage, an SD expansion slot and USB connectivity. So go on, bust out that credit card and count down the minutes till it arrives on your doorstep.

[Via Teleread]

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 1st 2007 3:04AM]

Exactly. I wonder who's going to buy it in Europe.

Thanks Ebay.

[Gonz Posted Oct 29th 2007 6:05PM]

it's that hentai on the "cover"?

[Dinochicken Posted Oct 29th 2007 6:16PM]

The Eee PC and OLPC X-O prove that a Linux based e-reader can be made for $99 or less, so why are we still seeing $300 models when the must have price point is much lower. Just give it .txt, open ebook and .cbr support with open source code and we are good to go.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 29th 2007 7:07PM]

Go to CompUSA and try out the Sony. You'll see what I saw: 1. It responds too slowly to commands. E.g. you can issue 3 commands (commands like: turn page, bookmark, main menu) and you'll see there is an enormous lag. 2. Resolution is still too small for reading pdfs. Conclusion? Call me in 2 years.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 29th 2007 8:09PM]

Cybook offer a replaceable battery, Sony does not mention one (probably a built in). This may not be much of a difference, but still is one. The Cybook software is a MAJOR step back from their first gen
reader software (I own and use a cybook first gen.),
but it's little different from the Sony (Sonys is probably better, but Bookeen is more likely to offer software upgrades.) Charges and leather covers are about the same. 50 bucks for a replaceable battery and the hope of software upgrades? You choose.

[justintimed Posted Nov 1st 2007 8:59AM]

The Sony can read prc, but not from eReader, because of the DRM. I have the Sony and love it.

One thing to think about in regards to PDFs. The Sony displays 8 levels of grey, and the Bookeen only has 4 levels of grey, as last year's Sony 500 did. Images in PDFs can get pretty hard to make out, even on the Sony, so I would be wary of the Bookeen until I saw it display some of my more important documents.

That said, most PDFs will be readable, but the ones with a lot of graphics and small text will be more difficult to make out. These devices can't scale the text in a PDF. In a regular book, it has 3 font sizes to choose from, but not in a PDF doc. It can only do a small magnification of the whole page, which doesn't help too much.

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 7th 2007 11:42AM]

The primary difference between the Cybook G3 and Sony Reader is that it supports Mobipocket files. In addition, it supports HTML, PalmDoc (non-encrypted only), TXT, and JPG/GIF/PNG. There doesn't appear to be direct support for CHM files, however the Mobipocket Reader is able to convert CHM files and then they could be transferred to the device. As for PDF files, yes they are supported however remember that PDF documents are formatted for A4 paper size. That makes them difficult to read on any device that is not A4 size. I believe Adobe has changed this recently, however most PDF's are still going to be somewhat unwieldy; not much of a way around that at the moment except to redo old PDF docs to support dynamic resizing. Personally, I cannot stand reading books on my Treo and am very eager to get an eInk device. I have one of these on order and it should arrive in a week or two (shipping from France) so will send another comment as a review when it arrives.