Keepin' it real fake, part CCXXII: Looks like "WeFound" a total Kindle ripoff
By Ross Miller 
posted July 11th 2009 7:29AM
posted July 11th 2009 7:29AM
[Thanks, Alex]
posted July 11th 2009 7:29AM
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Yeah, but its in Chinese? What use is that?
Where do you see Chinese??? Unless you're talking about whats on the screen. In that case, it will show any language the e book is published in.
Chinese?!
"Page Up", "Page Down", full qwerty keyboard!
What pic are you looking at dsteve?
And by independently developed, we mean that the guy who photocopied the Kindle's design was operating independently.
Well the Kindle doesn't exist in China and far as I know doesn't support Chinese...and since there's oh say...a billion and a half people on the planet that read Chinese it would be rather logical that someone would make what's basically a Kindle for China with Chinese text support.
I think it's nice that at least now people in China will have an ebook reader with wireless connectivity, but it is a little lame that they didn't bother to try and make the design a little less blatantly derivative.
Still I think it's mostly just that Chinese companies don't really think about this kinda stuff-like the design is basically an afterthought a lot of the time. Under the hood all the stuff like Chinese text support and working with SIM cards and wireless downloads (obviously not through Amazon) is all original, because obviously the Kindle doesn't support any of that.
It's a shame that the exterior makes it seem like such a knockoff because in reality there's a lot of original engineering here.
This looks nothing like the Kinder!
Does that mean you've seen inside die Kinder? You disgust me.
They could've at least changed the color...
Yeah if they had just changed the color and maybe not made the scroll buttons pretty much the exact same shape it wouldn't be so blatant.
I like the fact that they seem to have managed to get the frame border a little thinner than on the Kindle II though, and being able to use whatever SIM you want is nice but I have a hard time believing they didn't take a little too much inspiration from the Kindle.
If its cheaper than the Kindle and available in Europe, I'll buy one
不会吧?竟然显示的是简体中文...
omgz. like i tottally agree.
So what if it's in Chinese? It doesn't excuse the fact that it's a copy.
Yeah..I'd like a Hot and Sour soup, an egg roll, and a sesame chicken.
晕....仔细一看原来是方正出品的....
个人感觉没什么市场....反正我是不会花1千多买个只能看书的...
这价钱还不如买个手机看电子书爽....
omgz. i tottally agree to this one tooz!
Price is okay I don't see the problem. Phone screens are too small for ebooks anyway.
Here's how google translates that:
--
Look carefully .... halo was produced Founder of ....
Nothing personal feeling is the market .... Anyway, I will not spend more than 1000 buy only one book of the ...
This price might as well buy a cool cell phone to see e-books ....
--
Well that's all clarified isn't it.
According to online translator:
Corona….As soon as careful looked originally is the upright product….
Individual feeling not any market….I cannot spend in any case more than 1000 to buy only to be able to read…
This price might as well buys a handset to look at the electricity classical philosophical works crisply….
Yahoo Translator:
"One fine evening a young princess put on her bonnet and clogs, and went out to take a walk by herself in a wood; and when she came to a cool spring of water with a rose in the middle of it, she sat herself down to rest a while. Now she had a golden ball in her hand, which was her favourite plaything; and she was always tossing it up into the air, and catching it again as it fell. "
Translation:
lol...Taking a closer look, I found this is produced by 方正 (Chinese Peking University Founder Group Corp)...
I don't think it will sell...Anyhow, I'm not going to spend 200bucks for something I can only use to read books.
I'd be better off getting a cell phone to read e-books.
L2read Chinese....
To the OP:
国内EINK的产品没有多少，反正看书用起来比手机要好的多，看起来和纸上印的没有太大的区别。一千多是蛮值的。
谢谢。我们也常用GOOGLE翻译。
At least the price is reasonable.
Maybe this is the original Kindle OEM supplier??
See, this is why I'm only half scared of China taking over the world. They'd never last on top because there would be no-one else to rip off...
there's rip-off doesnt mean there's only rip-off, plus those e-book stuff, cant be that different from each other , IMHO
htd - what are u even saying.
Great minds think alike...? It's worth a shot as a defence.
Great minds think for themselves.
Well retorted.
China doesn't know how to exploit its potential, it has zero imagination.
I think they have trouble imagining what the rest of the world and the westerners want.
They make plenty of items which aren't copies and are pretty imaginative -- you just don't see them because they tend not to be very noteworthy enough for most tech news sites to pick up or notice. That, and the fact that pointing out and posting about fakes are far more amusing and gets more hits.
Regardless though, while a large portion of the products do mimic the designs of major brands, I don't see why it matters. If it functions better (probably not this case, who knows) and is more powerful/flexible and better in every other respect, why would it matter to me, a consumer? I prize functionality over aesthetics, unless the aesthetics interfere with the practicality (for me, apple keyboards are impossible to use in comparison to my thinkpad keyboard..)
Mimic ? They blatantly rip-off western company's intellectual property, but of course their rip-offs are low quality junk. Not to mention the massive piracy of software and media over there. The biggest problem is that the Communist government does nothing to stop it. They encourage it, it's a way for China to get a leg up on the west. Copy everything that is the result of all of the hard work and R&D, and then distribute without paying licensing fees to the domestic chinese market.
If all the idiot politicians didn't sell all of our debt to China and consumer products companies hadn't gotten so greedy with outsourced manufacturing, Western nations could impose an embargo on China until they clean up their massive piracy and IP-theft problem.
Quick government and economics lesson: A communist government has a command economy, in which case China would direct each company what to do as they would be federally owned and directed. It's the opposite here, China is acting too capitalist by not enforcing intellectual property regulation laws.
I'm guessing you hate Meizu as well for 'ripping off' apple designs, but they make higher quality products than their apple counterparts.
And who gives a shit about intellectual property about something like this. They hardware exterior design; big deal -- it's not like the design is groundbreaking and innovative. If they stole the source code for the Kindle, then I would think that matters.
Your take on the chinese government isn't exactly right either - it's not so much that China does or does not support it, but the number of new products being pumped out is at an extraordinary rate. The basic idea is that each developer of tech products has some kind of OS already developed, and they just create a new exterior design and then quickly port the OS and modify here and there to fit the product. This way, they can easily and quite quickly produce limitless numbers of designs quite easily. I doubt mimicking the design of their western counterparts can really improve the technology of the products. And it's not like the chinese government allows all of them, they certainly take action against especially bad counterfeiters but I doubt copying designs for tech products is the least of their concerns given their many problems right now.
Another thing, China is rather strict in piracy and people selling pirated software and movies usually have to do it quite discreetly, and it's pretty damn hard to enforce (Have you even been to a chinese tech market in your life before, once? It's really quite interesting, and would probably run counter to your perception of one.) I agree though that China is riddled with problems, but I'm not going to address your commentary on putting an embargo on China which seems to suggest and gross oversimplication of the issue on your part.
US had been disrespecting European copyright outright and blatantly pirating their works for almost century before it finally caught up and started enforcing it. China is doing a much better job policing and punishing piracy.
Have some ignorants on this board been to China, East European, or South Asia, buying pirated DVDs or software? Being able to compare the experience? Then you know how rampant piracy it is in the rest of world other than China.
Germany did the exact same thing China's doing these days after the industrial revolution and look where that brought the world to about 50 years later. I shudder to think about the future China, especially amid all these news about the crackdown in Urumqi... :S
@xiaobofan:
I haven't been to china for 3-4 years now (I went to beijing), due to a busy schedule, but if I remember it was quite easy to get pirated movies and software. You just had to say you wanted to buy movies, and the shopsellers would sneak you to the back and let you look through a shoebox. There were also streetvendors who smuggled them in while pretending to sell small jewlery. Obviously, the police try to crack down on it, but it was way to rampant and ubiquitous to control. However, in comparison to countries like India, I would say it's far better, or at least based on what I've heard.
@ende:
Not quite.
In this case, (gasp) China is enforcing peace. There are racial disputes between the minority, Urumqi, and the majority, Han. That is, violent riots following the death of a Urumqi worker in a dispute between two factory workers. What followed was essentially that that the Urumqi rioted violent, killing 100+ Han civilians. In retaliation, the Han attempted to carryout a riot against the Urumqi, but at this point the Chinese riot police intervened and attempted to stop both sides. That is, the riot police was in the middle trying to separate the two races.
The racial tensions there are fierce, in part due to the Chinese government trying to forcibly change the Urumqi culture. As an isolated incident, however, the riots were completely unjustified as the Urumqi murdered innocent Han and likewise the Han murdered innocent Urumqi.
And please don't try to compare this to Hitler. Anyone can pick out and select certain bits of information (which are unbelievably vague) while ignoring others that contradict it here and there to make it seem like a nation will become the fourth reich.
The similarity I referred to was about stealing technology. Germany stole tons of advancements the UK had made earlier during the revolution and eventually made them better, thus gaining a considerable advantage in terms of industrial power. At some point Germany was controlling 90% of world's chemical industry. Now, I'm not saying that China will become the 4th Reich, or comparing anyone present to Hitler; when Germany started copying foreign technology, Hitler wasn't even born. I merely said I have my fears about what China might become in the future. If it turns out to be a benevolent state, all the better for us. But things that happened in the past, and happening right now don't look encouraging. I hope you won't come and say that China actually has a good track record of respecting human rights, or ethnic minorities.
As to the Urumqi incident, I see that you aren't even mentioning what the Uighur minority's been reporting about the whole thing, and still sticking to the Chinese side of the story, I won't be having a discussion with such one-sided party. I really do hope that China will do good in the future. Cheers
@xiaobofan
If you want to talk about ignorance, lets talk about you. I don't know if you are a chinese nationalist, a communist sympathizer, or just mis-informed, but China is responsible for the most piracy and intellectual property theft of any nation on earth. Here are some references if you want to educate yourself:
# Financial Week Magazine: "Top risk in China? Intellectual property theft"
http://www.financialweek.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070813/FREE/70810013/1003/TOC
# Electronic Design News (EDN) magazine: "China Still Leads Pack in IP Theft"
http://www.edn.com/article/CA6346189.html
# International Federation of the Phonographic Industry says "95% of commercial music sales in China are from pirated sources"
http://www.ifpi.org/content/section_news/20080407.html
What a surprise American magazines complaining about forreign companies... What about if you refer to the Economist about how the US only listens to the WTO if its in their favour but all the other complaints from the WTO about the US are being ignored? The US ignores regulations just as easy as China does in order to protect their own market. In order to point fingers towards China about their IP it´s more important you are clean yourself otherwise the US keeps looking foolish to the world with their behaviour.
That on a side-note, i like these products in general to bad they arent worldwide avaible. Besides that they just copy the inner and outer shell they also improve. Instead of protecting their idea badly which will not work in their own market they realize that the only way to stay ahead of competition within China is to keep improving excisting products.
Regarding the quality, sure a lot is crappy but there are plenty of Chinese producers who deliver quality equal or better then their counterparts which imo is rather shamefull to the initial producers.
= =In fact. Chinese companies think it's a shame to put too much attention on design.
Does it have DRM? If it doesn't, then I know which one I'm buying. (Hint: not the crippled Amazon device).
LOL. Newb.
You can put antying you want on a Kindle with relative ease.
The killer feature of the Kindle is its connectivity to the amazon store. Otherwise, buy a Sony or other unit and have fun finding a place to load a book onto it while on the road. Whispernet FTMFW.
As to the dumbass up there talking about getting a "better cellphone" to read books on:AGAIN: LOL. NEWB. Enjoy getting your eyes raped by the lame ass display. Nothing compares to the e-ink for long haul reading.
the keys look bigger actually. :)
WeFound like "WeFound this after it fell off the back of a truck."
"We Found" another idea to rip off.
Sure, whatever you say. Snap snap, grin grin, wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more!
i heard they are coming out with a WeFound Dx :)