Affordable eBook Readers

In my quest to find affordable eBook Readers that are available across the globe I turned my attention to China. I found two suppliers and I wasn’t happy with the service I received from the one supplier so I won’t even bore you with the details. The supplier whose eBook Readers I showcase here has always given me very good service and I can honestly say that their service is excellent and to boot it all they offer free delivery worldwide on most of the items they sell, especially eBook Readers.

I have purchased numerous other items as well, but everyone I know has purchased at least one of these eBook Readers. There are basically two models available, i.e. the one I’ll call the “normal” variety and the Touch Screen variety.
These are essentially the same readers except for the way that you access your eBooks.

The first option is The 7-Inch Color eBook Readericon. This eBook Reader features full color and is also capable of displaying your photographs and videos in full color. The volume for the video playback is quite adequate as the eBook Reader is a personal device and is not normally used to displaying for a group of people (except when you are showing off!). The 7-Inch Color eBook Readericon has 4 GByte memory built in and it also features a MicroSD slot that can be used with MicroSD memory of up to 32 GByte. So instead of just reading you are also able to watch movies in a number of different formats including all the most popular formats. The color is really amazing, but lets get back to the eBook Reader itself.

The 7-Inch Color eBook Reader icon is able to display books in a number of various formats. I personally find the books in the ePub format to work the best as I find books in the Mobi format can also work but it has some peculiar line lengths and spacings at times that can be quite annoying. This eBook Reader has limited ability to handle PDF documents.

The display has a few different settings when reading an eBook i.e. orientation can be changed, there are 4 different text sizes available, the color of the text or the background can be changed, or both. The screen brightness can also be changed which is a nice feature if you are reading in a dark environment for example at night time with all the light turned off. This is one feature that I enjoy a lot.

The second eBook Reader is The 7-InchTouch Screen Color eBook Readericon. As the description implies it has a capacitive Touch Screen which makes the product very trendy. I am old-fashioned so I’ll be honest with you and tell you that I am not crazy about this eReader and I have used one for about a month. I find that having a touch screen lessens the quality of the color display slightly and renders the eBook Reader much more fragile.

The 7-InchTouch Screen Color eBook Readericon also has 4 GByte memory and is expandable to 36 GByte (by using a 32 GByte MicroSD card). The rest of the features are exactly the same as the “normal” eBook Reader.

There are various models available of both of these eBook Readers and for some reason that I am unable to fathom the price can vary tremendously from day to day and week to week but I would recommend buying at any time that the price is below US$60. The price also seems to be very dependable on the color of the frame of the eBook Reader – generally the black and white models are the same color, pink more expensive and orange extremely expensive! Click on any of the images below to find out more details (the company accepts Paypal, just make sure you select the currency as US$ as you tend to get errors if you try to use any other currency and the Paypal option sometimes disappears if you select another currency!)

Two more points to consider before I show you the picture links : Only order one eBook Reader and one sleeve at a time – postage is free if you do this but if you add a second eBook Reader to the same order you may find that you get charged a hefty delivery fee. Secondly, always make sure that the item displays the icon “Free delivery” on the info page as you sometimes find that this icon is missing on the page and you WILL be charged a delivery fee if you then click on the item. Rather wait a day or two and look at a few other items on the website before returning to purchase.

eBook Reader
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"Normal" 7-Inch 4GB Color eBook Reader
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Touch Screen eBook Reader

 

PS : Please note that I am an affiliate marketer and if you will be so kind as to purchase any of the products featured on this website I may earn a small commission!
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March 7, 2012 – 7:08 pm Categories: eBook Readers | Post a comment

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Affordable eBook Readers

I have a mission. It is to find affordable eBook Readers that are user-friendly, easy to use and functional.I have found a few of these.

I would like to take you along on my journey.

When I first heard about eBook readers I started looking at the different options available. I have not been able to find any eBook readers locally so I turned to the internet.

The first eBook I purchased was the Amazon Kindle Wi-Fi edition with 4GB memory, known as the third generation version. The full name and description is :Kindle Keyboard 3G, Free 3G + Wi-Fi, 6″ E Ink Display – includes Special Offers & Sponsored Screensavers (click on the link to visit the website)

The Amazon Kindle is as far as I am considered the standard against which all other eBook Readers can be measured. I started reading more and more books on the Kindle instead of the printed versions. Books are easily available via Amazon, some are very cheap and even the most expensive fiction books are available at a lower price than their printed versions. There are also a number of sites where free books that are in the public domain can be downloaded for example Project Gutenberg and ManyBooks ( at manybooks.net ).

The Kindle reader is used with books of a specific format i.e. AZW, but the Kindle is also capable of reading books in other formats e.g. TXT, PDF,  Audible (Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX)), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; HTML,  and DOC. The preferred format is AZW. There are numerous characteristics of the text you can change to enable you to read you book or document with as much ease and comfort as possible. There are eight text sizes to choose from, then there are three settings under typeface i.e regular, condensed and sans-seri. You can change the line spacing to one of the three available settings i.e. small, medium or large  and then you can also change the number of words that appears per line to one of the three available settings. Text to speech is available on some of the text formats. The screen orientation can also be changed to any one of the four directions.

The Kindle can be connected to a PC via the provided USB cable to transfer data to or delete data from the Kindle.

Text to Speech :
The text to speech conversion that is used in the Kindle is one of the best I’ve come across and if I tell you that the first text to speech conversion program I ever used was called SAM or Software Automatic Mouth as installed on a Commodore 64 Home Computer in 1983 then you will realize that I have used a few text to speech programs. I have a number of blind and visually-impaired friends and family members and I am always looking for a better text to speech program for them.

Music:
The Kindle can also play MP3 files, either audiobooks or music. I normally load my Kindle with my favourite music in MP3 format and then use that as background music while I am reading to make the experience so musch more enjoyable.

The Pros :
The device is very user friendly
The Kindle can be read in direct sunlight
The battery lasts for a very long time when reading – I charged my Kindle when I received it and after three months did I only need to recharge it for the first time.
4GB memory is more than sufficient to store your books.
The text to speech is excellent
The text size range makes it possible for even the visually-impaired individuals to read – at maximum text size the letter are about 10mm high.
Books are freely available – Amazon has all the classics and pre-1923 books available for free download that is more than 2 million books

The Cons:
The screen is fragile – BUT Amazon understands and will replace the screen if it was not wilfully damaged, at the cost of shipping
You can only read at night if you turn the light on

In conclusion, you can see that the positives far outweighs the negatives for the Kindle eBook reader!

The kindle is available in a few different models now and here are the pictures and links to a selected few of these eBook readers that are currently available:


January 27, 2012 – 10:13 am Categories: eBook Readers | Post a comment

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Our New Home

Although you will not be able to see any difference at this stage looking at this website apart from the fact that it is bare I can tell you that we changed our hosting and the old site will be up and running again in a few days.

I hate those stupid “Under Construction” signs that people put up on their sites so you won’t find one here.

In the meantime you can visit one of our other sites at : The Pepperplot

Cheers

Hugo

 

 

November 30, 2011 – 4:29 pm Categories: Uncategorized | Post a comment