Bookeen Cybook Opus e-book reader 2010 edition
Never judge a book by its colour
Review Less than a year after its initial release French e-reader maker Bookeen has released an updated version of its Cybook Opus e-book reader, reviewed last year. The most obvious change, but fairly irrelevant, is the new range of seven colours, instead of just plain white. Colour schemes aside, the important upgrade is the new firmware which Cybook calls Boo Reader.
New colours and firmware: Bookeen's Cybook Opus
The main advantages of this new fimware is speed. Push the power button and the Opus springs to life in seconds, making it the fastest booting e-book reader I have come across. Menu and page transitions also appear just a shade faster than before, as does the accelerometer's triggering to flip between landscape and portrait viewing.
The new firmware also lengthens the battery life with the 1000mAh user replaceable power pack now reckoned to be good for 8,500 page turns. Physically and technically the new Opus is identical to the device Sandra reviewed back in November 2009 so I won't repeat what she said about it. In short in remains a handy, compact and light ebook reader that is extremely easy to use.
Several major problems persist though. Firstly, PDF files still don't reflow, which makes reading them hard work on such a small screen despite the zoom facility. This is something that really should have been fixed.
Update adds to battery life too
Secondly, you still can't set bookmarks. The Opus will remember what page you stopped reading at in any particular book, so you can at least have multiple books on the go at the same time, but I, for one, like to place my own bookmarks on pages I think I may need to return to.
COMMENTS
Music not needed
Apart from anything else playing MPs kills the battery life of the reader. Furthermore I don't know about you but I have half a dozen devices that can play music e.g. my phone, a couple of cheapo MP3 players and so on. If I want to listen to music I'll use one of them.
OH NOES
Oh deary deary me, a snub, and such an eloquent one too. I'm touched.
Adobe are also well-known for creating solid, almost impossible to subvert file formats and rock-solid reader software that in no way or form ever would possibly support remote code execution. Well done, abobe, carry on! Obviously they know better than me.
Yes, verily, absolutely indeedy.
slowly
slowly getting to the price point and feature set that will get me to buy an ebook reader (well, I'm reading Robinson Crusoe on my iPhone right now, but I'd prefer a bigger screen). For about 100 quid I'd probably buy one (in black to my my MacBook :) ), but only if I can get Games Workshop's Black Library on it. There's a ton of paperbacks I want to read, but don't need the hassle of them clogging up the house, or having to go to bookfairs/car boot sales to get rid of them after.
PDF re-flow
"it implies lying to the customer, as in doing something other than what the format was invented for, and hence doing something other than what was expected"
I suggest that you take this up with Adobe then, since they incorporated the re-flow feature into their document format and explicitly support it in their own Reader software. Clearly Adobe are lying to the entire world by creating, supporting and documenting this feature in PDF which is not 'expected', despite being entirely standard functionality?
Or perhaps you should just STFU if you don't know what you are babbling on about?
The best 5-inch reader and the price is great
I spent a few weeks with one of these readers and at the time it was the best I'd tried...it probably still is. It was also one of the most expensive so this price drop is really welcome.
Regarding the EPUB/Mobipocket issue. I believe that is due to either the Adobe or Mobipocket DRM licensing (perhaps both). This states that they are not allowed to have a second DRM system installed at the same time as theirs. But you're right, it's about time they just dropped mobipocket--it's now all but dead.
