Personal information in the palm of your hand

Imagine sitting down at the breakfast, table of a morning with your eggs and a cup of coffee or a glass of juice. You reflect on the beautiful morning (perhaps also on the previous night's revelry) and you reach for the day's news. Sounds pretty normal so far. But imagine now that the day's news comes not from traditional newspaper cast into the front yard, but from the Internet via your e-book reader. Imagine also that the book you read on the bus is stored in your e-book reader along with some reports you have to catch up on.

This is a corporate scenario, but e-book manufacturers such as Franklin with its eBookMan have a broad user base in their sights. The e-book phenomenon is still in its infancy but growing quickly. I have to admit that I am on the fence when it comes to e-books. From an environmental and space saving point of view, I agree wholeheartedly. But there is something about the look of a nice home library, the smell and feel of a book or newspaper that I just can't imagine being lost to small, portable screens.

The eBookMan is available in three models: EBM-900, 901 and 911. All three share the same basic features and capabilities but increase in memory size and additional features as the model (and subsequent price) goes up. My review model is the EBM 901, which differs from the basic 900 model by virtue of a backlit screen and enhanced LCD display. The top-of-the-range 911 has an impressive 16Mb of ram (to the 8Mb upgradeable ram provided with the other models).

For a pocket-sized unit (around half the size of a small paperback book) the eBookMan boasts a comparatively big and clear screen at 200 x 240 16-level gray scale display. I say comparatively because it can still only fit up to 30 lines of text which I found, as a quick reader, became somewhat annoying. When reading an e-book it is possible to scroll through the chapter using either the unit's touch-pen, or the scroll wheel on the side of the unit. The latter is by far the easiest and allows quicker and more precise scroll when reading.

It is able to download books and audio books from the Internet via its USB connection to PC quite easily however, you must download the operating system from Franklin before you can even turn it on. Synchronization isn't as intuitive as it is expected with a normal PDA.

The eBookMan also features an easy-to-use e-audiobook player and a voice record and playback function useful for note taking. It also comes standard with (among others) handwriting recognition, calculator, scheduler and task list - all easily accessed with the unit's touch pen.

The unit also caters for English, Spanish, French, Dutch, German and Italian. These additional features are quite nifty. They make the eBookMan more of a multi-purpose tool, but they are nothing more than you would find in a competitor's model. It is also MP3 ready which effectively makes it something of a digital walkman as well but it can only store two or three songs at once with its 8 MB of memory. There is a MultiMediaCard with up to 64 MB of memory, so it can pose somewhat of a more respectable MP3 player but here lies the extra cost.

However, the thing that really got to me about the Franklin eBookMan was the screen. The LCD-screen and its protective coating (for the touch pen) made a highly reflective surface. Backlit screen, or not, I was constantly having to change the angle from which I was viewing the e-book in a largely vain attempt to avoid light reflection. This meant a frustrating reading experience which ultimately led to a minor headache, literally. I also found the battery life (2xAAA) to be rather short.

Franklin is hinting that the eBookMan will soon be granted email capability with a software download from its Web site. However, Franklin's purported arrangements with other websites such as Mobipocket and audible.com for content leave little to be desired. Their websites are poorly designed and they provide little usable tech support.