The Ebook Craze Continues, This Time with the BeBook

I don't know what thoughts the name BeBook is supposed to evoke (maybe thoughts of bebopping with an ebook reader, the successor to the Aebook or existential/metaphysical questions about just what it takes to Be a Book?), but it's obvious what market the BeBook is aimed for: the newly minted market of ebook readers.

We recently talked about all the new ebook readers coming out and the popularity of the genre that didn't really exist just a couple years ago. It appears that this is one more device to add to the list.

So should you be excited about the BeBook?


Yes...and no.

You should be excited because the BeBook has a lot of great features: E Ink screen, long battery life (7000 page turns), spectacular file compatibility (pdf, mobi, prc, epub, lit, txt, fb2, doc, html, rtf, djvu, wol, ppt, mbp, chm, bmp, jpg, png, gif, tif, rar, zip, mp3), large capacity (512 MB and SD card slot) and a sortable library, to name a few. It's really a great ebook reader, and it's even more encouraging to see competition in the ebook reader market because that will eventually lower prices.

But you don't necessarily need to get excited about the BeBook because it's not fundamentally different from the competition, or even better than other ebook readers. We've seen other readers with touchscreens, EV-DO connectivity and tens of thousands of current books available for download. Plus, the BeBook isn't really cheaper than the competition either.

So the final verdict: hooray for more ebook readers and increased competition, meh for the BeBook itself because there's nothing terribly special about it.

You can see reviews of thousands of electronics here at TopTenREVIEWS, or read some other blog posts that require no special reading devices:

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New Asus Netbook for Under $300, Possibly with Touchscreen

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