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Itomic IEBR7C eBook Reader

Back in early May 2012, my Aluratek Libre eBook Reader conked out for good.  You can read more about that in the earlier review of that reader and a comment I added soon after it conked out.  We liked having a reader and missed it very much.  My wife was looking around online and found a reader on Walmart.com for $29.  It could read epubs, had a color screen, and was compatible with SD cards.  I had saved the SD card that was in my Aluratek reader.  It had all of the books in text files.  The Walmart page for the reader also said that it could play music and video.  We ordered it and it came within 2 weeks in a box that looked almost too big for an eReader.

We waited a few days before opening the box.  Inside it was the official box for the reader that contained it along with a folding case, charger, and USB cord.  The reader is larger and slightly heavier than the Aluratek.  It also has a full QWERTY keyboard.  The power button is on the bottom and it seems like it could be turned on accidentally.  It also came with a very short user’s guide.  Just above the keyboard are buttons for turning the pages, a back button, volume controls and a very small square.

The first thing we had to do was charge up the reader.  Though the guide said that would take several hours, it took less time than that.  Maybe an hour or so.  I then turned it on.  It took 15-20 seconds to fire up and displayed a green status bar on the bottom with the Itomic logo in the middle of the screen.  Then the main menu appeared.  The first thing we had to learn was how to scroll down the menu.  Unlike the Aluratek, the Itomic has no arrow keys and the turn page buttons do not work for the menus.  It turns out that the small square between the buttons is a small touch-sensitive pad.  You rub the pad with your finger to go up and down the menus and side to side.  This took some getting used to.  The small square is also a button that you press to make a selection.  There are many selections in the menu such as settings, library, music, continue reading, and even a power off function.

The Itomic reader comes with many classic books as text files.  Many are the same as those on the Aluratek reader, though there are some different ones.  One of these was a book of Welsh fairy tales collected by an American in the 1800s.  I read through one of the tales that referred to the Welsh as the “Cymric” people.  I think this is an Americanized spelling of Cymraeg.  The text files were at a good font size for reading so I haven’t had to adjust it.  The reader allows adding, deleting and going to bookmarks similar to the Aluratek reader.  You can also go to a page number, though to enter the number you have to hold down the alt key and press the letter key with that number above and to the left of it.  Something else to keep in mind is that the reader does not automatically power off when you leave it for a while.  The screen does go to black but it’s still draining battery life.  You can turn it off by holding down the power button but the better way is to go back to the main menu and select power off.  It then asks you to confirm and scroll the orange selection button to OK.

Like the Aluratek, the Itomic can be read vertically or horizontally but the Itomic adjusts automatically depending on the angle at which you hold it.  This can sometimes be disconcerting such as when it moves just slightly at another angle and the orientation changes.  We had some issues with it not going back to where we left off in our books.  It does go back to the correct place when we exit it out and shut down at the main menu.  When we resume, we select the continue reading option.  I still try to leave bookmarks when I stop reading just in case it doesn’t go back to the correct place.

Something I wanted to test with the reader very early was the downloading and storing of epub books from the library.  The reader is compatible with digital editions.  However, the epubs can only be read if they remain where Digital Editions puts them on the reader.  When I tried copying an epub to the SD card I found that I could no longer read it.  This is not the case for free text files or .pdf files that can be opened on the SD card.  All of the text and free .pdf files that were on the card for the Aluratek can still be read on the Itomic.  I have not yet tried downloading PDFs from the library, but I don’t do that very often.

Before writing this review I tried reading two books: one free text file and one epub from the library.  The first one was The Awakening by Kate Chopin that I read for the Banned Books discussion group in mid-June (see earlier review).  The second was The Butcher’s Boy that I read for the Wednesday Whodunit Book Discussion group (again see earlier review).  The default font size for the epub was much too big.  I found the ideal font size when I selected “fit to width.”  I had to adjust the screen to be less bright than the default.  I was still used to the grey and black Aluratek reader.

The Itomic reader includes several features that the Aluratek did not have.  An interesting one is the pronounce feature that has an electronic female voice read the page out loud in a monotone.  The Itomic can also play music and has a small speaker allowing you to listen to music without headphones like a little transistor radio.  There’s even a shuffle feature.  We tried playing a video on the reader but it didn’t work very well.  It played it too fast and seemed to be skipping a lot.  One missing feature is the word or letter search.  The Aluratek allowed me to search for a word within the text of a book.  I don’t see this feature on the Itomic.  It has more features that I haven’t tried yet such as access to Wi-Fi.  The Itomic reader does not seem to have as much battery life as the Aluratek, but that may be because I sometimes listen to music while reading.  It uses the same standard USB cable but a different charger cable.

So far, the Itomic has done the job.  It lacks a few things the Aluratek had, but has many additional features.  We’re still learning all its idiosyncrasies.   My wife has been reading the Sherlock Holmes stories with it.  We’re hoping it lasts longer than the Aluratek did.  But at the Itomic price, we should get our money’s worth.

Aluratek Libre eBook Reader PRO & Case

I bought the Aluratek Libre eBook Reader PRO and case in December 2010 as an early Christmas present for myself.  We ordered it for around $100 from newegg.com plus tax.  The offer included a leather case for free, normally sold separately.  I had been looking at eBook readers because I learned that a large selection of eBooks could be downloaded from the L.A. Public Library website.  We looked at several different readers of different brands, though not the popular Amazon Kindle.  The Borders Kobo readers looked pretty good, though they could only read the EPUB and PDF formats.  We went to the Borders at Montclair Plaza and obtained a brochure that compared six readers: the Aluratek Libre, the Kobo e-reader, the Sony Pocket Edition Reader, the Velocity Micro Cruz Reader, the Sony Touch Edition Reader, and the Velocity Micro Cruz Tablet Reader.  They ranged in price from $120 for the Aluratek Libre to $300 for the Velocity Micro Cruz Tablet Reader.  The brochure also compared features, size and weight, memory capacity, battery life, eBook formats compatible, etc.  The Velocity Micro Cruz readers had color screens, the Sony and Velocity Micro Cruz readers had touch screens, the Kobo and Sony readers had the longest battery lives.  The Aluratek was the least expensive but was compatible with the most eBook formats.  When we saw the offer for Aluratek for just $100 along with a free case, I decided to order it.

It arrived within a couple of days.  There was a box for the reader and another for the case.  The reader came with a foam pouch-like case along with a charger cord and quick start guide.  The first thing we had to do was charge it up that took a few hours.  When it was done we started playing around with it.  A more comprehensive help guide was stored under the help option of the main menu.  The power button is a small one at the middle of the bottom designed so it cannot be hit accidentally very easily.  The reader came with 100 books already loaded on it, all text files in the public domain from Project Gutenberg.  They included old classics such as Ivanhoe, Moby Dick, and Pride and Prejudice, also even older ones such as Shakespeare plays.  It even has Les Miserables, though the Isabel F. Hapgood translation and not the Charles Wilbur translation that I read in 2010.  I slowly got used to the controls, buttons on the lower left for turning pages, arrow and function buttons on the lower right, numbers along the right side and another page turning control along the left.  I also had to get used to the various menus.

We tried reading the books on there.  The internal memory only consists of 90.8 MB.  We added an SD card, actually an SD card adapter into which we inserted the slotMusic microSD chip that came with my Sansa Taco (see earlier review), to expand the memory by one GB.  When we plug it into the computer it creates two drives, one for the internal memory and another for the SD card.  In addition to books we could add audio files and photos.  There’s a headphone jack for listening to music while reading.  I suppose you could even listen to an audiobook while reading it with the reader in text/pdf or epub version.  I tried downloading an epub book from the library.  To do so I had to install Adobe Digital Editions on our laptop computer.  The book then appeared on Digital Editions and could be dragged onto the reader from there.  When the due date was reached the book appears as “expired” in the Digital Editions.

So far I’ve read two books: Baltimore Blues and Not My Boy, both epubs (see later reviews), and I’m working on two more, an epub and an Adobe PDF.  I can bookmark pages as “virtual tape flags,” though a page is usually more text than I see on the screen.  I can adjust the text size, jump to a page, and find text.  The menus are a little different for text, epub, and Adobe PDF books.  The latter has a reflow feature that causes text to wrap around to the next line rather than requiring the reader to scan across the page.  Text can be looked up with each number representing a multitude of letters similar to phone buttons.  It has taken some getting used to and a few times I’ve had to reset it by pressing the tiny reset switch with a paper clip.  The page numbers aren’t the number of pages displayed fully on the screen but rather the number of full pages.  The screen pages are smaller due to the text size.  This causes some confusion with bookmarking because the bookmarks apply to the full pages and not to the display pages.  It seems like I can have as many bookmarks as I want.  I use them as “virtual tape flags.”  I noticed some idiosyncrasies such as the epubs downloaded from Project Gutenberg do not keep their bookmarks.  Text files do keep their bookmarks as do library epubs and PDFs.  Also library epubs remain on the reader after due date while library Adobe PDFs cannot be opened after their expiration date. 

The reader came with a case designed for it specifically.  It keeps the screen covered when I’m not using it and closes with a magnetic latch.  It’s not quite like reading a print book.  I have to turn it on and make sure it’s charged up.  I can’t read it while taking off or landing in an airplane since it is a portable electronic device.  Though the selection is wide at the L.A. Public Library website, it’s nowhere near as wide as the selection of print books.  Most of the eBooks tend to be newer ones published during the past 2-3 years or so.  There are many series of books: romances, mysteries, science fiction, mostly popular stuff that didn’t interest me.  There are also the public domain classics.  Older books tend to be on PDF, though these take up more memory.  Books that use pictures such as travel books and “For Dummies” manuals also tend to be in PDF form.  Of course, I also have to often wait for the books to become available.

But overall, I like the reader.  It’s much easier than schlepping to the library to pick up a print book.  For Lent between 3/8/11 and 4/24/11 I gave up checking out print books from the library and I’m only reading eBooks.  I’ll test how well the reader works on a long plane trip.