Franklin eBookMan Review

By Jon Jermey

A while back I asked the eBook-Community discussion list for impressions of the new Franklin eBookMan, and particularly why it appeared to be doing so badly. I got a few helpful responses but not enough to satisfy my curiosity, so I decided to buy one and see for myself. Here's my thoughts:

  • Marketing: 2/10 - bad, bad, bad...
  • Hardware: 9/10 - needs storage space for extra batteries
  • Software: 5/10 - quirky, to say the least. -1 for the bloated music format
  • eBooks: 5/10 for native formats, 8/10 for MobiReader third-party add-in
  • Support: 6/10 - also quirky, in fact downright irrational

Marketing

People buying gadgets like to be able to fiddle with them. The first thing I asked when I saw the eBookMan was 'Can I try it?' Well, no, you can't, because it doesn't come with batteries (the more expensive models do). It wouldn't hurt Franklin to shell out a dollar to supply some batteries for a US $129.95 (AUD $300) machine.

But it gets better. Even if you put batteries in you still can't try it because it does nothing without an operating system downloaded from the Franklin Web site. So you have to buy it and take it home before you have a clue whether it's even going to work, much less do what you want it to do. No wonder it's not selling.

Hardware

The shape and size are kind of standard, and the only external controls are a thumbwheel at the right hand side and an on/off switch at the bottom. The look and feel - dark cobalt blue - is quite funky, although the translucent plastic back is going to look very dated when the craze dies down. (Am I really supposed to look inside and think, "I know what's going on in there?").

There is a built-in mike and speaker, a socket for headphones and a flip-down removable plastic cover. The unit comes with a USB cable – more expensive ones include a cradle. Battery life seems fine and it's easy to slip into a shirt pocket and carry around all day. One mark off for the tacky stylus, which looks like it came out of a breakfast cereal packet. There is a panel at the base of the screen with two clickable 'hot spots', an area for handwriting and a movement control. Given the importance of spare batteries, I would have liked to see somewhere to carry them. More detailed specs can be found at the Franklin site.

Some eBookMans (including mine) are being sold with a capacitor problem which causes the operating system to be lost from memory when the batteries are changed, rendering the device unusable until it is plugged in to the parent PC again. Franklin regional offices are replacing these by doing a straight swap for new devices - if this situation sounds familiar, then contact Franklin in the US. International users (like me) need to contact their local offices.

Software

So you take it home, plug it in to a USB port and download the operating system. You can also register the device with the Franklin Web site and receive in return a game and a free dictionary in proprietary e-book (.FUB) form. This puts you in a position to download .FUB books from the Franklin Web site, if you're rich and crazy. More on that later...

On board the eBookMan there are the standard PIM applications – Address Book, Calculator, Date Book, Memo Book and To Do Book, plus an AudioBook player (will read books to you for money), a Music player (MP3 files converted to Franklin's own standard), a stalagmite game which allows you to practice handwriting with the stylus, and a couple of other games which are expendable. The PIM components are supposed to co-ordinate with Microsoft Outlook but I was unable to make this happen; unless I can get some help from Franklin on this it will severely limit the usability of the device. The available programs and any data files appear on the front panel as icons when the device is switched on. This can be filtered so that only certain types of icons appear, making an effective subdirectory.

Files are added to the eBookman through a PC program called the Desktop Manager which brings up a split screen showing a directory on your own PC at the left and the eBookMan directory (it apparently only has one) on the right. Files can be copied across if they are in a format that the eBookMan recognises (.TXT, .HTM - not .HTML -, .FUB) or have been converted to a generic .SEB format, which is what happens to .MP3 files, for instance. The two sides can also be 'synchronised', so that files are added to or removed from the eBookMan to bring it into line with the PC directory. All this is fairly painless once you get the hang of it.

A word on the MP3 player: although this is being pushed by Franklin as part of their marketing, they somehow omit to mention that stereo .MP3 files TRIPLE in size when copied across to eBookMan format. Think you've got 4Mb of spare space for .MP3's? Divide that by three and you end up with about TWO MINUTES worth of music storage. A 16Mb multimedia card will give you all of eight minutes. Dedicated .MP3 players have nothing to fear.

The handwriting recognition was surprisingly accurate and easy to learn, and can be supplemented in most situations (but not all) by a pop-up screen keyboard. I would have liked to see a sketching program.

eBooks: Franklin-style

To the ebook features after which the device is named: it features not one, but two e-reading programs. The first is the Franklin Reader, which will ONLY work with Franklin format (.FUB) e-books purchased from their site. Consequently I was unable to test it, but from the description in the manual it appears to support tables and footnotes and hypertext in the form of outlines, contents and keyword indexes. You can also choose from two font sizes and flip the text sideways to run across the length of the screen. Nice but not indispensable.

The second reading program is the Franklin Viewer, which displays .TXT, .HTM and .PDB files. I tried a few .TXT and .HTM files with no problems – the screen was reasonably crisp and clear and it soon became automatic to page down with the thumbwheel (scrolling via the movement area at the bottom was harder to work consistently). The Viewer doesn't bookmark, but you can leave it running in the background while you switch off or do other things, and come back to it later. Text in the Viewer appears unformatted but it does support HTML tables.

eBooks: ala-MobiPocket

What if you want to read formatted text but don't want the .FUB books on offer at the Franklin site? You can either wait for Microsoft to release the Reader for the eBookMan (coming Real Soon Now) or get the nifty MobiPocket reader from www.mobipocket.com. Note: at the time of publication, this was still a beta version so your mileage may vary.

MobiPocket supports compiled e-book format very much like the OEB standard, and if the books you want are available in some other format - text or HTML - there is a free (for personal use) compiler you can also download to convert them. The resulting .PRC format books can be read on your own PC or converted to .SEB files automatically (but without the bloat this time) for transfer to the eBookMan. The MobiReader supports limited formatting and has a few other features to enhance the reading experience.

I've had some trouble with the beta version of the MobiPocket Reader - it stops a page or two from the end of the book with an 'Out of memory' message. It doesn't seem to matter how long the book is -- BUT you can work around the problem by compiling the book with a few dummy pages of text at the end. Another issue: The MobiPocket Reader can supposedly display text and HTML files if they are copied across to the eBookMan individually rather than being synchronised. I've tried this for text files but the display seemed to "lose" pixels. I've written to MobiPocket support on this one so hopefully this will be corrected in the "release" version. But considering it's a beta, I'm pretty impressed with the folk at MobiPocket. Their Reader fits into 256k of limited memory space - I will be very interested to see if Microsoft can do better.

Support 1. Content

Now we get to the seriously weird marketing model. Franklin has some .FUB books for sale. There aren't many of these and they appear to be based on Project Gutenberg and other sources of out-of-copyright material. They are available from a download site which allows you to download the SAME books - plus many others - as text for free. So you can a) pay nothing and choose from a lot of books or b) pay a lot and choose from a few books. (With me so far?) One price I noted was $US2.95 (now about $6 Australian) for a copy of The Raven and two stories by Edgar Allan Poe. The $2.95 Edgar Allan Poe download actually includes three stories, one of which is The Fall of the House of Usher. This is a novella, bringing the price down to about four cents a page for a formatted version of an out-of-copyright text that I can click on an adjacent link and download unformatted for free. If this sounds like a great deal to you then I have a Harbour Bridge you'd just love.

Look, guys, this just isn't going to work, especially with MobiReader and MS-Reader eBooks available for free. Stick to selling the devices and let someone else worry about the files.

Support 2. Technical Advice

The Franklin Website has an FAQ which answered one of my questions. I sent further questions via email which were answered immediately after Easter, but I still haven't been able to get the synchronisation with Outlook to work. There is a .PDF (why not .FUB?) downloadable copy of the eBookMan manual which is short on troubleshooting but otherwise to the point.

Talk anyone?

I thought it might be a change from high-tech theorizing to get a report from the coalface. If you're interested or involved in a Franklin mailing list, drop me a line or post a comment to the Forum.