eBookMan®   eBookMan EBM-911 eBookMan EBM-901

I love my new eBookMan^®!

Our family has three!  We can download public domain titles off the internet, and then read them anytime, anywhere!  It's been a lot of fun so far!

My son has downloaded The Count of Monte Cristo, free, off of the internet and is now reading it.  It's handy, because we don't own an unabridged hardcopy of the book.

I've downloaded Henty's The Dragon and the Raven and In Freedom's Cause along with a little bit of Poe.  I've even got Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare.  They're in the public domain, you just have to visit Gutenburg.net to see all the titles you can download and read!

We recently rented The Importance of Being Earnest (English Lit for high school level) at the video store.  We watched it a couple of times and then loaded the play into our eBookMans and sat around the living room reading the play aloud--each on our own little electronic reader.  We didn't have to buy three copies of the play; we didn't have to print out three copies either.  And it was fairly quick--quicker than going to the store to see if they had three copies of The Importance of Being Earnest for us to read.  Sure, some of us had to read a couple of parts (both Jack and Chasuble), but it was great fun!  What a treat!  All for just the price of the eBookMan!

Here's some idea of what you can find online and download for your eBookMan.
 

If your homeschool employs living books ala Charlotte Mason/Ambleside Online, Sonlight, TWTM, then this may be a way to save a little money or save your printer from over use!  Plus it's neater and easier to store your eBookMan than printed-out pages.  And when you turn on your eBookMan, you're taken right back to where you left off in your ebook.

Of course, only old books are in the public domain.  Most of them are older than 80 years, or something like that.  There are many newer books that probably should, of course, be part of your curriculum, too.  This is meant to be an inexpensive way to read some of the classics that are currently available.

Besides being a reader, you can load this electronic reader with a foreign language translator for around $10 and a Morse Code Tutor for about $4!  It comes with an address/phone book, a to-do-list feature, 2 games, a date book, backlight, voice memo (that I haven't figure out all the way, but it records my voice and plays it back!), calculator.  You can download a dictionary free when you register your new item; it's so handy.  It's a little difficult to write the to-do lists, but I'm getting better with practice.  You have to write your letters the normal way or the eBookMan won't be able to read them.  I'm not too exact in my penmanship; the eBookMan is fairly forgiving though.

Of course, there are drawbacks.  First off, it's not a book!  It doesn't feel like a book, nor look like a book.  As a book lover, that initially bothered me.  But when I look at the economics of it and the ease, I wish I had an electronic reader a long time ago because, at the very least, I could have pre-read some of the story to see if we wanted to actually buy it.  I could have read a Henty to my kids prior to spending $15 each for them.  With this eBookMan, we can read the book first, and if we fall in love with it, then we can buy a hard copy.  This just opens up a whole new way of doing things for us.

Batteries are an issue.  You can buy an electrical adapter separately.  [Note:  I can't find one available anywhere, though they were manufactured.]  We went the rechargeable battery route since we already have a battery charger.  Some other brands of readers need to be plugged into the wall to charge them because their battery is not removable, but the batteries in the eBookMan come out.  Whatever you do, don't let the batteries run out because you'll lose everything!  Change your batteries with the eBookMan turned off and make it quick.

Quite a few books will fit in the 8 MB that are standard with a EBM-901, but I got an upgrade anyhow.  That way I won't have to worry about running out of memory.  Also, only one MP3 would fit on my 901 without the upgrade.  Not that I'm a big MP3 fan, but just so you know about memory.  This is the memory upgrade card that will fit:  SanDisk 32 MB MultiMedia Card (SDMB-32-470).  My husband bought a different kind for his eBookMan initially.  It looked just like it would fit, and it did go in the slot, but it broke the spring (we think) in the slot.  The card mentioned above is the one I have in mine, and it works just fine.  And my husband did get his working, too.  You can order it from Amazon, but we bought ours at our local Best Buy for about $28.

We bought our eBookMans (the plural seems like it should be eBookMen) from Costco for only $40 each.  What a deal!  Retail they are $149 for the 901 and $199 for the 911.  I think that Franklin is closing them out, and that's why the price is so low.  I'm not sure how long Franklin will offer support.  I don't know how long they're going to have the web site up to download the Morse Code program and the foreign language translator.  Regardless, even in the short term, we've saved money because our eBookMans were only $40 each.  Just loading three Hentys onto mine, puts us ahead by about five dollars over buying hardbacks.

Be part of the electronic reading revolution!  I don't think we can avoid it much longer.  Some colleges are already testing out having complete textbooks on computers; the students have to have laptops to take the class.  It's catching on.  What will our libraries be like 10 years from now?  Will we be taking out little PDAs or laptops to the library and having the books we want to read downloaded into our computer with a 4-week span of time to read the book before it's automatically deleted by special software?  Can you imagine?  It hard to believe, but I think things are headed that way.  I love the feel of a real book in my hand, and it makes me want to hang onto the real books I've got!  But I do like our little electronic reader; it's got a lot going for it, too!

If you decide you want a 901, then don't buy it through Amazon.  Amazon is out of them, and I don't think they'll get anymore.  They have 4 EBM-911s left last time I checked.  Currently there are some eBookMans 901 and 911 new in box (NIB) up for auction on eBay.  You may want to buy one that way.  They are going to $40 - $60, some for less.  You need to make sure that it comes with the USB cradle, the CD (because you install software into your desktop computer), and manual.  Of course, don't forget about compatibility.

There are other options, but they are more expensive, and I'm not sure about which ones will let you convert .txt files into a format that your PDA will be able to read.  These electronic readers and PDAs have a lot more features, but you probably won't want your 9 year old carrying around a $400 or $500 item--that's why the eBookMan is so nice! 

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