Feb 072010
One of the reasons, I bought a BeBook in preference to more familiar, highly publicised ebook readers such as the Kindle and Sony readers, was the fact that it’s firmware is open source and easily and regularly updated.
Since the BeBook is a re-badged reader from China, generically a Hanlin V3, there are many other resellers, each of whom bundle and market the Hanlin as their own. Some use Hanlin’s original firmware, while others amend it under the GPL and create their own. Additionally, software developers not tied to any re-branded reader are free to write their own firmware and I’ve tried a couple.
The first I tried is Open Inkpot a Russian based project which aims to produce a fast and graphically satisfying reading experience based entirely on free software. While this is a noble aim, it has a major flaw which is that you cannot read DRM protected books of any format. On the positive side, I found Open Inkpot to be fast and stable, and excellent at reading my free ePub books. I didn’t like the fact that it wiped my BeBook’s internal hard drive, which meant a reformatting exercise when I returned to the BeBook’s native firmware.
Next on test was the joyous Tirwall’s firmware. I chose his latest version v2.7 with Triple Boot. This has three great advantages over the BeBook’s native firmware from Endless Ideas.
- This firmware has the fastest page turns I’ve yet seen. Using the native firmware, I have acclimatised to pressing the next page button, two lines before the end of the page to allow the reader to access the SD card and redraw the next page on the display – no longer. Tirwall’s page turns are almost instant.
- The triple boot option allows you to select different formats for the bookshelf and navigational screens when not reading books. I’ve chosen the Lbook format as this is a change from the BeBook format which has larger fonts and is generally clearer.
- Finally his firmware can read both Adobe and Mobipocket DRM’ed files, as well as a large number of other non-protected formats. As I’ve mentioned in a couple of other posts about BeBooks, Adobe’s ePub format and its associated Adobe Digital Editions software replaced MobiPocket as the standard for DRM’ed files. As part of their licensing agreement, manufacturers are only allowed to include either Adobe or Mobi decryption software. No such restriction applies to individuals such as Tirwall. So I can now buy books in either format and read them as I please. Open source wins again.
Muchas gacias Tirwall!
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