Not the best ebook, not the best PDA. But very nice nonetheless

I just got my ebookman 901 a while ago, and my first reaction was positive. The screen was a nice size, compared to other PDAs, and the construction seemed solid. It was a little frustrating not being able to play with it out of the box, seeing how you first must download the operating system first. Well, with that done, I started it up, and I was impressed with the readabilty and also the applications that came with it. One drawback is the lack of content for the Ebookman, which only supports their own proprietary format. (However, microsoft plans to create a ebookman program allowing it to read other, more common formats).

THe next thing to try was Audible, a company that allows you to listen to audio books on your pda, ebookman or mp3 player. I had some trouble the first time I tried to use the Audible program, and had to find out that there was a special program for the ebookman. After I figured that out, it worked fine.

As for the pda functions, they are amazingly average. The games can be alright, "lines" can be fun, and they sell solitaire, and poker. They promised to have a voice recorder soon after launch, still no word about that. THe mp3 player feature, as they call it, can be annoying because it does not play mp3s, but rather it changes your mp3 files to a franklin music format, which is larger than the original mp3 file. Because of this, expandable memory, (50$ 32megs, 100$ 64) is neccesary for audio use. I guess if your willing to shell out an additional 100 $, the 72 meg ebookman could be a respectable mp3 player, even with the troublesome franklin format.

In conclusion, a word about the batteries. They last a fair amount for normal reading (no audio, no backlight) but if you want to use those features, use them while the batteries are still pretty close to full. After it claims it is running out of batteries, turn of the backlight and audio, and read on for several more hours.