Cybook Gen3 is a 6-inch (15.2 cm)
e-reader
An e-reader, also called an e-book reader or e-book device, is a mobile electronic device that is designed primarily for the purpose of reading digital e-books and periodicals.
Any device that can display text on a screen may act as an e-read ...
for reading
e-books
An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alt ...
and periodicals, and it can be used to listen to
MP3
MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...
and
audiobook
An audiobook (or a talking book) is a recording of a book or other work being read out loud. A reading of the complete text is described as "unabridged", while readings of shorter versions are abridgements.
Spoken audio has been available in sc ...
files. It was produced by the
French company
Bookeen
Bookeen is a French company dealing with e-books and consumer electronics.
History
In 2003 after the failure of Cytale (the first European company to make an ebook reader) two former engineers of Cytale, Laurent Picard and Michaƫl Dahan, bou ...
.
Description
The Cybook Gen3 is a reading device based on
E Ink
E Ink (electronic ink) is a brand of electronic paper (e-paper) display technology commercialized by the E Ink Corporation, which was co-founded in 1997 by MIT undergraduates JD Albert and Barrett Comiskey, MIT Media Lab professor Joseph Jacobson ...
screen technology. Its screen possesses a paper-like high contrast appearance and is readable under direct sunlight. The device offers a battery lifetime of 8,000 page flips. The Cybook Gen3 reads many file formats and offers access to a wide range of digital documents. A
Secure Digital card
Secure Digital, officially abbreviated as SD, is a proprietary non-volatile flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA) for use in portable devices.
The standard was introduced in August 1999 by joint efforts between SanDis ...
slot allows for expanded storage. To a host computer the Cybook Gen3 functions as a typical USB mass storage device, which allows for copying books from a computer. For this reason it is supported on all major operating systems, including Linux.
The device uses
TrueType
TrueType is an outline font standard developed by Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the most common format for fonts on the classic Mac OS, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating sy ...
fonts (.ttf), and can also be used as an image viewer to display
JPEG
JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and imag ...
,
GIF
The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , see pronunciation) is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released on 15 June 1987. ...
and
PNG files, as well as to play
MP3
MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...
files. The Cybook Gen3 supports
PDF
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
files, however it doesn't reflow text and early firmware did not allow zooming in on documents. Current firmware revisions support ten levels of zoom and allow scrolling around the page, making the device suitable for reading many PDF files. However, very large PDF files take a long time to display once the file is selected. Some PDF files also cause the firmware to crash, which requires a hard reset by pressing the small button on the back side.
Cybook Gen3 review
ZDNet
The Cybook Gen3 runs Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
as its underlying operating system. While the firmware source code is mostly open-source, the Mobipocket
Mobipocket SA was a French company incorporated in March 2000 that created the .mobi e-book file format and produced the Mobipocket Reader software for mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDA) and desktop operating systems.
The Mobipoc ...
reader application which allows the display of DRM-protected content is closed-source.
See also
* Comparison of e-book readers
An e-reader, also known as an e-book reader, is a portable electronic device that is designed primarily for the purpose of reading e-books and Periodical literature, periodicals. E-readers have a similar form factor (design), form factor to a table ...
* Comparison of tablet computers
This is a list of tablet computers, grouped by intended audience and form factor.
Media tablets
Multimedia tablets are compared in the following tables.
Larger than screen
Following two tables compare larger than screen multimedia tablets rele ...
* Cybook Opus
Cybook Opus is a 5-inch e-reader, specially designed for reading e-books and e-news. It is produced by the French company Bookeen.
Description
The Cybook Opus is an ultra-light reading device based on E Ink screen technology.
The device is 4.2ā ...
- A newer product from Bookeen
References
{{reflist
External links
Official website
Bookeen Cybook Gen3 dedicated forum
MobileRead Wiki entry
Dedicated ebook devices
de:Cybook Gen3