Don’t Quit That Kindle Just Yet

So often in life, reality doesn’t live up to the marketing; the fine print gets you every time. Vacation resort brochures always show the beaches and pools gleaming, well-lighted and completely empty. Movie trailers harvest 45 seconds of hilarity from even the biggest duds. And as for online dating profiles — well, you know.

Source: Coolreaders.com

Likewise, when you hear the description for the new Cool-er e-book reader ($250), from a British company called Interead, you have to sit up and take notice. It’s supposed to be just like the Amazon  Kindle, but smaller, lighter, thinner and $110 less expensive. (The name Cool-er comes from “Cool E-book Reader.”)

The Cool-er has enough memory to hold 700 books, but its memory-card slot can accommodate 2,800 more books, which should just about cover your next flight.

Unlike the current Kindle, the Cool-er has a removable battery. The company says that it will offer additional batteries for $5. And one charge is good for 8,000 page turns, which is more than the Kindle or the Sony Reader.

(Yes, it’s weird to measure battery life in page turns — but that’s E Ink screen technology for you. These remarkable screens, used by the Kindle, Sony and Cool-er, look almost exactly like ink on paper. They’re spectacularly readable as long as you have enough light; there’s no built-in illumination. And E Ink uses no power at all when displaying an image; the ink dots just stay frozen in place until you “turn the page,” which is the only time you use a shot of power.)

The Cool-er has its own online store, stocked with 275,000 titles. According to Interead, they’re advertised as less expensive than on Amazon’s or Sony’s stores.

Above all, the Cool-er’s books are far less restrictively protected than Amazon’s or Sony’s. For starters, you can read one on your Mac or PC. According to Interead, starting this fall, you’ll be able to sell books you’ve written on Coolerbooks.com; you’ll keep 50 percent of each sale.

And most intriguingly of all, you can share a Cool-er book you’ve bought with four other people. Think family, buddies or book club.

That’s a huge deal. It takes a step toward addressing what may be the biggest remaining e-book gotcha: you’re stuck with your books forever. On the Kindle, for example, once you’ve finished reading a book, you can’t pass it on, sell it or even donate it to a library.

The Cool-er, at 7.2 by 4.6 by 0.4 inches, is indeed smaller than the original Kindle, by almost an inch in each direction, and it’s far lighter and thinner than the Sony Reader. In fact, it’s small enough to slip into a blazer’s inside pocket, which is handy indeed.

Once you hold it in your hands, however, fine print hits you like a sledgehammer.

The Cool-er has eight iPod-like metallic-paint shades, but it’s made of plastic. It feels hollow and insubstantial; the plastic literally creaks when you press the buttons, which doesn’t inspire particular confidence. And did the company really need to paint all those TM’s on the reader itself — let alone the slogan (“We make reading cool”)?

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The iPod design inspiration continues with the white “click wheel,” which is actually four compass-point buttons (not a true dial). These buttons, like the six on the reader’s edges, are stiff and balky.

Even when you’ve successfully registered a “next page” button press, it can take several seconds for the screen to change accordingly. So you’re always left wondering whether your button-press was successful, or if you’re just waiting for the device to catch up. That’s not an ideal setup for immersive reading.

The four tiny white buttons on the left edge are unlabeled except for cryptic, molded indentations. As it turns out, the top one opens the “multimedia menu,” which offers only two choices: play an MP3 or play sudoku (how random is that?). The second rotates the screen image from landscape to portrait. The third is the Back button. The bottom one opens a menu of miscellaneous settings.

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Not only is this a bizarre layout — should sudoku really be the most important button? — but there’s no Home button. To get to your master list of books, you’re supposed to hold down the Rotate button for three seconds. (The Rotate button? Not the Back button?)

You have a choice of eight type sizes. Unfortunately, performing a type-size change requires — no joke — 16 key presses, each requiring about 20 pounds of force.

Keep in mind, too, that the Cool-er lacks many of the niceties that make the Kindle feel so complete. The big one, of course, is a cellular connection; you can shop the Kindle bookstore wirelessly. The Cool-er requires you to buy books on your Mac or PC, then transfer them to the reader via a U.S.B. connection. For this purpose, you’re supposed to use a free program called Adobe Digital Editions to manage your copy-protected books. Installing and learning it is left to you.

CONTINUED : Avoid 1.0, but root for future versions

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