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MP3 Players
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iRiver Story
This is the first eBook reader from iRiver. iRiver Story was originally designed to provide the same facilities as Amazon kindle. It later developed to have some other special features also.
iRiver Story Design and Features
The screen of iRiver Story is similar to other eBook readers being a 6 inch screen. Below this we have a full fledged QWERTY keyboard. The other controls such as USB port and headphone jack are at the rear side of iRiver. It does not have a touchpad but the keyboard works very well. There are a few control keys on the side used to zoom the screen and to flip pages. They are also quite sensitive and very easy to use.
The battery lasts quite long as in all other eBook readers. We can flip up to 7000 pages in one single battery charge. If music is played more power is consumed. However when we browse the web pages, power consumption is very low even if we do activities such as adding notes and bookmarks apart from flipping the pages.
Screen
The screen is built using the Vizplex E-Ink Technology. The screen has 8 greyscale levels. It has 800x600 pixel resolution. This is slightly less than Kindle, still the display is very good. It has a backlight facility so text could be viewed in the dark also. there is no strain to the eyes. However, very high resolution JPEG images are not displayed so clearly.
iRiver Story Storage
iRiver Story has 2BG internal memory and can hold 1,500 eBooks. SD cards could be used to extend the memory further up to 32 GB. Numerous eBooks and music files can be stored.
iRiver Support
iRiver Story gives a real challenge to Kindle when it comes to file format support. iRiver supports eBook file formats like EPUB, PDF, RTF and TXT. Business document file formats like DOC, PPT and XLS are also supported.
It does not have DRM support but can take in most of the downloaded contents from web as most of the popular eBook file formats in internet are supported. If you want to load anything in DRM file format no problem still. There is software called Adobe Digital Edition. You can download that in your PC and drag and drop it into your iRiver. iRiver supports both windows and MAC OS.
Image and Music
Image file formats like JPEG, BMP and GIF are supported. If you try to transfer contents directly from a digital camera, mobile or any other device the picture quality and rendering is below average. Audio file formats like MP3, WMA and even lossless OGG are supported. You can use them to hear music as well as hear audio books.
Transferring Data
Data could be transferred by plugging in the USB cable or through SD card slots. Data transfer and storage works in a standard way.
The iRiver Story Performance
PDF files with big fonts are viewed best in iRiver story. Other PDF files with small font sizes are a bit hard to see however. The overall processor speed is slow. Because of this, actions like zoom and general navigation take a long time. Office documents in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint formats are absolutely amazing to view.
Since we do not have a touch pad all navigation should be done through keyboard and the buttons present on either side of iRiver. They are quite easy to use and work absolutely well. Image quality should be improved. But there does not seem to be any issue with audio quality.
Based on the text we are reading, landscape and portrait modes could be used easily and any type of eBook could be read pleasurable in this reader.
iRiver Story Special Features
There are many additional features in iRiver like a diary where we can add our notes, a voice recorder which records our voice through a built in speaker and saves it in MP3 format. These files could be sent to others in the form of voice memo.
Support to any eBook format is another good feature. It is quite useful when we pick up stuff randomly from internet.
The Verdict
iRiver Story will definitely prove to be a worthy competitor for Amazon Kindle. If you are a frequent net user and want a device to check all the numerous snippets you download, iRiver is the best choice. It is a product worth spending on. Immense memory and excellent display are its highlights. Poor image rendering and overall slow performance is its drawback.
Cost: $330
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