It seems inevitable. With PDAs becoming more and more popular and the common buzz about the future being a single, integrated device, what could be more on-target than a handheld that does it all? Looking at the literature, the eBookMan appears to be that device. Is it? Well, yes and no.

The first glance is promising. The eBookMan has a nice form factor: A little bigger than a Visor, with a bigger screen and a similar-sized data entry area, the eBookMan is pocket-able and easy to hold. It lacks the solid quality of the newer Palm devices or Pocket PCs like the iPAQ, but feels well made. It has both a speaker and headphone jack for listening, a microphone, and a nifty scroll wheel on the side that is very convenient. The grayscale display is clear and easy to read, and had a very good backlight – not too bright, not too dim. The menu system is iconic and includes all of the standard PDA functions, calculator, address book, memo pad, date book, and to do list. In addition it has some nice features like an audio book reader, music player for MP3 files, and the ability to use standard book and document files (.seb, .fub, .pdb, .txt, .htm, and .html). You can also download support for Audible books, games, and applications. With the huge variety of books available in readable form, tons of books and magazines in Audible format, and MP3s to listen to, what could you possibly complain about?

To be honest, the eBookMan works just fine most of the time. It synced with Outlook and picked up my data flawlessly. All of the applications work just fine. The simpliWrite text recognition is certainly as easy to learn and use as Graffiti, and the recognition is first-rate. When you register your eBookMan you can download several books, among them “The Return of Sherlock Holmes,” which demonstrate that the eBookMan is an acceptable way to read a book, especially when you turn the text into “landscape” mode and hold the device sideways, giving you a similar reading area to a paperback.

So what’s the problem? Well, first off, the process of getting it up and running left me less than impressed. I started out by installing it at home on my desktop machine which is running RC1 of Windows XP. After installing the eBookMan desktop software and trying to sync the device, it failed. No big surprise, there aren’t many devices with XP drivers out there, yet, so I dropped a mail to their tech support asking if there were any beta XP drivers available. I even mentioned that my eBookMan was a review copy, hoping that I could get a bit more info out of them that way. There reply was a terse, “There are no XP drivers available at this time.” No advice, no information about when XP drivers might be available, no useful feedback whatsoever. Fine, okay, so I installed on my laptop running Win Me. Installation worked fine, syncing worked great, downloading the free book files went wonderfully. Then I noticed there is an upgrade to the desktop software. After installing the software and attempting to sync (which also tried to install a newer version of the OS), the eBookMan refused to work until I uninstalled the update, reinstalled the original software, dropped out the batteries long enough that it forgot all that it knew, and started over. Even then the eBookMan got twitchy on me a couple of times, once insisting that it was out of memory even though I hadn’t added any new files, and required resetting and reloading the OS (yet again) to make it work. In the long run, I got a lot of painless use out of the eBookMan, but it still didn’t completely erase the annoyance of spending the better part two evenings installing, uninstalling, and reinstalling the desktop, and downloading the OS repeatedly.

The other problem with the eBookMan is that it is competent at what it does, but it just doesn’t shine at anything, and I couldn’t find anywhere on the web where it was selling for less than the manufacturer’s list price. It isn’t as clear or easy to read as a dedicated book reader like the RCA e-book, which are selling for under $200. With 16 Mb of memory and the manual stating that stereo music takes up 1.25 Mb per minute, it isn’t going to win any awards as a bargain for playing MP3s. As a PDA, the dropping prices of Palm and Visor products mean that you can find an excellent PDA at a better price. Granted, none of these devices do everything the eBookMan does, but each of them does what they do as well or better than the eBookMan, and at a lower price.

If what you really want is a convergence device, I’d recommend you spend more and get a Pocket PC or simply wait. It’s hard to justify the price of the Franklin, given the competition.

--Tucker Hatfield
Palm Editor