Infibeam Pi

At my workplace are doing some work with Infibeam for their new ereader Pi.

A quick rundown on the specs
(from the Infibeam site)

Height     188 mm
Width     118 mm
Thickness     9.5 mm
Weight     180 gm
Screen / Display

    * 6" E Ink® Vizplex
    * 600x800 pixels
    * No backlight. Daylight readable.

Battery Life     7 days

File Formats Supported
Books / Text     PDF, EPUB, HTML, TXT, MOBI, DOC
Images     JPG, BMP, PNG
Audio     MP3

Control & Connectors

    * 3 mm Audio Earphone Connector
    * SD Card Slot
    * Mini USB Slot
    * Button for 4-Way Navigation & Selection.
    * Buttons back, home, plus / minus for size changes etc.

Internal Memory     512 MB
SD Card Slot upto 4GB

    * Screen Rotate for landscape / portrait views
    * Search inside a book or document
    * Game Play by Function Key & Navigation for Soduku

How does it feel
It is light. Much lighter than the Kindle. However, somehow you don't get the same intuitive feel as when you hold the Kindle. The Kindle UI can be used either handed, especially when you hold it for long periods and one hand gets tired

The first iteration of putting our India Today on it shows that the Infibeam team has put in a lot more thought into the presenting the magazine.

In the Kindle edition of India Today, the magazine runs like one solid block of text, without any formatting, indentation, tables etc. as if it were a book.

The Infibeam guys on the other hand have put in some effort in making the content presentable. It actually nicer to read, because of all the formatting elements introduced.

So to answer the eternal question. Is it worth it? At 10K a pop it is definitely worth a look as an alternative to the Kindle whose landed cost in India is Rs 18000 (Rs. 16000 is you got a customs refund).

This coupled with the fact that the Kindle does not do Indian languages and the Pi does, is a huge leg up for the Pi. Those reading books in Indian languages should definitely be looking at the Pi. Find out more about the Pi here.

The Kindle remains an attractive option for whoever is travelling and finds it necessary use the Internet to get his books. Also if you are subscribing to a few magazines and newspapers and rely on automatic wireless delivery. Then the Kindle is currently unbeatable. You can read about or get your Kindle here.

For a detailed thoughts on using the Kindle in India, see the post "Kindle in India" and a mini-faq on Kindle see this post "Kindle on the Delhi Metro"