After deliberating for a long time, I got myself an e-book reader. It was between the Sony PRS-505 and Hanlin v3. Although I have not seen the Sony Sony PRS-505 before in real live, I have been drooling over the pictures of them. The only thing that is holding me is that it does not support Chinese (although there are hacks which could enable the Sony PRS-505 to view Chinese characters) and the fact that the battery is not removable and almost everything else is ‘proprietary’ to Sony. Since I managed to find a seller willing to sell me the device in Singapore (with warranty), I dug out all my remaining Ringgit from my last Malayia trip and buy a Hanlin V3. The transaction took place beneath a HDB flat somewhere in Marsiling. I felt as if I was doing something really illicit when I passed the money over to the seller in a white envelope. I was half-expecting some police officer to stopped us and asked us what we were doing.
The Box
I am really wowed by the Hanlin V3. The first time I saw it, I was taken aback by the size of the device although I knew the dimensions of the device. The ‘chassis’ is made of black plastic material – you know the sort of black plastic they use for those big calculators. Certainly in the looks department, it lost out to Sony with its graceful metal finish (which comes in different colours). But it also has its charm in a sort of retro way. And the black-calculator-finish is low maintenance – unless you use a pen-knife to carve your name on it, you are unlikely to scratch the chassis. Metal finish looks really high-tech and polished…but it tarnishes too….I learn it the hard way with my handphone. Ok, ok….I admit it, I am jealous how delicious Sony e-book reader looks.
The size of the e-book reader is : 7.2″ x 4.7″ x 0.4″. Although I know the size from the specifications, I still get a shock when I saw the actual device. But after using it for a number of days, I know that I could never go back to my PDA days. It is just the right size to make reading comfortable. I know there are people who clamour for a 9 inch/A4 size screen but I think it would be far too big if you want to read for long because it is quite uncomfortable to hold a device which is the size of a A4 paper.
3 machines side-by-side. iPod Touch, Palm LifeDrive, Hanlin V3.
Hanlin v3 comes with a lot of freebies – including a leather case with magnetic clasp, AC power adaptor, ear buds, wrist leash, user manual, 1 GB Kingston SD card, SD card reader and a screw driver (in case you want to replace the battery).
I love the fact that reader could run on a Nokia battery which is cheap and easily available. Although technically, I would not need a spare battery since once charge is enough to last for a long time, it is good that if the battery dies/conk out, I can replace it easily.
I hate the leather casing (it comes free so I should not complain…..). The magnetic clasp looks weird because it goes ‘down’ instead of ‘up’. And having a magnetic clasp is really not a good idea because the magnet would lose its ‘strength’ to ‘stick’ after some time. I got a customized leather case for my Hanlin v3 – really good leather that would age looks even nicer when it starts to age.
Eat your heart out, all you Sony e-book reader owners. I actually wanted it in red leather but the artisan persuaded me to stick to ‘normal’ brown leather as the red leather would darken over time. I love roses so he carved roses on the cover and since I have bugged him about having a screaming red leather cover, he dyed one of the roses red. It is soooo nice….just like an antique diary. I may not have the nicest/coolest looking e-book reader but I have the nicest leather casing (stick my tongue out).
Hanlin v3 is really easy to use. To move your documents to the devicce, just plug the USB in and you can drop your documents to the device with no special software needed. Yes, although I am using Vista, I have no problem accessing the device as a removable drive and I could create folders and drag my documents to the device. I am so happy that Hanlin V3 supports native word document (but you must enlarge the font first). The document looks the best if you use the wol format but unfortunately, Vista does not support the wol format so I could not convert my documents to wol. But if the files are saved as text files, it still looks good on the screen. I downloaded one powerpoint slide to test – I can view the text but not the ‘background’ of the text which is good enough for me. You could also view the photos – if you don’t mind black-and-white photos.
Now the biggie…..how well the device reads Chinese characters. I downloaded a Chinese word document – the original word document is around 2 MB. It is in Chinese Simplified using SimSun font 10. The word document has 709 pages and 700,000 Chinese characters. I have been using my PDA for years to read e-book and word documents. For word documents, no PDA could read a word document which has more than 150 pages in the original word document. To my pleasant surprise, the device could read the entire document if I saved the file as RTF, txt. In its native form (word document), the font of the document on the device is too small and when I try to zoom it, it hangs. I could live with saving the files in txt files if it means that I do not need to ‘cut’ the document into several parts. Next, I copied another document which has both Traditional and Simplified Chinese in different Chinese fonts, Chinese characters unique to Catonese and Taiwanese and Japanese words. Hanlin v3 displays them beautifully. I am impressed!
I could not test the battery life…since it is supposed to last for 1 month or so, I could only finish testing at the end of the month.
The first time I ‘flip’ a page, I got a bad shock when I saw the ‘black’ screen. In fact, I called the seller up at midnight as I thought the device was spoilt. After looking at some Youtube videos of all the e-book readers, I know that this is ‘normal’. I have to say that the flip did bother me at first but now I am used to it.
I used a variety of SD cards. Yes, yes, yes! It supports SDHC cards. It could read 4GB and 8 GB SD cards – which means that I could save more documents with one SD card. This is really important to me as I have a collection of e-books and documents which is growing everyday. I don’t fancy carring several 1 or 2 GB SD cards around with me.
So did I make a right choice choosing Hanlin v3 over Sony PRS-505? I would say a tentative yes. It may look like a ugly duckling beside Sony PRS-505 but it has its strength. The fact that it has a removable battery and that the USB adaptor is not proprietary means that I could get a replacement if the need arises. It does not need any software and could read native word document and powerpoint (only the words) means that I could easily back up the office documents and read them easily. And of course, the fact that is supports multiple language means that I do not need to worry about hacking the device. Although I have not tested yet, Hanlin v3 supports a lot more formats than PRS-505. The onboard memory is also twice of that of a Sony PRS-505. However, the price is steep…at RM$1399 (which to be fair, comes with warranty and loads of freebies) compared to a Sony PRS-505 which you could buy for US$200 at eBay (excluding postage). However, if you chiefly reads English e-books and is confident of hacking to read the occasional Chinese e-book, Sony PRS-505 may be a good choice if you can get it at a reasonable price inclusive of postage (just remember, always check on the postage – sending things from US is expensive!).
You could contact Mr Hong from Malaysia if you are interested in getting Hanlin V3 – he is really nice and is very patient even though I called him at unearthly hours. He has answered my queries promptly and the after-sales service is excellent. Hanlin V3 cost RM$1399.
E-mail - hpkeong@streamyx.com





























