Gizmo

By Andy Walker, Cyberwalker Media Syndicate

When I went to Thailand for several weeks in 1999, I toted six books with me. When I ran out I ordered more from Amazon.com at a Web café. Of course international shipping was a fiasco and the books never arrived. Amazon was kind enough to credit me, but I was bookless on the beach. If I had the RCA eBook, I would have had more luggage space and a way to download books from the Internet.

The paperback-sized device (model REB1100) is designed to carry and display a bookshelf of electronic books around in one simple package.

At 18 oz, it is a little heavier than your average book, but it offers more features.
The stylus-driven gadget has a backlit monochrome screen that measures 5.5 inches diagonally. It can display text in two font sizes and four orientations for left or right hand reading as well as two landscape settings. You turn pages using two buttons.

The text of any book on the device is searchable and can be bookmarked and annotated. There's also a dictionary that will define words you might not understand in the text.

The eBook, which has a 20-hour rechargeable battery, can carry up to 8,000 pages or about 20 novels. A smart media card expands storage space from 8 MB to 72 MB to give you the ability to store 72,000 pages or 150 books. A free on-line personal bookshelf, hosted by Gemstar (which owns the eBook technology), can hold books that have been purchased when they are not on the device.

The digital books can be downloaded onto the device via a computer with a USB port and Internet connection. The gizmo's built-in modem can also dial into Gemstar directly to buy books and retrieve previously purchased titles.

The dialup feature calls a 1-800 number, which was not working when I tested it. Therein lies the flaw in this technology. If you can't get new books or retrieve discarded book without hassle, then this technology isn't much use. This gadget is desperate for a wireless connection. Let's hope that in the meantime RCA and Gemstar do something to remedy the dialup problems.

Price: $299 US / $499 CDN
More info: www.rca.com
Buy it: In Canada at Future Shop. In the US, at Circuit City and Best Buy. On-line at Barnes & Noble.com .