Skip to main content

Review: My new ebook reader - Infibeam PI


I bought a new ebook reader. It is the Infibeam PI (www.infibeam.com/PI) . I have seen and used both the Amazon Kindle and Sony ebook reader. The main reason I selected the PI is because it was available in India. I did not have to wait for weeks to get my hands on it.

I will not go into detailed comparisons between the three readers I have used. The reason I bought the ebook is to read books. Although that sounds rather a stupid thing to say, I found some features on Kindle quite superfluous to book reading. Like the space consuming keyboard. I dont know of any book which comes with a keyboard, so why should an ebook come with one. If I have to surf the net, I will use my laptop to do it.

The whole buying process was easy and seamless. Delivery happened within 3 working days. The only regret I had was my father was not there to see this. He was pretty excited with the concept of an ebook reader and I had entrusted him with the duty of checking the condition of the parcel when it arrived to make sure it was not tampered with in any way.

PI is very easy and intuitive to use. The reading is very clear and my impression was that it has better contrast than both Kindle and Sony e-reader although I may be wrong and the "endowment effect" may be working here on me. The device is pretty light and is easy to carry around and also to read while lying down (the only way I read books).

I had ordered a cover for the reader and that is the only part I was not fully satisfied with. The cover cost me Rs. 299 (about $6.5) and is actually pretty poor. It looks cheap and the quality is also not up to the mark.

But luckily, the cover is NOT typical of the reader. The reader is pretty good and the only feature I think that would enhance it's attraction is to have a touchscreen. I know that it would bump up its price a bit, but maybe it would be worth it.

Overall, even without looking at the price (cost me Rs. 9999 - about $222), PI is a great product and I would suggest all Indian buyers of ebook readers to try it before opting for a Sony/Kindle as long the latter are not available in India.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Oil, Liquidity and the Sensex @ 12K

The BSE Sensex – the default benchmark for the Indian equity market – touched 12,000 on Friday last week. There is a sense of euphoria, disbelief and caution in people depending on which group they belong to. There are people who have been waiting for a correction from 6000 and are amazed to see the sensex at double that. There are others who are perennial optimists and expect the market to continue giving them the returns in the way it has in the last 3 years. Milestones like 12000 are a nice point to just stand back and access the overall situation. So, what is the reality of the day? Today, the price of oil is hovering around $70 with the political situation in Iran not getting a whole lot better. Don’t think its going to come down in a while. Interest rates are showing signs of hardening. Prices of gold, silver, steel, aluminium, copper, zinc and sugar are in multi year highs. Real estate prices are going through the roof. So, in a way all asset classes are seeing handsome app...

Porfolio Structuring (PS) Step 1: Evaluate Current Status

The first step to any long term investment plan is to understand where we are at present. So, to start with you need to list down your existing networth. For example, you can have a list as follows: Provident Fund 100,000 PPF 50,000 Bank FD 50,000 Mutual Funds-Equity 150,000 Mutual Funds-Debt 50,000 Cash In Savings Account 30,000 House 2,000,000 Housing Loan -4,000,000 Others 0 Total -1,570,000 A couple of things to note here. 1. I am not calculating the value of any gold/silver jewellery that you may be having. Indians, typically are not very keen on selling their family gold/silver so it really does not count as investment. You can think of it as an additional bonus if you do have gold/silver. 2. I am including the housing loan you may have as a negative here under the assumption that that is your primary home and not a second home bought for investment purpose. Also, I am ...

13 years to become an expert

In Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, a study done by Anders Ericsson on violinists shows that it takes about 10000 (ten thousand) hours of practice to become an expert at something. When I read this for the first time, I was fascinated by the fact that it takes such a long time of dedicated effort to become really good at something. Today, I was reading a book on trading strategies and it mentioned that a traders life is divided into decades. The first decade he makes his mistakes, the second decade he makes his money and the third decade he enjoys the money. That set me calculating and trying to tie Gladwell with the traders cycle. If a person spends 3 hours per day for 5 days a week for 52 weeks a year, he will need about 13 years to be an expert at trading. And that is assuming that he is passionate about it in the first place. So, now we know, why we haev so many people failing as traders. It's just that they have not served their time as yet!!