When I first saw the MiBook on Mobileread, all I could think was, “Why is this new? The MiBook looks exactly like Kodak’s Easyshare digital photo frame (Model #PTC   7XLT).   Just look at the two photos and judge for yourself.  The optimist in me thought that someone had finally hacked a digital photo frame into an e-book reader.   No, but this is close. 

Just last year I started to buy this photo frame.  It was marketed as a portable device, but I felt that it was a little too much to just whip out of my purse to bore others with pictures of my children.  I ended up sticking to my smaller 2.5″ wallet friendly photo viewer. Then I started thinking that maybe I could find a way to make it into an e-book.  The light weight of the frame, the button placements, lighting, color, just screamed to be made an e-book.  I changed my mind since, well, I had no idea about how to go about hacking the device.

Needless to say I have ordered a MiBook.  From what I can tell, it will read text.  I am hoping that it will read html or at least rtf files.  It would be a shame to waste the color screen.  At $112 from QVC, I think that it is worth the risk.  At the least, I will finally have the photo frame I couldn’t make up my mind about. 

I believe the device is really meant to be a personal digital assistant of sorts for DIY projects like cooking, parenting, gardening etc.  So Instead of just reading a recipe or how to replace a washer on your faucet, you can watch a step by step video in conjuction with text. I like that idea.  Many times when watching crafts shows they go so fast that I am lost after the first step, and I feel like written recipes always leave out something.  I just have a few observations.  Why couldn’t a person:

1. Tape clips from TV and play them in the digital frame they already have (if it has the ability to play video files with sound)

2. Download videos from the Internet from various sites and play them either on their laptop, digital frame, PMP, etc.

3.  Forget about the MiBook and buy the MiBook SD cards and play them via the above methods?

4.  Is the MiBook simply a rebranded Kodak Easyshare or are the insides really different?  Are there any other digital frames that can read text?  Some time ago I did see one that was 10″ and could read pdf files, but it was way out of my price range, and too bulky.

 Now all I need is for someone to find a way to make a swivel portable DVD player into an e-book reader.

2 Responses to “MiBook”