Rating: 
Summary: Depends what you need
Review: I bought my e-bookman for one purpose... To read manuscripts while not at my computer.It works for that just fine. Clickomania is addictive. Bad thing: It is difficult to change the batteries without erasing the programming. I've gotten around this by using an adapter to plug in 'Frank' while I switch to fresh cells.
Rating:
Summary: Very comfortable ebook reader
Review: I've been the happy owner of an Ebookman 901 for the last two weeks and am very very pleased with it. Setting it up is easy if you go to Franklin and download the LATEST OS (the one with intellisync, not the smaller, earlier edition, and not the one sent on the CD-Rom) and then go to Mobipocket and download the Web assistant. Choose your enews too - it's one of the fun freebies available. Syncronization isn't as intuitive as it is for my Palm, but the minute you get used to it, it's fine. The handwriting recognition program is a problem for me at least: I can't get it to work properly at all, although I had no problem with Palm's Graffiti. However, I don't use the bookman as a PDA - I use it for reading. It's comfortable to hold, has a good screen size and pleasant, clear type (unless the light is coming from beside you - then there's a glare). The backlight is great in the dark, but does use up the batteries at a ferocious rate. The voice memo feature works, although the sound is very very low. I did a lot of research on the Net before I bought the ebookman, so that I knew where Blackmask.com was and what Mobipocket had in store for us too. I also bought a 32 MMC card as well. I store all my ebooks on the MMC card - about 40 of them for the moment - and have lots of memory left. The first time I changed the batteries, it was with trepidation. Would it cause a general memory loss? It didn't, and I breathed a sigh of relief. As to ebook availability: thanks to the Mobipocket format, users of the ebookman have access to an enormous, constantly growing, quantity of excellent literature and enews- check out Blackmask, for example. Buy the ebookman for what it is - a very comfortable ebook reader!
Rating: 
Summary: Don't waste your money - blur display
Review: I bought an ebookman 900 as a gift to my son's birthday. The configuration is ok. Songs are ok. The screen is really really blur. I compare the resolution of Ebookman's with my Palm Pilot V. Ebookman's is only 1/2 of Palm's. I tried to contact both Franklin.com and local distributor in Hong Kong but failed. Bad customer services. Franklin only gives me standard email "your questions will be answered shortly" Now I have to spend some more money on another present. When you want to buy this product, think triple please.
Rating: 
Summary: Best on-the-go ebook reader out there
Review: I love my Franklin eBookMan 911. Is it a perfect device? No. Is it the best on-the-go ebook reader out there? Absolutely. The screen is large, the two included eBook reading applications (Franklin Reader and Mobi Reader) are both very good (albeit with different strengths). For a science-fiction fan, like myself, there's lots of first-rate content available at electronic publisher Fictionwise (award-winning real SF authors like Robert Silverberg, Isaac Asimov, and Harlan Ellison). The backlight is perfect for reading in bed while someone else is trying to sleep. I take mine everywhere.
Rating:
Summary: eBookman Perfect for "bookworm" on the Go.
Review: As a lover of books and gadgets I could hardly wait to get the EBM-911. I bought it over six months ago and I love it. I take it every where I go and I'm always up to date on current events because it is so easy to load exp. Fox News, News Week, Bloomberg, and many, many more daily publications. I load over ten differnt books, including the Bible, all at one time. To all of the book lovers need I say more ok then how about the neat back light and did I mention audio books and mp3 music. Get the picture oh yeah, it has pictures too. New owners Please take the time to see what the EBM-911 can do it is truely amazing.
Rating: 
Summary: Mixed Feelings
Review: I have used my Ebookman for about 6 weeks now and I have mixed feelings about it. In some ways it is a very good little unit but Franklin still has some problems to sort out with both the hardware and the software. It took me a day to download the Operating System and Software and install it and print out the manual on my Laser Printer. Surely Franklin can provide a CD with the OS and a printed manual.
I bought the 911 model with 16MB RAM and added a Sandisk 64 MB MMC (these are about half the price of an original Franklin MMC).
The screen is sharp and large and has 16 shade grey scale. This screen is much better than the mono Palms.
The processor is a 24Mhz 32 bit propriety processor that Franklin has been given a Patent for. This means the unit is fairly responsive in most situations - certainly more so than the first generation Palms.
Battery life is poor and if you do not want to lose your contents I suggest changing the batteries when the indicator says 50%. Fortunately I have most of my applications on MMC but having to load 10MB via USB when the batteries die is just simply frustrating.
Some of the built in applications work well but the Date Book is particularly buggy. The OS itself is about as stable as Win 95 or 98 ie. it works most of the time but will occasionaly crash for no reason at all.
Mobireader is good and works well but sometimes I have trouble downloading the enews off the web each day. I have one Audible book that is 19.5MB and find that playback is not as smooth as it should be. Whether this is because the book resides in the MMC or the processor is simply just not fast enough I don't know.
If you want to develop software for the eBookman then Franklin has made a SDK available but you have to develop in C++ in a Linux environment. However a port of SmallBASIC has just been made available and this seems to work OK on my eBookman (but only in RAM not MMC).
I suggest you sync your eBookman everyday and then you will not have any problems with losing any valuable data.
The UP side is the screen is better than a Palm and it offers more expandibility than a Palm and is cheaper than a Palm.
The DOWN side is that the applications are not as mature as the Palm and there is only a fraction of the applications available that there are available for the Palm. The 16 shade grey scale is not suitable for displaying pictures - if you want to do that buy a colour PocketPC.
Rating: 
Summary: EBOOKMAN 911
Review: My biggest complaint is that I have never received the rebate. Secondly, the batteries are the next biggest problem. They don't last long and if they die completely so does all your info. I recently lost mine and have had trouble sync all of it back on correctly. Also, it is a long distance call to Franklin Tech support. No 800 number unless you want to buy something - as it always is these days. I like the backlit display and the size of the print.
Rating:
Summary: Lack of Support
Review: I purchased the top of line ebookman, the 911, the 64mb memory card and the audio program monthly subscription. I wanted to use it. The audio works fine. I have not used the other features on the unit because I am afraid to load to many items on it and not to be able to use it for what I purchased it for. It was purchased to be able to read Microsoft Reader ebooks. It does not. Franklin tells me they stopped working with the Microsoft Reader and it is no longer supported. Amazon tells me it is not supported and I have a reader and a big investment that does not do what they told it would do. I asked that question before I purchased it and choose this model over others because of this feature. It even says it will do on the box. I got stiffed.
Rating:
Summary: OK for books, but don't travel with it!
Review: I got mine a few weeks ago. You have to download the instruction manual from the internet, since they don't provide one. It's ok for books, but limited to very old romances and mysteries and such, and it's hard to find anything good to read. In spite of that, I've found some good books, and enjoyed using it. But don't think you're going to travel with it, because when I change the batteries on mine, even though I follow the directions carefully, all the information is erased, including the operating system, so I have to reconnect it to my pc and download the whole thing again. They have addressed this at the Franklin website, but no solutions! I've contacted the company via the website, and they told me to follow the directions for changing the batteries. Thanks a lot! They also provided me with a long distance phone number (not an 800 number), or suggested I send them my phone number, and what, sit around by the telephone waiting for them to call? Next time I contacted them, I didn't get a response. I wouldn't recommend buying one unless they can fix this huge glaring glitch. What good is a neat little portable file of books that's not really portable? *as of March 28, 2002, still no rebate. (...)
Rating:
Summary: NEGATIVE STARS for eBOOKMAN 911
Review: I begged for one of these devices, and my husband indulged me without researching it himself.
It was incredibly hard to set up, I couldn't even BELIEVE it came without an instruction manual! Since then it's had all kinds of little gliches like not displaying the date on the date book when it's in 7-day mode, leaving out appointments for no reason, etc.
THEN one day it just stopped synching with my Outlook98 for no apparent reason. So I couldn't synch it with my PC and I had to enter everything twice.
NEXT the darn thing wouldn't even let me open the date book at all. When I turn on the eBookman and try to open the date book, it says "Abnormal termination Franklin-Date_Book.fxe Error Code 36."
TO MAKE THINGS EVEN WORSE I have e-mailed their tech support with this problem several times and THEY DON'T ANSWER MY QUESTION! I called the long distance (not 800) number for tech support and it plays a recording and then HANGS UP! I called the 800 number of customer service and they could only say they'd "try to get someone to call" me.
I HATE THIS EBOOKMAN!
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