Franklin Electronic eBookMan EBM-901 Handheld

Pros: USB connection to the net; large screen; quite versatile
Cons: incompatible with Microsoft Reader; short battery life; highly reflective screen; 8Mb memory; poor support

Imagine sitting down at the breakfast, table of a morning with your eggs and a cup of coffee or a glass of juice. You reflect on the beautiful morning (perhaps also on the previous night's revelry) and you reach for the day's news. Sounds pretty normal...

Pros: large screen,easy scrolling
Cons: very poor battery life, lots of glare on screen

I purchased this to read e-books , not to use as a PDA.The advertising indicated it could hold several books in its memory and it seemed an ideal thing to carry on trips , holidays etc.Sadly the whole concept is ruined by its silly battery life. It has...

Pros: PDA features, Audible ready, expandable ready, better resolution than PDAs
Cons: Glare-prone screen, additional memory almost required for audio use

I just got my ebookman 901 a while ago, and my first reaction was positive. The screen was a nice size, compared to other PDAs, and the construction seemed solid. It was a little frustrating not being able to play with it out of the box, seeing...

Pros: Cheap, good-sized screen, handier than paper, good handwriting recognition
Cons: Glare from screen, a few software bugs, want better scrolling, E-books not cheap

I admit I only bought it because Franklin offered a rebate. But now that I have it and am connected to MobiPocket(TM), I'm really glad I did. I can download the daily news and read it without being chained to my PC (my kids hate that). I can download...

Pros: nice idea
Cons: does not perform as advertised

Read between the lines of the other reviews and you'll realize this is a fatally flawed product. First, it eats batteries at a high rate, and if they run down you have to go back to your PC and reload the OS, apps and books all over again. Heaven forbid...

Pros: Very inexpensive, lots of basic PDA and ebook features, MP3 player, voice recorder.
Cons: Screen glare is terrible, backlight is almost useless

I picked this up at Costco for $49.95. I've been thinking about whether I would really use a PDA if I had one, and thought this was a low-cost way to find out. As a result, I found the features of this unit useful and intriguing enough that I'm going to...

Pros: audible books are easy to use
Cons: 40 megabytes of e-books takes 3 hours to download to the memory card

As the other reviewers have said, it is a good start and the music files need to be converted to it's own MP3 forme. It sets up OK but you must delete all memory on the MMC before you load anything or it just doesn't recognize what you had on before....

The above 2 respond does not rated the EBookMan fairly. When changing battery, you need to turn off the power otherwise it will loose all the data ( which is written in the user manual ). The EBM caome with the OS on CD. This is my 1st PDA and I like the Big Screen. Very hard to find part only through on-line. Overall, this is a good unit with the price I pay for. Upload & download to Mircosoft Outlook is very simple. They need to write a better User Manual and improve their Wed-site. I would recommend this product to all my friends.

Purchased a 901 because at the price ($40 at a discount outlet) it was hard to resist. They weren't selling, even at that price, and the reasons for this aren't hard to discover. The unit has no built-in O/S and its desktop must be downloaded from Franklin (when it works) - they did promise to send a CD when I complained (never came). The backlight is useless, a dim green electroluminescent panel with a coarse, grainy appearance that interferes with legibility - clearly a "feature" that wouldn't be used often. You need to use a memory add-in card (MMC) to achieve a useful amount of storage.

AAA Batteries nowadays are so cheap why worry about batteries. Perfect to hold you over till you decide whether you really need a Pocket Pc or not and it still has a cool factor above "8". Losing memory? not a problem if you change the batteries correctly. Yeah kinda tricky to figure out software but then again have you seen a new Tv remote control lately?

I loved the ebookman. It seems to work just fine, and most of the ebooks for download are for free. As many have stated before me, it is a bit complicated at first, but reading the directions turns it into a piece of cake. It is also a great way to track meetings and schedules. A couple reviews have said that ebookman is cheaply made, and doesn't do many of the things you want it to do. Well you should have looked on the box before you bought it, the box clearly states each of the ebookman's functions, and a little bit of research goes a long way. I have found that the $40- 901 version of ebookman does everything it claims to do and more. I have found it as a truly wonderful and reliable PDA, not to mention how cheap AAA batteries are these days. I would highly recommend this product to anyone.

It is an OK price for PDA with mp3 player and 8 mg memory. However, there are some inconveniences when using it. First, it does not come with OS installed. User has to download from Franklin web site for it. Second, OS and data aotumatically deleted every time when you change the battery. There is a great potential to lose important data, and user has to install OS every time after changing the battery. By the way, there was no other power source except 2 AAA battery. Third, EBM OS does not compatible with any other software except Franklin's. Fouth, input method mostly depend on touch screen and stylus which requires using both hands at a same time. Fifth, the design of battery lid is poor. It is difficult to open it without hurt your nails. Also, this unit is relatively "big" in comparison with other PDAs. It's OK to buy for its price and features. However, its development in softwares is very weak.