TechGazing

We got our hands on Pi, India’s first e-book reading reading device, during a visit to the World Book Fair at Delhi. Its details had been released a few days ago, along with an aggressive pricing strategy. Our initial impressions: well, the hardware does look rather impressive and the price of Rs 9,999. is definitely going to tempt lots of gadget lovers. In fact, we would even go so far as to call it a MUCH better deal than the Kindle in India. Before you start accusing us of insanity, do take a look at our reasons. Mind you, these are based on a very short use of the product. We will have more to say when Infibeam sends us a review unit. Incidentally, the device will start shipping on February 22, although one can place an advance order for one. 

1. We like the six inch, eight-level greyscale E Ink display which is very readable even in broad daylight and works both in horizontal and vertical layout. However, the representative at the Infibeam stall said that reading in pitch darkness would require an additional accessory. Now, that seems a tad disappointing.

2. The reader supports a number of formats including PDF and .doc. Now we call that really handy, considering that Amazon added PDF support to the Kindle only now. A lot of people might end up using it to view not just books but even lengthy official documents.

3. At less than 200 grams, the Pi is very portable indeed. It comes with 512 MB onboard memory which can be upped to 4 GB with the help of an expansion card. Nope, we do not know if one can store one’s library on the cloud as in the Kindle, but even 512 MB is a decent start for most readers.

4. The Pi blew us away with its ability to handle Indian languages. Now, this is something we really wanted in an e-book reader. Right now, content seems to be coming from Infibeam’s online bookstore which has over a lakh titles, but if we could download content from other stores and still read it on Pi, well, that would be nothing short of awesome!

5. Our main quibble with the current model of the Pi is the fact that it does not seem to have any data connectivity. There is no onboard Wi-Fi or EDGE/GPRS/3G chip, which means that one needs to transfer books from a computer to the device using USB. Now, that can be a bit of a pain at times, as it necessitates lugging a notebook around every time one feels like a new book.