I am of the old school of thought who loves to feel the pages of a book, love their smell and enjoy the book covers. I have a collection of books myself and I like to look at them, and if I’m bored and have nothing to do I rearrange them or read them all over again.

But with the advent of new technology everything changes, even a simple thing as reading a book.

Now comes the e-book

Who would ever think that even reading books is already controlled by it? The e-book reader is a digital book reader where you can access electronic book that is already pre-loaded with several titles making this ultra light gadget your own portable library. Not only that, you can also download books that you like in addition to the ones stored on it. It has a storage capacity of extended 2GB SD card (8GB maximum).

More importantly, you can still carry them around like a real paperback and read them anywhere and anytime, the standby time will full battery is over 15 days. It is very handy which you can carry on a trip, minus the inconvenience of having to worry about torn pages.

The Hanvon E-Book Reader N516 which the office loaned me for this assignment has books from A-Z, from the classics, to fables, to novels, history, among others. Some of them range from 1 KB to 2027 KB.

This e-book reader is easy to use, press the OK button to confirm the information you require, the menu button to return to the main display, the direction buttons to indicate where you wanted to go – up, down, right, and left, the C button to cancel the operation and return to the previous display.

There is also a track wheel on the left side of the device where you can press to turn the page up or down. The 0-9 number buttons when pressed will let you select and operate the corresponding function at the right side. It has a stored user’s guide where you can refer to (or press) from time to time if you forgot some operating instructions.

This white Hanvon E-Book Reader also comes with an earphone outlet, a mini-USB port for charging the device or transmitting data from PC, speaker, SD card slot where you insert a SD storage card, and a microphone outlet.

I started reading The Doctor which is pre-stored and has 529 KB, then went on to read another book, and another book. I can always go back to the first book I am reading since it is stored in my recent readings.

Recent readings will display the latest nine books you opened. If the first book bored you and you like to move up to the next title you can do so, just press the bookmark button to enter the “Bookmark” interface, and you can read to where you left off.

You can adjust the text to thrice the size by pressing the zoom button if your eyes get blurred from too much reading. My grandmother, if still alive today would have loved this e-book. You can also choose to switch the display format between portrait and landscape while reading the e-book.

The only thing lacking in this e-book model is a night lamp (or backlight) to allow me to read without turning the lights on, or is there an e-book reader (on the way) which is touchscreen where everything is so easy, no more buttons to press, or is there a new model with everything I asked for?

In addition to reading books, you can also use the e-book reader to listen to audio books and MP-3 music. By the way, you can simultaneously listen to your preferred music while reading your book. Cool.

Now that e-book is slowly finding its way to bookworms and bibliophiles, does this mean that in a few months or a few years time there will be no more books to read? Will this be a standard or just a fad?