When I was initially looking for information on the Hanlin V3 prior to the purchase of my BeBook, I stumbled upon a project that caught my attention and I bookmarked the site in order to watch its development.

The project is OpenInkpot, a free and open-source Linux distribution for eInk-powered devices, and its recent 0.1 release introduced support for the Hanlin V3ext (e.g., BeBook).

This of course makes me extremely happy because I really like the ideals behind the OpenInkpot project and wanted to try it out. Their website sports a Social Contract which states that the system and components follow the Debian Free Software Guidelines also strongly discourages the use of DRM.

I enjoy reading books when ever I can and like many others, I had begun to bring them along with me in electronic form on my PDA so that I always had something to read.

My eBook reader for the past year or more has been my trusty Palm IIIxe which was given a new lease on life thanks to great eBook reading software like Plucker and Weasel Reader.

However, There are obvious down-sides to reading eBooks on the IIIxe's small display and I decided that it was time to look around for a dedicated eBook reader. I wanted something that was not loaded with DRM, had support for a wide variety of formats, and looked reasonably decent.