There's no question the SoftBook, which is the first of a few electronic books to hit the market, is a nifty piece of work. It's what computers should be. With just four buttons and a simple on-screen menu, it's extremely easy to figure out. The designers have worked hard to make SoftBook a booklike experience or improve on bound paper. Pages are ''turned'' forward and back using a rocker button.
Page corners can be dog-eared by touching the upper corner of the screen.
The page can be found again by hitting a ''bookmarks'' icon on the touch-screen. You can write in the margins on the screen using a stylus tucked in the bottom of the SoftBook, then easily erase the scribbles. And a SoftBook book just doesn't seem as easy to navigate as a regular book. If you had a paper copy of Fodor's Aruba , you'd flip through and quickly find the hotels or restaurants. Clicking through the SoftBook version of Fodor's Aruba is more work.