When I was in primary school, my dad bought a set of Encyclopedia Britannica which cost over $1000. It had 32 volumes and fits in the custom made cabinet, occupies almost quarter of our dining hall . I used to flip through the pages especially when I had homework to do as a reference.

Fast forward 20 years ahead. In today’s digital world, electronic version of encyclopedia has replaced the popularity of its predecessor. We can access Wikipedia, a web based open-encyclopedia which allows the reader not only to read but also to add up new information to ensure that the information are up to date.

Another version is in a form pocket size device encyclopedia and can hold up to 1000 volumes, and it costs only a fraction of the original cost – $99. The WikiReader is sold online and made by OpenMoko Inc., a Taiwanese company. The WikiReader carries the text on a memory chip, rather than accessing through Internet. Means you can use it anywhere: overseas, during a flight or in the metro train. It’s also faster and easier to use than most cell phones, and it has a bigger screen. It is reported that two AAA batteries will last in the WikiReader for a year, if you use it 15 minutes per day.

It comes with monochrome LCD touch screen display. To do a search, you just need to key in the words on the on-screen soft keyboard. To select links, just tap on the them and you can maneuver the page by moving your finger tip across the screen. The overall design is quite simple with four buttons-power, search, history and random article button.

The only drawback of this encyclopedia is that there’s no backlighting, so don’t even bother to read it in the dark. And because the screen has no colour, this device won’t show images, so if you are a kind of person who loves an interactive kind of encyclopedia, maybe you need to wait before they come up with an improved version.