The project debuted an offline portable reader for Wikipedia in October 2009.[1] Updates in multiple languages were available online[3] and a twice-yearly offline update service delivered via
Micro SD card was also available at a cost of $29 per year. WikiReader versions of the
EnglishWikipedia,
Wikiquote,
Wiktionary and
Project Gutenberg can be installed together on a user-supplied 16 GB Micro SDHC
memory card. Unlike Wikipedia itself, the device features
parental controls.[4]
The device can also run programs written in the
Forth programming language; a simple
calculator program is included.[5]
Battery life: 90 hours;[9] equivalent to 1 year of normal use according to manufacturer[4][10]
Limitations
Text-only display: The WikiReader is strictly a "text only" display device. The device therefore does not store or display any Wikipedia images.[11]
Tables: The WikiReader does not display article text which appears inside a table on Wikipedia.
HTML "special characters": Certain Wikipedia article text encoded using
HTML special characters is stripped from the WikiReader's output.
Mathematical formulas: Original versions of the WikiReader do not display Wikipedia article information encoded as a formula using
LaTeX markup. This has been addressed with an optional firmware update, which is pre-loaded on newer WikiReaders.
Treatment of missing information: The WikiReader does not provide indications of sections where information has been removed from a Wikipedia article. Images, tables, mathematical formulas and other information that was not encoded as plain text in the original Wikipedia article is deleted from the WikiReader's output.
Search: The WikiReader's search capabilities are basic. There is no
full text search capability. Only the titles of Wikipedia articles can be searched. The WikiReader does support
incremental search of article titles, beginning with the first characters of each title. Search terms must be spelled correctly.
Wildcard searching is not supported.
Discontinuation
In late 2014, the WikiReader website and project itself were abandoned, following Pandigital going out of business.
The last official WikiReader image was released in 2011, however unofficial images are still being produced by a Reddit community centered around the WikiReader. [12]
Images can still be generated based on the latest English Wikipedia using the officially released tools.[13]