It's getting close to the end of da month, is newer firmware available?

I swear, if there's another 9.7 inch pearl screen device made by anyone else other than Chinese companies, I will never go back.

Onyx certainly lacks the software engineering skills to manufacture a decent workhorse, and yet they still do is pushing out semi-functional device without even a working firmware. and it's beennnn months months.. I hope Sony release a 9' device soon so I can left this M90 to my dad .

Like Kindle DX?

Like Kindle DX?

I have heard it has poor PDF support and that's why I shunned away from Kindle.

Not many 9" pearl screens around.

Yeah, pocketbook 90x is good but too bad is vizplex. Too bad is vizplex but even so I'm really thinling taking it instead of onix. :blink:

Yeah, pocketbook 90x is good but too bad is vizplex. Too bad is vizplex but even so I'm really thinling taking it instead of onix. :blink:

seemingly, e-ink is a rather small market as not many manufacturer are willing to make new products. despite e-ink pearl has been out for a while...and 9" devices are even rarer for serious reader such myself

seemingly, e-ink is a rather small market as not many manufacturer are willing to make new products.

Just read this:
http://www.knightdigitalmediacenter.org/news_blog/comments/20110627_e-readers_more_popular_than_tablets_pew_report/

E-readers are much more popular in the US (thx 2 amazon) than tablets.

Most irritating to me is that the display blinks several times on waking up from standby and takes me to a random folder instead of the home screen. But I love the Pearl screen. I also like it that I don't have to crop margins on PDFs before copying them over to the device. Also, I just today discovered it is possible to install custom fonts when upgrading the firmware.

Scribble is now very fast... i'm very happy for this. It's a little step toward a good 9.7" e-reader (desipte being a bit slow in general).
What is to fix now is the dictionary. It is still unuseful.

Scribble is now very fast...

What do you use this feature for Shinra? I am curious because I have never used notetaking programs, not even on my Windows computers.

My M90 is now locking up every time it comes out of sleep. It will go to the first page of the last book read, but it won't advance pages. The only button that responds is the home button, and that is after I hit it several times. If I try to close out of the book, it brings up the Go To page dialog.

If I click the button on the bottom to put it to sleep, it will restart. When it restarts it still locks. If I reset it, then restart it, the page will still not turn, and the buttons still don't respond.

The only way I've come up with to get the unit to work again is to plug it in, then put it to sleep and turn it back on. Then it functions normally, until it goes to sleep again.

My M90 is now locking up every time it comes out of sleep. It will go to the first page of the last book read, but it won't advance pages. The only button that responds is the home button, and that is after I hit it several times. If I try to close out of the book, it brings up the Go To page dialog.

If I click the button on the bottom to put it to sleep, it will restart. When it restarts it still locks. If I reset it, then restart it, the page will still not turn, and the buttons still don't respond.

The only way I've come up with to get the unit to work again is to plug it in, then put it to sleep and turn it back on. Then it functions normally, until it goes to sleep again.

Does it have an SD card in it? If so, how does it behave without an SD card?

How does it behave if you go to the home screen before letting it go to sleep?

What do you use this feature for Shinra? I am curious because I have never used notetaking programs, not even on my Windows computers.
For scribble i usually mean annotation's function... however, i use very often the real scribble, for example when i write formulas and other calculations. Indeed, a wacon pen turns an almost useless app like scribble into a very useful one, since i can use an e-reader as an e-writer, and i can forget about papers, block notes and similar stuff.

Does it have an SD card in it? If so, how does it behave without an SD card?

How does it behave if you go to the home screen before letting it go to sleep?

No SD card.

I have returned to the homescreen prior to it going to sleep. Sometimes it will work when it wakes, sometimes it doesn't. It's getting to be quite a pain.

Right now I am trying to delete a book from the library on the M90. It doesn't want to do that either. Oh look. Now it's frozen again. :(

No SD card.

I have returned to the homescreen prior to it going to sleep. Sometimes it will work when it wakes, sometimes it doesn't. It's getting to be quite a pain.

Right now I am trying to delete a book from the library on the M90. It doesn't want to do that either. Oh look. Now it's frozen again. :(

I'm sorry that you and the other M9* users are suffering so much on the bleeding edge.

Can it be powered completely off? That is, does it go through a boot up when it is powered back on?

If so, is it more stable when it is powered off after each use? If that doesn't help, I am losing hope that I would find the M92 useful.

I did finally use the shut down command, after I couldn't get it to respond to the pen at all. I turned it back on, hooked it up to my iMac, and removed all of the books on it via Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/). Then I added two books, and opened one, then put the unit to sleep.

After waking it, the next page button would not work again. Neither did the home button. After pushing a few more random buttons, the thing finally responded and flashed here, there and everywhere. It finally landed on the library, where I opened the same book up, and now the pages are turning.

It really ought not be this much trouble.

I did finally use the shut down command, after I couldn't get it to respond to the pen at all. I turned it back on, hooked it up to my iMac, and removed all of the books on it via Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/). Then I added two books, and opened one, then put the unit to sleep.

After waking it, the next page button would not work again. Neither did the home button. After pushing a few more random buttons, the thing finally responded and flashed here, there and everywhere. It finally landed on the library, where I opened the same book up, and now the pages are turning.

It really ought not be this much trouble.

Strange that different people have different problems with the device. Wonder if it is the hardware/poor QC.

Strange that different people have different problems with the device. Wonder if it is the hardware/poor QC.

I will go with an unequivocal yes.

I have heard it has poor PDF support and that's why I shunned away from Kindle.

Not many 9" pearl screens around.

I just bought an Onyx M91S to replace my Kindle DX, hoping to avoid some PDF problems I had on Kindle DX. Unfortunately, I found out after receiving my M91S that it has its own share of PDF problems. I hope they fix them.

I just bought an Onyx M91S to replace my Kindle DX, hoping to avoid some PDF problems I had on Kindle DX. Unfortunately, I found out after receiving my M91S that it has its own share of PDF problems. I hope they fix them.

How does Kindle handle PDF files? What I wanted is a nicely formatted, margin cropped PDF, and that's it. M90 has been giving me headaches for months...

How does Kindle handle PDF files? What I wanted is a nicely formatted, margin cropped PDF, and that's it. M90 has been giving me headaches for months...

Here are some observations about the Kindle DX:

Rendering is mostly OK, meaning the page is rendered quickly and accurately, but for certain pages, especially certain TOC pages, it can be slow, slower than the M91S, sometimes unbearably slow. For many, if not most, pages I've seen, the two devices are about equally fast. On the other hand, although I've only had the M91S for three days, I've already spotted two obvious rendering problems with two of the documents I have.

It fails to properly extract the Title and Author for many documents when showing a list of documents.

It fails to render certain images that the M91S has no problem with. This happened with one technical book I have. The rendered image is garbled.

It crops out white margin automatically. Sometimes, it is very aggressive about this for a page that is almost blank, and you get extra-large text. Not a big deal for me, better than not cropping at all. For documents that are just bitmap images, I don't expect margin cropping. It seems to display most bitmap documents fine, but I have one 300MB one for which it falls flat on its face, failing to render after the first few pages, with an error message. It could be the funky way in which that document was constructed, but the M91S had no problems with that document.

For many, if not most, pages I've seen, the two devices are about equally fast.
Hm, interesting notice; could you please compare the device with the attached technical pdf (a programming guide); start with page 45.

Oh, and by the way; does Onyx have that Kindle's function only for pdfs that allows you to make font darker ?

Back to topic: there's a new firmware for the M90: https://www.onyx-boox.com/onyx-boox-firmware/137-onyx-boox-m90-firmware

I installed it on my M90, but haven't noticed any major differences so far.

Back to topic: there's a new firmware for the M90: https://www.onyx-boox.com/onyx-boox-firmware/137-onyx-boox-m90-firmware

I installed it on my M90, but haven't noticed any major differences so far.
I'm experiencing major differences when scribbling. It is much faster and for my test device the blind spot is fixed.

I haven't noticed any improvements in the scribbling. It's been like this right from the beginning, rather quick, but still with a short delay between when the pen hits the tablet and when the ink is actually displayed. No major issue.

I've never personally had the problem with the blind spot.

But I have two issues with scribble. First, there's two mysterious displacement lines, between the arrows marked 1/2 in the image. That gap/line is also occurring in pdf sketches, i.e. anywhere the pen is applied. Second, why is there tons of white space on top and bottom of the image (3)? Is that because of the blank template? (Larger resolution linked below the image).

http://www.georgruss.de/tmp/booxm90-scribble-800px.jpg

http://www.georgruss.de/tmp/booxm90-scribble-large.jpg

It is really strange that the notes-taking for you is really slow. And for my device it's really quick. (This device is from the first batch in June)
Maybe the touchscreen in your device is a bit faulty.

Below you can see the scribble I've made. You can see I am not experiencing the mysterious displacement lines.
Why there's a big white space at the top and bottom... I don't have a clue ;)
I'll ask why they did it.

http://www.onyx-boox.com/images/booxm90-scribble.jpg

Sorry, don't ask, I solved the "scribble not on full-screen" issue. OMG, the onyx programmers are just plain stupid. There are by default four templates, which can be seen from the firmware update archive in the /notes_template folder. Here comes the clue: the images are resized to fit the M90's screen. That's no big deal, but then you can't simply put 600x800 template images in that directory, but something with an aspect ratio of 768x1200 (or 768x1170, since the bottom tool bar can't be removed, it seems).

So, in order to fix this: download newer firmware, put a blank png file with a resolution of 768x1170px into the /notes_template folder and do the updating procedure. Then scribbling works in full-screen: http://www.georgruss.de/tmp/booxm90-scribble-fullscreen.jpg.

It's those sorts of plain stupid usability issues that the M90 has :angry:

Oh, and just now it crashed again while I was simply going to the options menu while reading an epub ebook from the internal storage. Damn.

So, in order to fix this: download newer firmware, put a blank png file with a resolution of 768x1170px into the /notes_template folder and do the updating procedure.
Thanks. Those Chinese engineers are just that stupid :smack:

So what they're probably doing is scaling the scribbles to match the resolution of the template image, storing the line segments that way, and then rescaling back to screen resolution to show each update. That will definitely be slower than not having to scale at all (i.e. using a template of the correct screen dimensions). It does look like their scaling algorithm is off, judging by the breaks in the lines, but I wouldn't call them stupid over that. It would be interesting to see if the saved image has those line breaks or not. Then we'd know if the problem is in scaling the line segments to the template when storing them, or in resizing the segments back to screen dimensions when showing them.

It would be interesting to see if the saved image has those line breaks or not.

If you can tell me how I can export the scribbled image or how I could otherwise access it, just shoot. I couldn't find anything on the SD card or on the internal memory (both accessible as a USB device).

If you can tell me how I can export the scribbled image or how I could otherwise access it, just shoot. I couldn't find anything on the SD card or on the internal memory (both accessible as a USB device).

Don't ask me, I don't even have a touchscreen on my PB902. I just assumed the device would let you copy the scibbles somewhere else if you wanted. I used to program in a related area of image processing, so I was professionally curious about the problem. Hopefully someone else knows the answer.

Back to topic: there's a new firmware for the M90: https://www.onyx-boox.com/onyx-boox-firmware/137-onyx-boox-m90-firmware

I installed it on my M90, but haven't noticed any major differences so far.

I don't understand why a firmware was made back in Sep 2nd, but not released until later October.... Don't give me crap excuses such as *testing*, nope, coming from an engineering background, testing must be carried extensively before final release. and all fimware files were dated in Sep 2nd...does it mean that they simply forgot to update their website?!

I don't understand why a firmware was made back in Sep 2nd, but not released until later October.... [...] does it mean that they simply forgot to update their website?!

Nope, I guess the onyx-boox.com website which the new firmware appears on is from the European distributor who happens to be in this forum under the name "Onyx Europe". He seems to have a better contact at Onyx International (or whatever the producer is called) and can get newer firmware from them. He then puts them online. This is all just a guess ;)

Nope, I guess the onyx-boox.com website which the new firmware appears on is from the European distributor who happens to be in this forum under the name "Onyx Europe". He seems to have a better contact at Onyx International (or whatever the producer is called) and can get newer firmware from them. He then puts them online. This is all just a guess ;)
You are totally right.

Nope, I guess the onyx-boox.com website which the new firmware appears on is from the European distributor who happens to be in this forum under the name "Onyx Europe". He seems to have a better contact at Onyx International (or whatever the producer is called) and can get newer firmware from them. He then puts them online. This is all just a guess ;)

It still does not answer my doubt, why a firmware made back on Sep 2nd was not realeased until Oct 26th?:smack::smack::smack:

It still does not answer my doubt, why a firmware made back on Sep 2nd was not realeased until Oct 26th?:smack::smack::smack:
Don't ask me, ask the Chinese engineers... :blink:

The lastest firmware still leads to freezing :(

The lastest firmware still leads to freezing :(

maybe I shall feel fortunate enough that the latest release almost functioning flawlessly for mine... except occasional refreshing problems.

ETA: my device almost never froze, it crashes to main menu at most....

Don't ask me, ask the Chinese engineers... :blink:

Could you tell'em to release it as soon as it was finalized? It's rather ridiculous that there's a two months gaps between release and availability. :eek:

maybe I shall feel fortunate enough that the latest release almost functioning flawlessly for mine... except occasional refreshing problems.

ETA: my device almost never froze, it crashes to main menu at most....

I have the M91S are you using that or the M90? :)

I have the M91S are you using that or the M90? :)

Mine is an M90.

Don't ask me, ask the Chinese engineers... :blink:

Could you give us some contacts? We will certainly send them some feedback :smash: :pandazzz:

About scribble function, here two png images are attached, one with squares and the other with lines. Both have 1170x768 pixel resolution. I created them with Octave (a free version of Matlab) since i don't like original Onyx's templates. If you like them but you prefer a different space between lines, you can ask me to change it. In this version the squares have 24x24 pixel size, while the lines are separated by 48 pixel. (Actually I haven't yet tested them in my M90... if you want to try them let me know how they suit the device).

The latest firmware made the freezing problem reappear for me, this didn't happen with the previous version.

addendum: The new firmware did crash on my device yesterday....after pressing *prev* for several times.

After using the new firmware for a while, I can confirm that it's clearly not better than the other ones on the major issues. Occasionally the M90 crashes, exits the current document or just randomly opens the SD card folder. Furthermore, I've had two cases of deep discharge: just left the M90 in standby and forgot to switch it off. After one or two days in standby, the device wouldn't wake up since it had drained the battery. The only remedy was to fully charge it, which takes around 8-10 hours and a reset.

I think a worthwile accessory would be a professionally bent paper clip that fits snugly into the Boox' pen, for resetting purposes :(

I'm not sure the above bugs were there in previous firmwares, but they're there in the latest, dated 2011-09-02. Sad but true.

I had virtually no problems with swift deep discharge until I updated the firmware to the 9/02/2011 version. Seems like they spent time making sure that the sudoku game looked better, while they screwed up the power management modules. I have to consciously leave the thing on, so that it goes to shutoff, in order to avoid the deep discharge issues.

Is there any way to roll-back to the prior version of the firmware?

Is there any way to roll-back to the prior version of the firmware?

I just downgraded to the 20110818 version. Same procedure as with an upgrade. Copy the stuff to the SD card, boot with the IR button pushed and it updates the firmware (actually: downdates :-) Mine required a hard reset after updating, but it works after that. I'll see if the deep discharge happens again.