I've posted some pictures of the Reader (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=40018&postcount=77) last night in a different thread, so here are some initial impressions.

Packaging: The box is "disappointedly" small. So is reader. For some reason it looks bigger in pictures, then in hands.

Screen: Looks and "reads" very well. Again online pictures don’t show it well. Background is some shade of gray, not white. But eyes adapt really fast and it's very easy to read.

Screen refresh/Page turns: Good and bad. BBEB/TXT/RTF refresh is quite fast, probably 0.5 - 1 seconds. It doesn't distract. With PDFs it's a different story. PDFs without embedded fonts take 1.5 - 2 seconds, and ones with embedded fonts close to 4 seconds. It gets annoying very fast. Since PDFs with embedded fonts is the only way (for now) to read non-English books, I'll have to get used to it.

*It looks like, pdfFactory was the issue in this case. Same PDF with embedded fonts, but created with PrimoPDF takes about 2 seconds.

*For 700+ paged PDF page turn time significantly increased once I passed 500 or so first pages. Moving file from memory card to main memory didn't help. For 1000+ paged BBEB I have not noticed any time increas though.

Fonts: It depends on book format, font typeface and if it's built-in or not. Built-in fonts look better and readable at smaller sizes then ones that embedded into PDF. I'll post some pictures tonight with Font typeface/Size comparison.

Navigation: Not bad at all. I actually like 1-0 keys.

Case: The one that came with the Reader is good enough for me. The way it connected to the reader is a bit weird strange. And one has to apply considerable pressure to attache the case.

Memory slot cover: It looks and feels flimsy. So for now, I'm using USB transfer instead of taking memory stick in and out.

CONNECT Software: Like it. Easy to install and easy to use. Once Reader connected it shows it (and its memory card if there is one inside). You can drug and drop your files directly from hard drive to reader/card without adding them to library. Once you disconnect USB cable, reader will refresh list of books from internal memory/card.

RSS: Well .... it's not what I expected. I think I'll write more about it and post some pictures later tonight.

Reading Letter/A4 sized PDFs: I've put some Oracle documentation, and doesn't look well. Fonts are too small (which makes them too light) even in Landscape mode and zoomed to "M" size. I guess, readability depends on font size used in PDF and document structure (tables, examples of code, etc).


So far, so good. I like the Reader, and hope that the issues will be fixed as time goes by.

Example of some built-in fonts look like based on RTF file.

As far as I can see, fonts that are not present in the Reader get replaced by Arial, Times Roman New, and Courier New.

Example of PDF with built-in fonts. PDF prepared with PrimoPDF (http://www.primopdf.com/).

One can see that built-in Courier and Times Roman fonts looks better, then PDF version.

Hi, Slava,
I am a Chinese user from Taiwan.
Could you please help me to test the attached Japanese (JP) and Tranditional Chinese (CN) PDF and RTF files?
I want to know whether the files with CJK fonts can be open correctly or not.
Thanks a lot!

Hi, Slava,
I am a Chinese user from Taiwan.
Could you please help me to test the attached Japanese (JP) and Tranditional Chinese (CN) PDF and RTF files?
I want to know whether the files with CJK fonts can be open correctly or not.
Thanks a lot!

No problem :)

Only PDF files shows CJK fonts correctly. The JP*.pdf file doesn't have any text, it has chart.

Added pictures. I had to rename files, but you will recognize the content.

Slava,
Great pictures - just what I was wanting to see! -
Still don't have a Reader yet, but since one of the "built-in" fonts you display is "Lucida sans(erif) Unicode", wouldn't that font display unicode format rtf's (i.e. Cyrillic)? I know this font doesn't have the Asian glyphs but I thought it included Cyrillic and Greek? Has anybody tried an rtf with Lucida sans as font and saved as unicode format?
tx, Jake

Jake,

thank you. Actually if you look at RTF version, you will see that "Lucida Sans Unicode" was replaced by "Arial" font. So unfortunately it is not built-in.

THANK YOU! Slava, you are so nice!

A question about readability of PDF small text:
The photo seem show that the smaller Chinese text of pdf is 'lighter or gray'...Is its readability good?
(I saw some similar information from:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7758
I guess text of pdf is not truely black. The smaller the fonts, the lighter they are.)
In addition, the photos also show that fonts of RTF is obviously blacker than fonts of PDF.

About the JP*.pdf:
Because the fonts of the Japanese pdf file can display correctly on my PC, I guess fonts of the JP*.pdf are not 'embeded' and Sony Reader does not have those corresponding necessary fonts. So, the Reader can only display the charts.

*******************
I upload two new Japanese pdfs and a up-down Chinese text pdf file.
I embedded the fonts into the JP1.pdf and up_down_CN.pdf by PDFcreator. :) )
THe JP2.pdf is a regular A4 layout pdf downloaded from internet.

And, I find the iLiad has CJK manaul pdf files:
http://www.irextechnologies.com/files/user%20manual%20v2.6%20Chinese.pdf
http://www.irextechnologies.com/files/User%20Manual%20v2.6_JPN.pdf
http://www.irextechnologies.com/files/User%20Manual%20v2.6_%20Korean.pdf
(However, I can't upload them because they exceed the upload limitation of this forum.)

Could you help me test the uploaded pdf files again?
Thank you very much.

I will agree that the built-in fonts looked better than the PDF files in your example, but the PDF fonts don't look atrocious either!

@segatang

All three display fonts correctly. JP1 and up_down_CN zoomed to "M" are quite readable, unlike JP2. But then again, almost all Letter/A4 sized PDFs with fine details/small fonts will have that problem.

I'll post pictures later.

@rmeister0
>I will agree that the built-in fonts looked better than the PDF
>files in your example, but the PDF fonts don't look atrocious either!

Generally - yes, but take a look at RTF and PDF versions of "Courier New" and "Times New Roman" fonts. There is huge difference between these two fonts.

Update: Pictures posted with zoom options "S" and "M"

Hi, Slava.
I appreciate very much that you spent a lot time to test those files and tell us the results so rapidly.
The photos you took are very beautiful. Are you a professional photographer? :)

I think the reason why JP1 and up_down_CN zoomed to "M" are quite readable is
because the two files have optimal layout and font size for the size of the display of Sony Reader.
(I originally edited them for my (6.4", 640*480 pixel) EBK reader.)

The regular letter/A4 PDFs are really problems to most of the ebook devices
since the mismatch of the layout size of PDFs and the display size of devices.
Can you rotate the JP2 into the 'half page' mode?

I think the basic problem is that
the algorithm of Sony Reader to deal with the small size text.
If the small size text can be dark rather than gray, it would be good.
Oh. Adding a zoom in/out and scroll function for the PDFs,
such as for the pictures, would be the best.

Finally, do the Sony Reader support the CJK filename well?
How many bookmarks can one book have?
Do TOC and internal hyperlinks of a PDF work well?
How fast is the time of loading and rate of paging the CJK PDFs (equal to an English one does)?

Thanks again.

@segatang
>The photos you took are very beautiful.
thank you
>Are you a professional photographer? :)
no, but I wish I was :)

>Can you rotate the JP2 into the 'half page' mode?
Will do that and post picture tonight

>Finally, do the Sony Reader support the CJK filename well?
Probably, but it shows you Title and Author, and you cannot see Russian characters in those fields, so I guess you wont see CJK characters as well.

>How many bookmarks can one book have?
Not sure about it. There is also very useful History Navigation. If you by mistake went to the different part of the book (by pressing 1-0 keys), you can use History to get back.

>Do TOC and internal hyperlinks of a PDF work well?
Works pretty good for Reader's Manual

>How fast is the time of loading and rate of paging the CJK PDFs
>(equal to an English one does)?
I would say the same.

Update: Pics added.

How many bookmarks can one book have?No more than one per page. :)

Seriously, though, there probably is a limit imposed by the actual memory size, and there may be some sort of limit on the size that cache.xml (where bookmarks and lots of other stuff is stored), but I don't think there is a limit beyond those hardware/OS imposed limits.

No more than one per page. :)

what's about landscape mode? one could bookmark top or/and bottom halfs :)
then it will be two bookmarks per page :)

Yes, you're very smart, now shaddup. :grin:

I just checked it, if you mark the top half of a page, it's also marked in the bottom half. :)

The problem with Bookmarks and History, that they don't show non-english characters :uhoh2:


Update: Pics added.

Thank you for your so many detail tests for us who can't get the Sony Reader.

I hope Sony can release new fireware for supports of CJK fonts including non-
embedded one, filename, bookmarks, etc.
And the problem about too light display of small-size text.

You're very welcome. I hope as well, that Sony will add Unicode support that will let us use TXT, RTF formats for non-english books and UI.

Hi, Slava,
Can you post some photo of "Bookmarks and History" of English PDFs?
I want to see the normal situation of those one.
Thanks a lot~

Bookmars and History :)

Thank you!
Is the words in each bookmark or history the first sentence of the first paragraph in the page? (I guess the file is RTF or TXT format; thus, the Sony Reader can easily catch the words. How about bookmark or history of PDFs?)

Is the words in each bookmark or history the first sentence of the first paragraph in the page?

correct

How about bookmark or history of PDFs?)

it's the same, but Reader doesn't use Embedded fonts to display "first sentence", hence the "squares" instead of non-english characters.