As I noted earlier, I received my Review Sample of the STAReBOOK today.
You can find a bunch of pictures and a few brief observations here (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=9475)

I've had a little time to play with the device this afternoon and can now give you a little more information.

First of all, I'd like to make a few things clear:

1) As with the Iliad deal, I don't get paid for what I do here. I'm trying to make an independent review here, for the community, not for the company.

2) Staretek has provided the review unit free of charge. I did not have to pay a single penny for either the device or the shipping to Germany. For this I'd like to thank those responsible at Staretek and especially Ivan who was always very helpful.

3) I will compare the device to the Iliad from time to time. I know that the devices are completely different, but there are still some things that can be compared, like reading ebooks on the devices. I think it makes sense to compare, even if this is far from a apples to apples comparison.


So, let's get started... :deal:


First Impression:

The STAReBOOK is a very nicely made device. The Materials are very nice, not the cheap plastic I had expected but a more iPod-like soft-glossy finish. The silver-grey strip on the lower end of the device actually looks a lot more metallic in real than it does on the pictures. Quality seems to be good as well with very little obvious room for improvement. The rubberized backside of the device is also a nice touch since it makes it eaiser to hold and prevents it from slipping out of your hands.
When I first received my Iliad I thought it looked very much like a business device. The whole design and the form-factor made it look very down-to-earth and like something a manager wouldn't be ashamed of carrying around.
The STAReBOOK has a very different charm. It has a lot of "sex-appeal" somehow, hard to define it exactly, but it's a bit like the attraction an iPod nano has. It's very sleek, stylish in a understating kind of way and looks a bit fragile (although I'm not sure whether it is any more fragile than the Iliad). I can imagine a manager owning one of these, but I can't exactly see him using it as a work-tool in a meeting.

So, let's go into some details:

1) Connections:
The STAReBOOK has a USB2.0 connection and seems to be using a standard mini-usb connector for both data-transfer and charging. there is an additional charger in the box (mine is the US model unfortunately so I can't really try it out, only charge from USB connection) that will be of some use to those who are away from the computer for longer periods and like to recharge their gadgets from a normal wall-socket. The additional charger also connects to the mini-usb socket. The mini-usb socket is hidden behind a rubber flap that seals it against dust/water/whatever. The headphone connection is also behind this "flap" on the lower edge of the device.
The SD-Card slot is at the top of the device, next to the on/off switch.
The volume controls are on the right side and the bookmark, menu, delete and mp3 keys are on the left side.

Turning pages is done via a 4-way cursor-pad on the front of the device below the display. The up/down keys on the pad are for increasing/reducing the font-size when you are reading. The last key is the OK key in the middle of the pad. Pretty straightforward so far.


I'll continue this in the next post so that it does not become too long.

Startup:

Starting the device is done by holding down the on/off button. Booting times are OK, I did not time it, but I started the STAReBOOK a few seconds after my Iliad and it still finished booting when the Iliad was still showing between 50% and 75% loading bars. There is a bootup picture and a shutdown picture...they are actually quite cute...:-)


Updating the device:

I received the device with Firmware 1.11 installed. The newest version on the website was 1.12 so I decided to update. I downloaded the update, copied the files to the SD card and started the device. The update was checked, verified, and installed. It showed me a "completed" message and asked me to restart and that was it. Very nice and comfortable.



Navigating:

The device starts with a short and to-the-point menu. It gives you access to your files, both on main-memory and on Sd-card, offers a few settings and a favourites (last read books I guess) section.
The top of the menu-screen always shows the last book you read. The cursor is on that selection at startup, so all you need to do is press enter and you can continue reading your last-read book right away.
Navigating is fairly fast and there is little to explain. There is a "back" key on the side of the device and a menu key that always brings you directly back to the main menu.
The settings hold few surprises. You can select language, sleep-settings, volume, memory (shows how much free memory you have in the internal and on the card), music mode settings and the "about" section that shows the firmware version.


Reading:

So, I prepared a few books on my computer (I'll go into that part of the process later) and transferred it to my 1GB SD-Card I still had lying around. (I did not use the supplied 512Mb card yet, but I saw that it's from A-DATA, so it's not even noname...impressive.

First impression:
In comparison to the Iliad, the screen is very small. It's a 6" screen, 9cmx12cm, should be just like the Sony Reader. I haven't read much yet, butI'm slowly starting to get used to it. I had the 8" Iliad screen for over half a year on a daily basis now, so it's understandable that this screen seems small at first I guess..

The Good:

Page-turning is VERY fast, it's faster than the Iliad can do, even with the newest firmware and Scotty's enhanced PDF viewer. Loading of files is also impressively fast.
Most interesting: I tried a small (<1MB) and a large (>35MB) and they showed no real difference in page-turning speed and file-opening speed. Very nice!
Text looks crisp, it's an eink screen and there are no surprises here. I could not see any ghosting while reading, only slight aftershadow of the shutdown image when the device is turned off.

Ergonomics are OK, I liked the Iliad left-handed pproach better since I like to eat and read at the same time and am better at eating with the right hand... :vulcan:
One-handed operation is OK, especially since the device is VERY lightweight. However, the page-forward key is slightly too close to the edge of the device for comfortable handling over longer periods of time. It is however easier to handle with one hand than the Iliad (again, the wieght makes a difference).
Navigating inside books is acutally done very nicely.
You can jump to a specific page-number (press enter key, "type in" the page-number with the arrow-keys (little selection menu from 0-9 pops up over the text) and off you go. Simple and efficient and much less intrusive than the popup keyboard of the Iliad.
Setting bookmarks is a new feature that was added in the recent Firmware update.
It works perfectly as far as I could find out in my initial tests. You press the "bookmark key" on the side, a menu pops up asking you to either set a bookmark or view your bookmarks. Setting a new bookmark is just one keypress away. Navigating through your bookmarks works just as easily. You select "view bookmarks" and then you get a list of bookmarks and the corresponing page-number. Finito.
Enlarging fonts is done with just one keypress. There are 5 "steps", 5 font sizes and the size you originally used when you created the file is the smallest (you can't go lower than that).



So, my initial impression of this device is WOW!!!
It looks nice, feels nice and is nice to handle. The firmware is also very nice, smooth and fast. Just the way it's supposed to be.

Unfortunately, there is a bad side as well...and that bad side is rather serious at the moment. While the device performs flawlessly, both where hardware and where Software are concerned, the file-format .stk that is the only supported format at the moment is a real limiting factor.

I don't really mind having just one format at my disposal (I only used PDf for my Iliad), but the Software that created the .stk files is almost completely useless. (eRead 3.0, buil 614)
It does not allow you to do any manual formatting. It does not allow you to use anything but plain text as source and it does not allow you to choose a font either.
VERY BAD...and very unfortunate because it makes it incredibly hard to create nice-looking ebooks for the STAReBOOK. the Software is still being developed so there is hope. I've sent a few questions off to Ivan and will see what he says.
I'll do a few scans (or rather try... :deal: ) of the menus and of a book being displayed so you can see where my troubles with the font and the layout lie.


So, to give a short conclusion to this short-term test:

The device is cool, the device-firmware is cool. The format and format-creating software need work.
If what you are after is a handy ebook, then this might very well be the ideal candidate for you. (once it becomes possible to actually create nicer-looking ebooks for it)
The device is more expensive than the Sony Reader (it's 420$ at the moment) which is a bit hard to swallow since Sony has the ebookstore AND support for additional "free" formats. The free ebooks (with dubious legality... :scholar: ) are not really too much of an asset since they seem to be very badly formatted, at least some of them are...I tried one and it had all kind of weird stuff going on...lines starting in the middle of the page and things like that... :rolleyes5

I'm not sure where development of the STAReBOOK is going...but I have seen several new versions of the eRead software in the last months, so it's moving somewhere...and there are noticeable jumps forward in the development, even in the last weeks so I guess it could work out OK sooner than many would expect. Since the Iliad is in a completely different league (and fighting with lots of problems) and the Sony Reader is only available in the US (like the Hanlins only sell to China apart from a few samples) this could very well be a good candidate for the European Market. I'm not sure what the stance of Staretek is about international sales, but they handled the shipping of my sample unit so professionally (I have never seen a package go through customs in Germany so smoothly and with no charges applied) I guess they do have some experience.


This was the short-term review. I'll let you know how the device progresses, how the battery-life is (it's probably already beaten the Iliad... :deal: ) and whether I find anything else and of course I'll try to answer any questions about the device you might have.

For thesting the Battery-life I'll just leave the device on at all times (I turned the auto-power-down off) and read on it (transferring books only through SD-card to avoid recharging there) and see how long it takes until is goes flat.

I hope there are not too many mistakes in this text...if there are, I hope they don't compromise readability... :vulcan:
I can't remember when I last typed so much in one go... :cool:

I see you bought yourself a Harry Potter. :-)

it's completely unreadable...the version from their online book-collection... ;)
But for the copyright-sharks reading along here...I actually own the book...in hardcover... :-)

I see what you mean about the fonts, looks like the page layout needs a little work too. Thanks for the review. :)

When you go from plain text with absolutely no formatting and only one font, I can see how they get the pages to display so fast. I think on most of the ereaders it's a balance between speed and formatting. I'm curious how the speed compares to a BBeB pre-indexed on the Sony Reader.

Does .stk support DRM?

I don't know about .stk DRM support, but the speed is not (only) down to the missing info in .stk files.

There are actually two kinds of .stk files right now. One consists of plain text, the other one is .jpg based. I tried both (the same book, once as plaintext, once as collection of .jpg files (you can create a .stk book with the software from a folder containing .jpg files) and the page-turning speed was the same, just like the loading time of the file (close as I could tell) although the .JPG based file was over 35MB and the text-based .stk was only 900k

I just read the review (before I had only looked at the pictures), and I must say that if the software is the only problem, the Baen deal may be very sweet to some people. Now if you only could get the proposed Bookeen/Baen version too, so that you could compare them.

well, if they would just send me a firmware update...that would actually be only a minimal problem.
I'm not sure whether this would work, but since I think the hardware is identical and updating via SD works...I'd be happy to help out...:-)
Maybe they'll approach me...^^

The photos in part 1 show two keys on the right side (+ and -) and four on the left side (unreadable icons). Are these working? The +/- could (or should) be page forward and page back, although they are so small the arrow keys may be better in practice.

@wallcraft

As I mentioned somehwere in my Review, the +/- keys are for volume control as far as I could tell. You can listen to mp3 while reading (I haven't tried it yet) so it's good to have direct access to volume.

The four keys on the other side are (top to bottom):

Music
Main Menu
Back (Return)
Delete (doubles as bookmark key in books)

I'm signing off for today...it's already half past two in the morning here... :uhoh2:

I really like this for the reason that branko mentioned in that the Bookeen is supposed to be the STAReBook with a different reading software.

While the device performs flawlessly, both where hardware and where Software are concerned, the file-format .stk that is the only supported format at the moment is a real limiting factor.

I don't really mind having just one format at my disposal (I only used PDf for my Iliad), but the Software that created the .stk files is almost completely useless. (eRead 3.0, buil 614). It does not allow you to do any manual formatting. It does not allow you to use anything but plain text as source and it does not allow you to choose a font either.
It leads to bigger files, and presumably no run-time font size options, but PDF (say) to JPEG might be the best bet for now. Some of the user developed Sony Reader tools could probably be easily modifed to produce a directory containing JPEGs (perhaps some already do so). The most obvious choice was actually posted for the iLiad, see pdftojpg (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9211).

One of the screenshots in the pdftojpg thread is actually a STAReBOOK, and it shows landscape mode with the arrows in the bottom left. This might be the best landscape orientation, but how does it compare to arrows in the top right? Can text .stk files also be rotated?

Thank you for a great review CommanderROR.

I have got a few questions.

On the scanned pictures of the starebook I can see that the font they are using for displaying the text is monospaced. Is there a possibility to use a non-monospaced font (like Helvetica or Arial)?

What codepages does the built-in font support?
Does it support ISO8859-2 (Latin 2)?
Does it support Russian?

Can you try to connect the ebook to a computer running Linux or FreeBSD and post a little piece of text generated by
dmesg > dmesg.txt
command?
Can you ask somebody to try to mount the ereader as a disk on Linux of FreeBSD?

How long does the starting of the reader takes? I mean from the "off" position to the opening of your most recently read page. Can you measure it with a stopwatch for us?

Can you post an example of *.stk file so we can ponder about the possibility of creating it by other means than the original SW?
Plese post it otgether with the original text.

Can you ask starebook company if they plan to publish specifications for the *.stk file?

Can you ask the Starebook company HOW CAN I BUY one of those wonderful machines (in Central Europe, European Union)?

Do they plan to sell them here (in Europe)?

Have a nice day.

@kacir

I'll try to answer at least sone of your questions, but not all of them right away.

The font is not changeable at the moment, I hope they are working on changing that since I don't like that font anyway...-)
I can't say anyting about the codepages just now, but I'll try to find out. I doublt that russian would work.
I don't have any Linux machines in the vicinity so I can't promise to test Linux support, sorry.

I'll time the booting later today if I have time. I'll also try to reactivate my girlfriend's old digicam that has video capability so that you can see the loading and page-turning with your own eyes. The boot-times aren't really that relevant though, since I just left the device on all the time since yesterday and the battery has not gone down at all. Seems like powersaving is working.

I'll put a .stk file at the end of this post so you can play with it, you can also visit the staretek online library for lots of (badly formatted) ,stk ebooks and comics... ;)
About byuing the device...I suggest you contact staretekcom.cn directly, but i'll also try and remember to put it into my next email to Ivan.

I tried to put an example file up that does not violate copyright... :deal:
It's from the "free book database" that the company provides.

I have just sent a file to staretek to demonstrate what we don't like about the .stk format.

I created a file for the Iliad and one for the STAReBOOK, using the same source and the same settings (as far as possible) I even tried to set the font and pagesize for the STAreBOOK as well (but of course the software just ignores those settings) and then scanned the results.
The difference in image brightness of the screen is just due to the scanner (the white frame of the STAreBOOK makes it turn down brightness I guess) but apart from that I guess you can see quite well where the differences lie.

Enjoy!

The STAReBOOK has a USB2.0 connection and seems to be using a standard mini-usb connector for both data-transfer and charging. there is an additional charger in the box (mine is the US model unfortunately so I can't really try it out, only charge from USB connection) that will be of some use to those who are away from the computer for longer periods and like to recharge their gadgets from a normal wall-socket.
This sounds as if they implemented correct charge from USB which is not as easy as most engineers believe.

@kacir
I don't have any Linux machines in the vicinity so I can't promise to test Linux support, sorry.
Well, you can download a "live CD" linux distribution, preferably Knoppix. Boot your own machine from the live CD, and you have access to a Linux machine. After you finish playing, simply reboot machine, take out CD, ...
If the Knoppix download is too big for your internet connection you can try Slax, or Daman Small Linux (50MB download), or anything that you local Linux geek^H^H^H^H nerd^H^H^H^H expert has in his/her hands at the moment. (**)
Thera ere a few links to "live linux CDs" at http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=cd

But there are questions that have much higher priority than this, Linux, one, so do this please only when you run out of things you can try on your new toy ;-)

@kacir
I'll time the booting later today if I have time. I'll also try to reactivate my girlfriend's old digicam that has video capability so that you can see the loading and page-turning with your own eyes.
I am looking forward to it.

@kacir
I'll put a .stk file at the end of this post so you can play with it, you can also visit the staretek online library for lots of (badly formatted) ,stk ebooks and comics... ;)
Can you please take some short text (downloaded from The project Guttenberg, for example), create an STK file and post BOTH files. When trying to decode file it helps to have encoded file AND the original file.
Not that I think that it will be easy to decode the file, but one of readers of this forum night be able to notice something that might help us. Even Sony Librie heavyweight encrypted file format got cracked eventualy.

By the way
Has StarEbook indicated what OS the machine uses?
Has StarEbook indicated what hardware platform (procesor) the machine uses?

Thank you
Kacir

(**) ^H is an old UNIX joke. ^H is Control+H key, and represents backspace.
It works on surprising number of systems, even in Command Line Window on Windows computers. ^M is Enter, ^[ is Escape and so on ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%5EH

Would it possible to convert pdf or HTML file into STK format easily? I guess this is kind of important for most reader reading scientific documents.
Best, Ivan

I have just sent a file to staretek to demonstrate what we don't like about the .stk format.
Enjoy!
Well, it looks as if word wrapping of the text is broken somehow. It doesn't break the text properly when when dot, coma, ' character and other "non-alphanumerics characters" are on the position after the last letter on the line. Also spaces are not wrapped properly.

This is fortunately very, very easy to correct when you are creating your own .stk files.

Simply format the text, so the lines are wrapped at the 44th character and then create .stk file.
Of course you will have create a text pre-formated width for each font size. Because the font is monospaced this can work very well.

For wrapping the text to fixed length you can use many UNIX tools, and also numerous Windows utilities, from fancy text editors to simple programs.

One of the best tools for formating the text is program par
http://jmcpherson.org/par.html
Example of use of the par program.
par.exe -w44 < alice30.txt > formatted.txt
Please read the documentation at
http://www.nicemice.net/par/par-doc.var
and download the windows version at
http://www.nicemice.net/par/par152ex.zip

@Ivan

You can convert anything to .stk as long as it's only text content. What you do is simply pull out the plain text (easy in HTML, in PDf you would have to use an app like PDFtoTXT) and past it in the .stk maker. At the moment the results aren#t too pretty, but I just got a reply from Staretek telling me that they are working on improving these issues.

@kacir

I'll try the Linux boot-CD stunt as soon as I have time, same goes for the gutenberg text. I hope I'll manage that this afternoon.

The details of the STAReBOOK hard and software are actually available on the website...they use Linux as OS and have a 200Mhz Processor...

Check out the details on http://ebook.stareread.com/en/
most of the info you want is in the FAQ section.

UPDATE:

I did a little trial with the program you suggested and the results look slightly better.

Here are the files:

alice30.txt is the original from gutenberg
alice.txt is the one modified with par

alice30.stk is the eRead transformation of the original
alice.stk is the eRead transformation of the modified file.

All other parameters are unchanged.
I probably won't have much time today, but I'll see whether I can try the same trick with the book I am reading at the moment and scan the results.

I just tried the par program and it solved one problem by introducing another...:-)

The weird line-breaks are gone, but now everything else is also gone. I've got one completely solid text now which is also rather hard to read, almost worse than the badly formatted text I had before.
I'll try to post pictures later.

Now I'm finally off for lunch!

I just tried the par program and it solved one problem by introducing another...:-)

The weird line-breaks are gone, but now everything else is also gone.
Now I'm finally off for lunch!

Well, par program was only an example, so you do not have to experiment with various tools. Most of advanced text editors can convert the text by wrapping it at the width of 44.

What makes par special, is that par ties to recognize bulet lists, numbered lists , text in frames, paragraphs in Guttenberg texts, it can balance lengths of lines to make the text more eye pleasing, ...
If you read the documentation for par you will find out that par can do MUCH more than just wrap the text at the 44 position.

I have looked at the StarEbook site. I have even downloades some software so I can experiment a little.

When I saw a link pointing me to a site with 100 000 books I was very excited. Until I went there. The site is in chinese. :-((

Also "Electronic shop" is in chinese. The only thing I can read is the price (Hey! they seem to have some discount). Unfortunately I do not know what currency the 3500 is in ;-)
So much for buying it online.

Thanks CommanderROR!!!

THat is quit a lot works by cutting and pasting txt from pdf and convert into .stk (not even mention the document with picture) for every single document I intend to read. I wish they will support pdf format soon......

How about the power management? (better than Irex's reader?)
Best, Ivan

Well, there is little I can say about power-saving at the moment apart from the fact that it is better than the Iliad...:-)

I have had the device on nonstop now for about 24 hours. I read perhaps a hundred pages, played around wiht settings, removed and reinserted the SD card, opened files, set bookmarks, deleted files, updated the firmware and played around with the text-enlarging function.
The device is still running and has only lost the first battery bar. (there are 4 alktogether) so I would say that if you just use the device for reading there is no way you'll run out of power quickly...^^

I'll continue to use the device for reading and will avoid connecting it to the computer so that it can't recharge.
I'll keep you all posted on the further battery-life results.

As for getting PDf on the device, I would not bet on it. If someone hacks the firmware and creates more viewers for it, perhaps, but I guess Staretek is focusing on the -stk format for now.

@kacir
I don't know about buying online, but the ebookstore also contains english books.
I also think that it should be possible to get a STAReBOOK outside of china since the box I received is very clearly not chinese and they even have a manager of international sales...:-)
Just a question of where to get it then...I'll try to find out. The price is 420$

the pdftojpg program is developed for starebook ,because starebook can't read pdf, but my most document is pdf,so i decided to develop the pdftojpg program before i actually own the starebook.luckly pdftojpg has been used to view pdf on starebook,hanlin v8, jcnip m218a, ebk books.
photos see the pdftojpg thread, CommanderROR can use pdftojpg to see pdf in your starebook.

last week i have already order the starebook, but still now ,i have to wait for it's arrive, maybe in this weekend, i can own my starebook.

@yunhaid

I would love to try your program, but it seems not to work on my system.

Whenever I run it it complains that it can't find the jpgtran module. I downloaded that as well (another .exe) but that did not help.

Can you give me a complete package of all files I need? I have the pdftojpg.exe version 1.21

So... I don't suppose there are any e-books with Acrobat Reader support... It seems like that would be a really nice thing to have.

Well, technically, iLiad and the Sony Reader both support PDFs (iLiad significantly better than Sony), and I think there are non-e-ink devices that support PDFs, though I could easily be mistaken there. But of course, we're all excited about e-ink for a number of very good reasons, none of which would apply to non-e-ink devices. :nice:

UPDATE:

I just used my girlfriend's old digicam to take a short movie of the Iliad and the STAReBOOK next to each other, booting, loading last-read book and flipping pages.

The file is 29Mb, so i'm still looking for ways to compress it and it's also rather bad quality. You can however see quite clearly what you wnat to know I guess and that's the speed comparison between the two devices.

I'll upload as soon as I've got the compression and everything worked out. Maybe later tonight, maybe tomorrow afternoon.

UPDATE:

The video is up, I found a freeware app that easily compressed it down to 1.xMB.
Please refer the the new thread http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=9493 for all speed-related questions. I did not include stopwatch measurings, but I guess you can check that yourself now.

oh ,
you should download the english versin, because 1.2.1 version is just a patch , user must download the V1.0 and patch the 1.2.1 version. and language is chinese, don't perfect for you.

in the iliad thread, i upload the english fully version, you can down it and use it.
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9211
good lucky.

in the iliad thread, i upload the english fully version, you can down it and use it.
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9211
If this is the us.f2.yahoofs.com link, it is broken. It should be possible to attach a .rar file to a message, and upload it directly to mobileread. You may need to break it into 5 MB chunks.

oh, it't my fault.
i upload here

release the pdftojpg program

install:
cp pdftojpg.rar to "C:\Program Files\" and unrar it

execute:
double click C:\Program Files\pdftojpg\bin\test.bat

argument description：
Usage: pdftojpg [options] <PDF-file>
-h : help
-r <int> : rotate 90 or no rotate, default 1
-em <int> : use embedded in font or not,default 0
-fp <int> : PDF first page，default １
-lp <int> : PDF last page, default max page
-sw <int> : screen width ,default 800 ,
-sh <int> : screen heigth ,default 600


be careful:
you should use -em 1 default. there are bugs in don't use embedded fonts.

Dear yunhaid :I just brought my STAReBOOK but would like to read pdf file. Could you please let me know how to operate your pdftojpg? Best, Ivan

the pdftojpg is very easy to use,
cp pdftojpg.rar to "C:\Program Files\" and unrar it
double click C:\Program Files\pdftojpg\bin\test.bat
then should create hello folder, jpgs in it.

you just copy your pdf to C:\Program Files\pdftojpg\bin\
and modify the test.bat ,

pdftojpg hello.pdf changed to

pdftojpg -em 1 your.pdf

@yunhaid

There is one problem with your program...it creates very large .jpg files. I tried it and it made files that are 275K each which means that a book with 800 pages would be huge...and that#s what I'm dealing with most of the time.

UPDATE:

I managed to rip a PDF into .jpg files. I then selected a few of them and turned them into a .stk book. Using this method for a whole book is out of the question anyway since even a small book (PDf of 850k) explodes into around 200MB of .jpg files and makes a similarly large .stk book.

But the other problem is that the book looks really bad on the STAReBOOK. Somehow, the device changes the size of the file slightly, probably because it does not display on 100% of the screen-area. This causes artifacts in the .jpg and makes the whole excersise useless.

I guess i'll just have to live with the poor text formatting for nwo and hope for the updated software Staretek promised me.

oh,you can mail your pdf to me(yunhaid@yahoo.com.cn). i test it
.and i will give answer to you. i will own starebook this weekend,so i can make a full test.

the size can drop to little, 80% quality can drop size to half. for example 275k can drop to 135K. the version 1.3 can do it.

I've now finished my first book on the device and am well into the second one. I'll make a new post in the next few days and report my findings during the first week and also perhaps give you a first assessment of battery-life.

I'm afraid you'll have to wait a bit longer for my "week with the STAReBOOK in Review" article since I'm rather busy this weekend and my girlfriend has a birthday on Monday, so I'll probably only be able to give you that article on Tuesday evening.

Just a few tidbits for now:

I have not used my Iliad even once since I received my STAReBOOK (apart from the boot-speed and text-formatting comparisons).
I am almost finished with my second book on the STAReBOOK and just realized how much the on/off procedure the Iliad requires because of it's disastrous power management disrupted my reading habits and slowed my reading pace...more about that next week.
despite it's shortcomings in the text-formatting department and it's relative youth (the STAReBOOK has been on themarket since november if I remember correctly, the Iliad came out in June/July) I find the chinese ebook device a lot more suited for book-replacement than the Iliad. When it comes to educational or infopad solutions, then the Iliad is still your only choice, but for reading, especially reading fiction, there could be a new star rising, especially in those countries where the Sony Reader is not available...of course always depending on how staretek is goung to handle international sales...

Just a stupid question. Is it available in black?

The reason being that when you shine light on an eink display you need lots of it just to have a good contrast between text and background. If you do so on a white bezel it will pop out so much as being too distracting and tiring for a long read. Case in point, the picture you put of the Iliad next to the STAReBOOK.

I think it is available in black, at least it is shown on the website somewhere I think, but so far the white frame has not been a problem for me and i'm almost through with my second book now...:-)

@kacir

It took me a while, but I went ahead and used one of the "Live Linux DVD" (Knoppix to be precise) and did what you asked.

I copied the relevant bit of information to a textfile and attached it to this post.
I hope it will tell you more than it tells me....:-)

In windows I can access botht he internal memopry and the SD-Card, in Linux it loox like I can get only the SD card to display.

look what we have here:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/29/starebook-stk-101-reviewed

My review actually made it on Engadget...!!!

Wow...I always wanted to see my name mentioned there... ;)

look what we have here:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/29/starebook-stk-101-reviewed

My review actually made it on Engadget...!!!

Wow...I always wanted to see my name mentioned there... ;)
Neat. And cool of Branko to inform them of the review ;)

No probs, I thought it deserved a wider audience.

"Is it available in black?"

Yup, sure is. When I get less tired and jetlagged I'll try to snap a few pics of one in black for you to see. I thought it looked better in black than the white with the various coloured metal highlight panels. Besides, as with my macbook purchase, they had black in stock, and only a few demo models in white.

One more thing I've discovered from a review point of view. The unit uses a mini USB port, the same as my digital camera and numerous other things. However, the cable supplied with the STAReBOOK has the plastic surround of the cable shaved right down to only be as thick as the USB connector. It doesn't look like a normal miniUSB plug will fit. Again, I'll try to get some pics to illustrate this.

Just a bit annoying as while you can transfer .STK files using a card reader onto the SD card, it doesn't seem to index them or add them to the bookshelf as occurs if you transfer them with the eReader software.

On another note, full success using this with a mac. Obviously from the mac side you can just drop STK files onto the mounted SD card, but the eReader and STK maker software runs fine under parallels (XP virtual machine). The USB connection for eREADER also works great here. (techy details for those interested : XP SP2 runnning on a bootcamp partition, but running thru parallels accessing that bootcamp partition. Also runs fine under bootcamp itself of course)

Next challenge is to try the spanky looking PDF2JPG that yunhaid has so generously provided.

I just tried several standard USB-mini cables (I was actually not using the suppkied one anyway...) and they all fit. There was one that was a bit of a close fit, but it also worked with some carefully applied force.
So, while there might be some cables about that don't fit or only bareyl fit, most should be OK as far as I can tell from my collection...

ah, thats good to hear. It means that many of the cables I've got hanging around will work. To be honest I hadn't actually tried any other ones.

Have you bothered to use the charger that came with the unit yet?

And have you tried mp3 playback? Personally I doubt I'll bother with mp3's as I'm 110% sure my ipod will do a much better job :)

I can't use the charger since it's not for europe...but I have one from another device and it works fine.
mp3 is something i have been meaning to try, but somehow i never get around to it. I don't plan on using that function, but I think perhaps some of our readers here would be interested, os it's still on my ToDo list...

The charger I received was a multi voltage unit. 100-240V, 5V 1amp output. With flat american style pins. So no use for me here either (round euro style pins in korea). however, id be interested to see how much quicker the charger will charge the unit as it provides 1amp of power, while USB only provides 0.5Amps. I guess theoretically it should charge twice as fast.

I'll try giving the mp3 a shot today. Nothing else to do except bury a time capsule, but I'm only a spectator for that. No more real work until begining of march. Oh the life of an engrish teacher.

Of course not having read the manual yet means I'll just copy a selection of mp3 files of varying bitrates onto the card and see what happens.

Hi there!

oh, it't my fault.
i upload here


Please, can you also try this program http://www.shareup.com/PDFtoJPG-download-31542.html?

Thanks to everyone throughout the forums and especially to CommanderROR for reviewing the Starebook.
Recently I got interested in e-book-readers and first thought the Iliad would be a good choise.
Right now I'm for the Starebook!
And you summarize my intention:
The device is cool, the device-firmware is cool. The format and format-creating software need work.
If what you are after is a handy ebook, then this might very well be the ideal candidate for you. (once it becomes possible to actually create nicer-looking ebooks for it)

But:


Unfortunately, there is a bad side as well...and that bad side is rather serious at the moment. While the device performs flawlessly, both where hardware and where Software are concerned, the file-format .stk that is the only supported format at the moment is a real limiting factor.


What does that mean to me?

Up to now I used - sometimes - my little, simple organizer (10 lines only). I converted technical documentation to txt and downloaded it.
Or scanned lengthly texts (company internal documents). The resulting pdf-document I OCRed to txt and downloaded that. No formatting anyway.
And I had some free e-books on it.
Actually I never bought an e-book from Amazon or similar. Maybe I'll do it when I have a real reader.

This is the way I want to use the STAReBOOK. Can I do that with the current availabe utilities?

What about pdf-documents with images included? I can convert only txt to .stk, how can I see the images?

Somewhere I read the font of STAReBOOK is ugly. Can that be changed in future by a firmware update?
I think the font is given in pdf-files. So whenever it can take pdf directly the font cannot be always the same. Am I right?

And if the STAReBOOK can't give me what I want, can the SONY do it?


I'm not sure what the stance of Staretek is about international sales, but they handled the shipping of my sample unit so professionally (I have never seen a package go through customs in Germany so smoothly and with no charges applied) I guess they do have some experience.
Every some month I'm in Taiwan. So maybe I have the chance to visit Staretek directly. At least I'm saving the transportation cost.

BTW CommanderROR, I see you're in Germany, too. Maybe we're not to far away from each other and I could have a glance at your STAReBOOK, if you don't mind.
I live in the vicinity of Recklinghausen and a one or two hours drive wouldn't be a problem.

Thanks for help

Thomas

The Sony Reader can do everyhting you want to do. If you are creating the PDF files yourself, you create them to be sized for the reader's screen and it's good. Otherwise, you'll have to use one of the available tools to split the PDF pages in 1/2 in order to read it without being way too small. Letter/A4 do not display well on the Reader. But everything else you want to do is easily doable with out a problem.