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Old 11-27-2008, 09:19 PM   #8
ProDigit
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Posts: 2,553
Karma: 11499146
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Miami FL
Device: PRS-505, Jetbook, + Mini, +Color, Astak Ez Reader Pro, PPW1, Aura H2O
I'm not here to discuss about the topic, but merely give you my opinions.

When I bought my Sony reader I investigated thoroughly the differences between all models.
I had the following list made up:
1- E-ink screen
2- Cool design & looks.
3- PRICE!!!!!
4- Good performance (capable of reading many documents, lots of things you can do with it,works fast).
5- Battery life

I found the looks and price and battery life where best on the Sony Reader PRS-505,but pittied the lack of format support and a keyboard.

I found the Jinke Bebook had the possibility to do most things,more than any other reader out there, but the slightly less nice design and slightly lower battery life, and higher price tag,plus the non-availability in the USA made me go for the Sony.
If I ever want to buy another additional device it might be a bebook.

Kindle, nomatter what you can do with it, basically the looks turned me off immediately.

About converting documents, it does in fact not matter if a device supports generic formats or not; but generally if it does it supports the documents better than when you have to reconvert every document.
Say the device does not support PDF format, everyone knows that it's a pain to get pdf's converted well for any reader. And what works for one document might as well not work for another.

Another thing is, suppose a device supports chm, and you open the .chm document in the reader, but it does a lousy job in displaying the document,
you can always convert it to another format (as much as with another device that does not support chm and needs conversion).

If supported fileformats add significantly to the purchase price of the device I'd go with your logic, but as Ralph Sir Edward said,most formats like txt,doc, rtf, zipped doc or txt, jpeg, html, are open source and cost (apart from updating the firmware to support these files) nothing additional to the device!

Adobe PDF and MS chm documents may require a licence fee to use them.
But if I have 2 identical PRS-505's one having additional support of Mobi, chm, zipped docs, & djvu and likes, and costs only $50 more, I'd buy the more expensive one!

I agree with Kris777, in order to convert a document WELL,you need to spend a significant amount of time learning the formats and conversion options and programs!
The problem isn't in blindly running a document through an encoder, the issue starts after you done that, the reader starts showing small errors here and there, that you wished where corrected. So you'll need to place a hard enter here, and move that picture up a bit, to get it nice looking...
That's where most time gets lost into.

Not only that, but most people don't even want to spend time on how to get the document on their device, they want plug it in, upload the book, and read it.

Literally, if there was a device you just needed to plug in a USB port for 30 seconds, unplug it and it would have been updated people would love that most!

I think we all are still waiting for a specific format to be revealed for 800x600 pix screen electronic book readers.
It would be nice that both Jinke's Bebook,the Cybook from Bookeen, the Kindle, and Sony Reader,as well as the higher resolution devices like the Iliad would support a format that will support all possible fonttypes, and touchups (like underline strikethrough, pictures, basic draw formats etc....) Anything you'd find in a modern book and compatible with MS Word documents.

But in the mean time, we'll need to convert I guess...

Last edited by ProDigit; 11-27-2008 at 09:25 PM.
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