MobileRead Forums - View Single Post

MacEachaidh · 05-03-2010, 03:44 AM

Hi all,
Sorry, this is going to be a long post. Either skim, or please bear with me.

Firstly, some good things:

I love the screen. I find it really easy to read from, completely glare-free, and a comfortable size. The display is crisp, and I quite like the black-on-slightly-grey display, as I think black-on-pure-white would prove too eye-straining. Downside: You need it to be glare-free, and I understand why they make a big deal about it being readable in full sun, because it really needs decent light to be particularly readable at all. I know you shouldn't try to read anything in dim lighting, but there are places I like to sit and read where I can read the text in a book but not from a Story. That's a pity.

(My solution: I've put some audiobooks on an SD card and keep that in the Story. If it's too dark, I read a book aurally instead.)

For me, the size and weight is quite comfortable, and having both a "Page Forward" and a "Page Back" button on both sides of the device means I can switch hands and positions with no discomfort. (I have to disclose, though, that I have hands big enough to hold a basketball in the air from the top one-handed, so that might make a difference to my comfort with the device!) But I find it light enough that I can hold it in one hand, between thumb and fingers, and read for quite a time without feeling any strain on my wrist.

As for its capabilities:

Sadly, I agree with all of greenapple's points. (Sorry, greenapple, not sad that I agree with you! Just sad that I've found the same limitations in the Story.)

.DOCs don't reflow. Opening them, they're displayed as a full page (A4 or Letter), which of course makes the text far too small to read. The zoom function merely zooms in on a rectangle in the middle of the page, and the text expands out and disappears off all four sides of the screen -- as greenapple says, as if the page is an image. The text doesn't reflow, and what disappears off the sides becomes inaccessible. I confirmed this with tech support at the Australian iRiver distributor -- they're experiencing the same thing, and they feel it may be in the new firmware, as they say nobody has ever raised the problem before (ahh, but doesn't tech support *always* say that?!). Problem is, you can't install an older firmware over a more recent one, so I can't go back to an earlier version that (allegedly) works. At my insistence, they say they have reported this to Korea, but they would make no undertaking that I'd even get a reply, let alone any time-frame for when it might be addressed.

I have the same experience with .TXTs as greenapple. Text is treated as having a certain number of fixed-width characters on a line, and when that number is reached, the text simply breaks to a new line, even if it's in the middle of a word. No attempt at hyphenation is applied, and words are apparently not seen as discrete units that must be kept whole. I wondered if there was a way to turn off right-justification, and if that might make a difference, but there doesn't seem to be.

I tried reading a comic also. The format it supports is a .CBR file, which is basically a zipped collection of .JPGs strung together in sequence so you can page through them. But you can't zoom them or display them in landscape mode, and like greenapple I found the text too small to read -- you can manage it, depending on the relative size of the text in the original, but I wouldn't want to read more than a few pages that way. Also, artwork really shows up the limits of an 8-levels-of-greyscale display: if the original was particularly intense, or had a darker or richer-hued palette without a lot of contrast, then displayed in greyscale it just looks blobby and murky. Not very pretty, I have to say.

.ePUB is about the only format I've come across that works well -- and pleasingly, I have to say. (I don't use crap like Excel in real life, so I'm not about to on my Story.) greenapple, not sure if you've discovered it, but with an .ePUB file loaded, the "Options" menu has an extra item: you can switch screen dithering on, which I felt really made the text display quite lush and pleasing. I think battery life takes a bit of a hit from this -- how much, I can't yet tell -- but so be it. I've had my Story for six days now, have read from it every night, and haven't had to recharge it yet. I figure that's not bad!

.PDFs don't reflow, either. Not even the ones with OCRd text, so that's a pain. You can't zoom in landscape, as greenapple says (an acknowledged bug in the firmware, and allegedly being worked on). In portrait, trying to zoom brings up the cryptic message "Press D-pad + ENTER to confirm". I finally worked out that "D-pad" is actually the Down arrow key, although it's not called "D-pad: anywhere else that I can discover -- not in the Getting Started Guide, nor in the PDF manual that comes pre-installed on the device, nor in the online guide that explains all the buttons and their names and functions. (I've started to get the feeling that different aspects of this device -- certainly hardware and software -- were developed by different teams who didn't talk to each other very much.) Meantime, the Story is actually trying to do a mouseless equivalent of a click-and-drag to define the area in the full-page display of the .PDF you want to zoom to ... but it doesn't reflow the text, so you're going to make the page as unreadable as the zoom of a .DOC file. It might be useful if you want to zoom in on a diagram, but otherwise ... Since the device treats every PDF as if it was a single full-page vector diagram, I'm struggling to see what benefit there is in support for the format at all.

In fact, the bloke at the distributor's tech support agreed with me, that the *only* format that works well on the iRiver Story is .ePub. A bit of a p.i.t.a., really -- that means that anything I want to read on the fly -- even .DOC attachments someone sends me in the e.mail that I might think "oh, I'll take that and read it on the train" -- still has to be physically printed out and carried as paper, or else I have to spend the time converting it to an .ePUB before it's usable. Not at all what I was hoping for. (I'm checking out Calibre to handle the .ePUB conversion.)

I don't know how responsive iRiver is going to be to these issues, how quickly they can draft a fix for at least some of them (if they can fix them at all). I imagine most eReaders have limitations -- I'm not sure where the Story sits in this pack. And I note that the company has just declared the Story's operating system open-source, so I'm *really* hoping they're not just going to wait for someone else to fix the problems.

My final thought: I'm a bit unimpressed at the profit mark-ups that seem to be going on. All the .eReader devices seem to be around similar prices, but that could be pack behaviour as much as the hardware requiring that. The only cost-intensive part of the device, as far as I can see, is the screen, and that alone doesn't justify a $400 asking-price at retail. And it comes without any sort of case or screen protection, which is really a bit much. It seems Harvey Norman has almost an exclusive on iRiver Storys here in Australia, but they knew nothing about the iRiver case for it, and *I* had to make all the phone-calls between the two to line up getting them in-stock at my local HN shop, because the distributor wouldn't sell to me directly. And then I find I can get the same case from Amazon UK, including shipping to Australia, for more than $20 cheaper than I can buy it at Harvey Norman. Not happy, Jan!!

05-03-2010, 03:44 AM	#48
MacEachaidh Browser Posts: 745 Karma: 578294 Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kobo Touch, Kobo Aura HD	Hi all, Sorry, this is going to be a long post. Either skim, or please bear with me. Firstly, some good things: I love the screen. I find it really easy to read from, completely glare-free, and a comfortable size. The display is crisp, and I quite like the black-on-slightly-grey display, as I think black-on-pure-white would prove too eye-straining. Downside: You need it to be glare-free, and I understand why they make a big deal about it being readable in full sun, because it really needs decent light to be particularly readable at all. I know you shouldn't try to read anything in dim lighting, but there are places I like to sit and read where I can read the text in a book but not from a Story. That's a pity. (My solution: I've put some audiobooks on an SD card and keep that in the Story. If it's too dark, I read a book aurally instead.) For me, the size and weight is quite comfortable, and having both a "Page Forward" and a "Page Back" button on both sides of the device means I can switch hands and positions with no discomfort. (I have to disclose, though, that I have hands big enough to hold a basketball in the air from the top one-handed, so that might make a difference to my comfort with the device!) But I find it light enough that I can hold it in one hand, between thumb and fingers, and read for quite a time without feeling any strain on my wrist. As for its capabilities: Sadly, I agree with all of greenapple's points. (Sorry, greenapple, not sad that I agree with you! Just sad that I've found the same limitations in the Story.) .DOCs don't reflow. Opening them, they're displayed as a full page (A4 or Letter), which of course makes the text far too small to read. The zoom function merely zooms in on a rectangle in the middle of the page, and the text expands out and disappears off all four sides of the screen -- as greenapple says, as if the page is an image. The text doesn't reflow, and what disappears off the sides becomes inaccessible. I confirmed this with tech support at the Australian iRiver distributor -- they're experiencing the same thing, and they feel it may be in the new firmware, as they say nobody has ever raised the problem before (ahh, but doesn't tech support always say that?!). Problem is, you can't install an older firmware over a more recent one, so I can't go back to an earlier version that (allegedly) works. At my insistence, they say they have reported this to Korea, but they would make no undertaking that I'd even get a reply, let alone any time-frame for when it might be addressed. I have the same experience with .TXTs as greenapple. Text is treated as having a certain number of fixed-width characters on a line, and when that number is reached, the text simply breaks to a new line, even if it's in the middle of a word. No attempt at hyphenation is applied, and words are apparently not seen as discrete units that must be kept whole. I wondered if there was a way to turn off right-justification, and if that might make a difference, but there doesn't seem to be. I tried reading a comic also. The format it supports is a .CBR file, which is basically a zipped collection of .JPGs strung together in sequence so you can page through them. But you can't zoom them or display them in landscape mode, and like greenapple I found the text too small to read -- you can manage it, depending on the relative size of the text in the original, but I wouldn't want to read more than a few pages that way. Also, artwork really shows up the limits of an 8-levels-of-greyscale display: if the original was particularly intense, or had a darker or richer-hued palette without a lot of contrast, then displayed in greyscale it just looks blobby and murky. Not very pretty, I have to say. .ePUB is about the only format I've come across that works well -- and pleasingly, I have to say. (I don't use crap like Excel in real life, so I'm not about to on my Story.) greenapple, not sure if you've discovered it, but with an .ePUB file loaded, the "Options" menu has an extra item: you can switch screen dithering on, which I felt really made the text display quite lush and pleasing. I think battery life takes a bit of a hit from this -- how much, I can't yet tell -- but so be it. I've had my Story for six days now, have read from it every night, and haven't had to recharge it yet. I figure that's not bad! .PDFs don't reflow, either. Not even the ones with OCRd text, so that's a pain. You can't zoom in landscape, as greenapple says (an acknowledged bug in the firmware, and allegedly being worked on). In portrait, trying to zoom brings up the cryptic message "Press D-pad + ENTER to confirm". I finally worked out that "D-pad" is actually the Down arrow key, although it's not called "D-pad: anywhere else that I can discover -- not in the Getting Started Guide, nor in the PDF manual that comes pre-installed on the device, nor in the online guide that explains all the buttons and their names and functions. (I've started to get the feeling that different aspects of this device -- certainly hardware and software -- were developed by different teams who didn't talk to each other very much.) Meantime, the Story is actually trying to do a mouseless equivalent of a click-and-drag to define the area in the full-page display of the .PDF you want to zoom to ... but it doesn't reflow the text, so you're going to make the page as unreadable as the zoom of a .DOC file. It might be useful if you want to zoom in on a diagram, but otherwise ... Since the device treats every PDF as if it was a single full-page vector diagram, I'm struggling to see what benefit there is in support for the format at all. In fact, the bloke at the distributor's tech support agreed with me, that the only format that works well on the iRiver Story is .ePub. A bit of a p.i.t.a., really -- that means that anything I want to read on the fly -- even .DOC attachments someone sends me in the e.mail that I might think "oh, I'll take that and read it on the train" -- still has to be physically printed out and carried as paper, or else I have to spend the time converting it to an .ePUB before it's usable. Not at all what I was hoping for. (I'm checking out Calibre to handle the .ePUB conversion.) I don't know how responsive iRiver is going to be to these issues, how quickly they can draft a fix for at least some of them (if they can fix them at all). I imagine most eReaders have limitations -- I'm not sure where the Story sits in this pack. And I note that the company has just declared the Story's operating system open-source, so I'm really hoping they're not just going to wait for someone else to fix the problems. My final thought: I'm a bit unimpressed at the profit mark-ups that seem to be going on. All the .eReader devices seem to be around similar prices, but that could be pack behaviour as much as the hardware requiring that. The only cost-intensive part of the device, as far as I can see, is the screen, and that alone doesn't justify a $400 asking-price at retail. And it comes without any sort of case or screen protection, which is really a bit much. It seems Harvey Norman has almost an exclusive on iRiver Storys here in Australia, but they knew nothing about the iRiver case for it, and I had to make all the phone-calls between the two to line up getting them in-stock at my local HN shop, because the distributor wouldn't sell to me directly. And then I find I can get the same case from Amazon UK, including shipping to Australia, for more than $20 cheaper than I can buy it at Harvey Norman. Not happy, Jan!! Last edited by MacEachaidh; 05-03-2010 at 03:59 AM. Reason: To code a link for "Calibre"