MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Received pocketbooks 302 today. This is the review thread.

agravier · 06-05-2010, 02:31 AM

More testing:

My wife and I are pretty happy with the devices.

I tried several file formats, and a few notes that I took:

The battery life is immense. It is really impressively long. I didn't charge yet (though I transfered a lot of files by USB, and maybe it charges the battery when using USB transfer)
The Wifi range is very good, better than my macbook pro (from 2006, ok, but still)
PDF files open correctly right away most of the time. However, not all the time, we got a collection of failures like empty pages or error messages trying to open some PDFs. But it's not a catastrophe because:
- there are two pieces of reader software on the device, so there is a chance that the second succeeds where the other one failed.
- you can try to save the faulty file again (meaning rewrite the PDF) if you have Adobe Acrobat, Foxit Fanthom, Apple's Preview, etc...
- if you are using calibre (which I am not, but that's a matter of taste), i heard that you can convert PDFs to various other format.
RTF files are stripped of their formatting but display fine as pure text, which is ok for me.
The USB connection to windows and my distribution of Linux work normally, the device is recognized as a mass storage device to be ejected after use. But there is an issue on my Macintosh computer, as OS X (Leopard) recognizes the device, and can read and write it, but can't eject it properly: as soon as ejected, the device pops back. It make that you can only remove the device dirtily or shutdown the mac. Again, it may be only my computer, I don't know.
I have yet to find how to get a "column view mode". I thought (from reviews) that when center-touching while reading a PDF, there should be a choice of "column mode" zoom options in the zoom menu. I yet have to find this column zoom mode. I daily read journal articles which are column-formatted (e.g. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ature09146.pdf ) and the column mode was one of the reasons why I bought the reader. Any idea how to activate it?

Finally, I saw in the comment thread that there was a debate on the "inward buttons" that are not easy to press when the device is no the pouch. Yes, on my device the right buttons are a little covered by the pouch, while on my wife's the pouch is relatively symmetrical. She has small finger, and that with long nails make that she didn't notice any problem to use the buttons. However, it's too hard for me to use the right scrolling buttons so I mostly use the touchscreen to turn pages.

06-05-2010, 02:31 AM	#2
agravier Member Posts: 22 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2010 Device: Pocketbook 360, if I can find one...	More testing: My wife and I are pretty happy with the devices. I tried several file formats, and a few notes that I took: The battery life is immense. It is really impressively long. I didn't charge yet (though I transfered a lot of files by USB, and maybe it charges the battery when using USB transfer) The Wifi range is very good, better than my macbook pro (from 2006, ok, but still) PDF files open correctly right away most of the time. However, not all the time, we got a collection of failures like empty pages or error messages trying to open some PDFs. But it's not a catastrophe because: - there are two pieces of reader software on the device, so there is a chance that the second succeeds where the other one failed. - you can try to save the faulty file again (meaning rewrite the PDF) if you have Adobe Acrobat, Foxit Fanthom, Apple's Preview, etc... - if you are using calibre (which I am not, but that's a matter of taste), i heard that you can convert PDFs to various other format. RTF files are stripped of their formatting but display fine as pure text, which is ok for me. The USB connection to windows and my distribution of Linux work normally, the device is recognized as a mass storage device to be ejected after use. But there is an issue on my Macintosh computer, as OS X (Leopard) recognizes the device, and can read and write it, but can't eject it properly: as soon as ejected, the device pops back. It make that you can only remove the device dirtily or shutdown the mac. Again, it may be only my computer, I don't know. I have yet to find how to get a "column view mode". I thought (from reviews) that when center-touching while reading a PDF, there should be a choice of "column mode" zoom options in the zoom menu. I yet have to find this column zoom mode. I daily read journal articles which are column-formatted (e.g. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ature09146.pdf ) and the column mode was one of the reasons why I bought the reader. Any idea how to activate it? Finally, I saw in the comment thread that there was a debate on the "inward buttons" that are not easy to press when the device is no the pouch. Yes, on my device the right buttons are a little covered by the pouch, while on my wife's the pouch is relatively symmetrical. She has small finger, and that with long nails make that she didn't notice any problem to use the buttons. However, it's too hard for me to use the right scrolling buttons so I mostly use the touchscreen to turn pages. Last edited by agravier; 06-16-2010 at 10:50 AM.