MobileRead Forums - View Single Post

mathias · 06-27-2011, 07:18 AM

So, I got myself a brand new Cover Story and after about 24 hours I'm still happy with it. But...

The Cover came branded with CDON, a Scandinavian electronics chain with its own online book store, but I'm not going to use it since they have Scandinavian prices (25$ for a book that costs 9$ at Waterstone, booksonboard or even the Sony shop? I don't think so!) CDON does provide the latest firmware for download on their website, which is nice, since I didn't manage to download from iRiver.

To say it right away: the reflections on the screen don't really bother me. Yes, they are there but turning the reader 5 mm to either side usually does the trick. Also, I don't think the Cover Story does worse than my BeBook Neo, which has a wacom layer behind the e-paper. (I did look at the Sony 350 at the airport the other day and its screen seemed very nice, but I wanted 6" and the 650 is completely unavailable these days.)

There are a couple of things that confuse me though:

The dictionary: Yes, there is an inbuilt dictionary, but I cannot tap a word to look up its meaning. I have to open the dictionary window, type in the word and then I get the definition. This is a rather clumsy way of looking things up

The keyboard: I don't know how the shift key works. Maybe I'm stupid but this actually prevents me from using the email function. Why? Because when i type in the password all I see is stars (phones normally show the letter for a second before it is replaced by a star) and I don know if I typed "a" or "A". If your password is "abc123" this isn't a problem, but with something like "asHjs98%sH"? Forget it...

Addition: I just figured out the Shift key. It is in fact a caps lock key, i.e. pressing once will produce capital letters until shift is pressed again

The library: And yet another reader that lists books by file name. Mine are sorted by author-title so all I see is "John Doe - A...", "John Doe - A..." Sure I can easily rename with Calibre but how difficult is it to actually use the meta info in an epub? I can see the book cover alright...

I may sound rather critical but all in all I like the Cover Story. The device looks nice, the touchscreen works fine (never liked the Neo that forces you to use the stylus), and it's nice to have a reader with a dedicated cover. i prefer the magnetic cover to the Neo's thick leather cover and the Sony's neoprene sleeve.

So yes, I'll be reading on the Cover Story for the time to come.

06-27-2011, 07:18 AM	#1
mathias Member Posts: 12 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2010 Device: prs-300; BeBook Neo; iRiver Cover Story; Sony T1	My new Cover Story So, I got myself a brand new Cover Story and after about 24 hours I'm still happy with it. But... The Cover came branded with CDON, a Scandinavian electronics chain with its own online book store, but I'm not going to use it since they have Scandinavian prices (25$ for a book that costs 9$ at Waterstone, booksonboard or even the Sony shop? I don't think so!) CDON does provide the latest firmware for download on their website, which is nice, since I didn't manage to download from iRiver. To say it right away: the reflections on the screen don't really bother me. Yes, they are there but turning the reader 5 mm to either side usually does the trick. Also, I don't think the Cover Story does worse than my BeBook Neo, which has a wacom layer behind the e-paper. (I did look at the Sony 350 at the airport the other day and its screen seemed very nice, but I wanted 6" and the 650 is completely unavailable these days.) There are a couple of things that confuse me though: The dictionary: Yes, there is an inbuilt dictionary, but I cannot tap a word to look up its meaning. I have to open the dictionary window, type in the word and then I get the definition. This is a rather clumsy way of looking things up The keyboard: I don't know how the shift key works. Maybe I'm stupid but this actually prevents me from using the email function. Why? Because when i type in the password all I see is stars (phones normally show the letter for a second before it is replaced by a star) and I don know if I typed "a" or "A". If your password is "abc123" this isn't a problem, but with something like "asHjs98%sH"? Forget it... Addition: I just figured out the Shift key. It is in fact a caps lock key, i.e. pressing once will produce capital letters until shift is pressed again The library: And yet another reader that lists books by file name. Mine are sorted by author-title so all I see is "John Doe - A...", "John Doe - A..." Sure I can easily rename with Calibre but how difficult is it to actually use the meta info in an epub? I can see the book cover alright... I may sound rather critical but all in all I like the Cover Story. The device looks nice, the touchscreen works fine (never liked the Neo that forces you to use the stylus), and it's nice to have a reader with a dedicated cover. i prefer the magnetic cover to the Neo's thick leather cover and the Sony's neoprene sleeve. So yes, I'll be reading on the Cover Story for the time to come. Last edited by mathias; 06-28-2011 at 06:26 AM.