"Slowness" of the Pocket PRO

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by John F

....

I honestly don't think the 600 is faster then the PocketPro. .....

I may post what seems like some mean spirited comments, but if I do, it is because I feel that Astak living up to their lofty goals.....

If you are touting the abilities of a feature, also give the down sides/incompatibilities so users can make a logical choice. If your going to say it supports "up to 20 formats", give a comprehensive list somewhere.

...

John, "thinking" is not a measurement. The page turning is a feature which CAN be measured. That is if we want to. I personally "think" there is WAY too much emphasis on this particular feature. My 505 may turn pages slowly, but I really don't care. It does the job and once I adjusted to it -- pushing the button as I finish reading the last sentence -- it is not bother whatsoever.

There is no reason to be "mean spirited" -- if there are issues, problems, differences of opinion, it's easy enough to simply state them without the mean spirit.

As far as formats there is a list on the website, in the specifications or features.

As far as presenting the sides/good/bad I agree and in addition as has been mentioned above, if you are going to do this it's probably a good idea to actually own or at least have significant hands-on experience with the device as opposed to speculating and expressing your thoughts based on what you've read or someone else's experience.

[cvkemp]

I really do not understand why it is so important that the pages turn so fast, what are all of you speed readers. Reading is something that you do for relaxation or for information you need for you job. How fast the page turns is not that important what is important is the fact that I do not have to lug around 100 lbs of books any more. What I have seeing here is a punch of jealous owners of other ebook readers trying to put down the EZreader Pro why can we not grow up in the world.

Chuck

[RichyRich]

Given that the Epson controller is a newer design and that the processor speed is doubled over the previous generation, you would expect a faster page turn. Of course, it couldn't be as instantaneous as an LCD because power has to be applied to change the E-Ink display while an LCD constantly has power going to it, so an E-Ink display will most likely always have a screen refresh time. Just from what I've seen of videos so far, the page change is nothing to be concerned about as it is now. If it took 10 seconds or so per page, then that's another matter entirely.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by kennyc

The page turning is a feature which CAN be measured.

Yes, although as usual it isn't as easy as it first seems. For many devices on the market we can now measure exactly the same ebook using exactly the same underlying software (mobile Adobe Digital Editions). For the Kindle we can use the same ebook in MOBI instead of ePub, or on the KDX we could use a PDF (remember, it is using mobile ADE for PDFs). However, the problem is that the Pocket Pro isn't slow if you repeatedly turn the page - it is slow (or slower) if you wait a few seconds between page turns. In this mode you can know a slow page turn when you see one but it is harder to measure page turn performance.

I think this is worth taking further. We put page turn speed on the E-book Reader Matrix, but it isn't from a standardized test. The only numbers that have firm reports behind them that I know of are those from iRex, which reported on the page turn times on the DR1000S and the iLiad. It would be reasonable to assume that iRex quoted best case times, but they do correctly indicate that the iLiad has a slower page turn than most devices. A standardized test would probably have to be something like: turn the page 10 times as fast as possible, so it would not catch real-life performance but again best case performance.

Note that concentrating on page turn speed can also have unforeseen consequences. I have seen reports that the Kindle 2 has a fast page turn because it does not always do a "page invert" step. This gives fast page turns at the expense of more ghosting.

[AJ Starr]

Originally Posted by cvkemp

I really do not understand why it is so important that the pages turn so fast, what are all of you speed readers. Reading is something that you do for relaxation or for information you need for you job. How fast the page turns is not that important what is important is the fact that I do not have to lug around 100 lbs of books any more. What I have seeing here is a punch of jealous owners of other ebook readers trying to put down the EZreader Pro why can we not grow up in the world.

Chuck

Speaking as an avid reader who has just about ruined her eyesight from reading without letting up, REMEMBER: Every so often, let you eyes rest by focusing on a far distant object, then a close object, and back and forth a few times. Otherwise you will be wearing as thick of glasses as I've had to do since third grade.

Keep the device at a comfortable focus distance, and take breaks.

AJ

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by AJ Starr

Speaking as an avid reader who has just about ruined her eyesight from reading without letting up, REMEMBER: Every so often, let you eyes rest by focusing on a far distant object, then a close object, and back and forth a few times. Otherwise you will be wearing as thick of glasses as I've had to do since third grade.

Keep the device at a comfortable focus distance, and take breaks.

AJ

Great advice!

[dmikov]

Originally Posted by cvkemp

I really do not understand why it is so important that the pages turn so fast, what are all of you speed readers. Reading is something that you do for relaxation or for information you need for you job. How fast the page turns is not that important what is important is the fact that I do not have to lug around 100 lbs of books any more. What I have seeing here is a punch of jealous owners of other ebook readers trying to put down the EZreader Pro why can we not grow up in the world.

Chuck

I can only speak for myself on this matter, but it is second most important spec for me, second only to contrast.
Yes, I can speed read, but it has nothing to do with not liking to see page refresh taking 2 second. It's hurts my eyes to see black flashing, spidering of fonts etc. Before ordering Pocket Pro, I was all about buying JetBook, because of shorter page refresh and only promise of "almost" instantaneous page turns made by Astak, made me go with Pocket Pro instead.
So I it will be quite a disappointment if 2 sec will be true.

[cvkemp]

I have the Ezreader and it is slower than the pro and I only see a very quick flash when the page changes and it never goes black but will go the color of the background of the reader but it is very quick and to be honest i can not even flip the page of a paper book as fast. Now granded I am 61 and my eyes are not the best but it does not bother me. I do catch myself hitting the next page button as I read the last sentence on the page.
chuck

[John F]

... My 505 may turn pages slowly, but I really don't care. It does the job and once I adjusted to it -- pushing the button as I finish reading the last sentence -- it is not bother whatsoever.

I have a 505 also. While the page turning is "acceptable" I wish it would be quicker. I also push the page turn a little early, and once in a while, I need to go back a page. Sure it works "just fine", but why settle for this on a newer device?

Originally Posted by kennyc

John, "thinking" is not a measurement. The page turning is a feature which CAN be measured. That is if we want to. I personally "think" there is WAY too much emphasis on this particular feature.

Sure you can measure it. That is great and very helpful, everyone will decide if it is quick enough for their needs, there will be questions about how the measurements were taken, Is twice as fast really necessary?... Why not look at it from a different angle? Did you see the video of the 600 scrolling a PDF? Doesn't it beg the question: "if you can scroll at a rate of 10 frames a second, with no black flashing and no appreciable ghosting, then why put up with 1-2 second page turns."

Why not raise this with the factory, instead of just saying this is the measurement.

As far as formats there is a list on the website, in the specifications or features.

My appoligies, I didn't expect to see it under highlights, I expected it under specifications.

It says "20+ open formats", and then lists 21 formats. So it supports 21? RTF is missing, so it supports 22? The list is incomplete. Where can a I get a comprehensive list?

The highlights page lists TTS. So TTS works with all formats?

The highlights page list "rotating display"** Where can I get a list of what formats can be rotated?

I (and many other potential customers) could weed through a ton of posts, to find information for the above, but I would rather have as much information as possible in one spot.

[cvkemp]

John F
That is ok I kind of had my dander up this morning. I had a lot planned over the weekend that did not get done.

Chuck

[gollu]

It really is somewhat subjective to say "slow" or "fast" page refresh. So IMO, we can only compare the page refresh to that of some existing device.

If anyone has two or more devices, one of which is the 5" ezreader, please have a video of page turning on both. I'd recommend putting them one by the other on a table, one hand has the camera/phone doing the video, the other hand pressing simultaneously the page turn buttons on the devices(probably easier to be done with someone to give a hand).

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by John F

I have a 505 also. While the page turning is "acceptable" I wish it would be quicker. I also push the page turn a little early, and once in a while, I need to go back a page. Sure it works "just fine", but why settle for this on a newer device?


Sure you can measure it. That is great and very helpful, everyone will decide if it is quick enough for their needs, there will be questions about how the measurements were taken, Is twice as fast really necessary?... Why not look at it from a different angle? Did you see the video of the 600 scrolling a PDF? Doesn't it beg the question: "if you can scroll at a rate of 10 frames a second, with no black flashing and no appreciable ghosting, then why put up with 1-2 second page turns."

Why not raise this with the factory, instead of just saying this is the measurement.


My appoligies, I didn't expect to see it under highlights, I expected it under specifications.

It says "20+ open formats", and then lists 21 formats. So it supports 21? RTF is missing, so it supports 22? The list is incomplete. Where can a I get a comprehensive list?

The highlights page lists TTS. So TTS works with all formats?

The highlights page list "rotating display"** Where can I get a list of what formats can be rotated?

I (and many other potential customers) could weed through a ton of posts, to find information for the above, but I would rather have as much information as possible in one spot.

What you want is the wiki Hanlin V5. I will be generating a format specific list of features at some point as I think this can be confusing. In particular the rotating display is a confusing function since it is implemented as a command in some formats and automatic as a zoom feature in other formats and not supported at all in MOBI. TTS is not supported in all formats, more specifically ADE ones. User fonts is another that can be confusing.

Dale

[jodeum]

I've had the PP for two weeks now and thought I would post a couple comments on it. For reference I have installed the latest firmware from the website.

The speed of the page turns seems to be relative to the file type. The second day after I got it I wanted to find out which format would be the best for most of my reading. So I took three different books that I happened to have in both text and epub format, their sizes (in text) were 36kb, 742kb and 1.6mb. I then converted each of those text versions to the following formats; doc, rtf, pdb, pdf, and html. I put a copy of all of them, including the epub, on both the reader and the SD card (8GB Sdhc class 6). After doing a very unscientific test of loading each one and turning the page button, the scroll wheel on the right side, as fast as i can for one minute and counting the page turns. I noticed a general difference in that the doc format had fewer page turns and the pdf had the least of all (8 page turns less than text). Html, pdb, txt and epub I didn't notice much difference. No difference between the device and the card.

One thing that did stand out is the rtf format for the bigger file. The 1.6mb text file after being converted to rtf was over 3mb. This file locked up the device after a few page turns, I had to restart the machine (and reset it once). That happened when I went into the book and immediately started turning the page. If I went into that file and waited a minute then turned the pages I didn't have that problem. It's a way around the problem but for me it means I will never use rtf format for any large file.

Now overall, since I was happy with the speed of the txt, html, pdb, epub and to some extent rtf I started looking at the features available in each. For some reason text versions don't seem to retain bookmarks and last page read info if you exit the book to look at some other file and then go back into the original. So that didn't overly impress me. There's also some annoyances in other formats, some rotate when you go to the largest font selection, some rotate through the menu command. I don't see why that has to be. Some don't have TTS, and so on, you get the idea. The type I personally have settled on is the epub. It has more text size selections (all 5), it has TTS, I can rotate the screen in any of the font sizes through the menu, the bookmarks seem to be retained and it remembers the last page read when reentering the book, and it supports catalog (direct chapter access if the book has them).

One last note for people using doc or rtf file formats. Something the manual and FAQ on the web page does not tell you is the saved font size makes a difference. In other words if you save the file in MS Word, or OpenOffice in 10pt font size and then transfer that to the EZ Reader it will be unreadably small on the screen. But if you save that same file with 22pt font size it will be about the average text size as a txt format file. And further, saved at 72pt, it will be bigger than any text size that can normally be attained in other formats.