Libre first impressions

[Begemot]

Finally, received my shiny new Libre.

As this is my first dedicated e-book reader some quick impressions are in order:

Screen:
Looks very nice, very readable, much much better than my Acer Aspire One netbook.

Size:
5 inches is good enough for regular text(readable at 12 points, but I prefer 18 points), however, converted pdfs to ePub do suffer.
For A4 type pages one would need at least 8 inches(with appropriate resolution of course). Thus, as a technical reader Libre is not optimal, but I knew that already going in.

Speed:
Loading of books can take a while.
Page turning(once loaded) is fine.
Some strange delays, for example there is about 15second delay going to recently read books screen, which does not make sense.

Also, it was strange to only get 500KB/s when transferring the free books from the SD to my computer via USB cable. Obviously, not a huge issue, as one could put SD in the computer directly.

Weight:
Appropriate for its size, about the same as a medium hardcover book.

Design:
The left side page turner is a strange beast, otherwise the buttons feel good and put in right places, the design feels much better than expected.

Libre works very well with Calibre which I installed on Ubuntu 9.10. Kudos to developer of Calibre!

Overall, I am very happy with the choice I made. Hopefully, there will be a larger screen version released in the future.

Next step: installing Jetbook firmware to get dictionaries...

[uRwhatUr]

Originally Posted by Begemot

Speed:
Loading of books can take a while.
Page turning(once loaded) is fine.
Some strange delays, for example there is about 15second delay going to recently read books screen, which does not make sense.

Design:
The left side page turner is a strange beast, otherwise the buttons feel good and put in right places, the design feels much better than expected.

Next step: installing Jetbook firmware to get dictionaries...

How long is "take a while"? I find that the load times do vary somewhat. As an example I can open a 28 meg .pdf quicker than the 10 meg .prc World Fact Book.

For me, I really like the left side page turner and use it more than the buttons.

As for switching firmware for the dictionaries, I've seen a few posts stating disappointment in it and few words found.

Thanks for sharing your opinion!

Just did some time checks: 7.05 seconds to open Recent Readings; 30.66 seconds for 10 meg .prc file and 15.77 seconds for 28 meg .pdf file

[GhostHawk]

I believe the Libre has the same issue as the Jetbook with USB connection speed. The USB side of the reader is the older USB 1.1 so using an SD card with a reader/adapter can be much faster.

[doug38]

Other first impressions/ tech support details and corrections:

I asked if the Libre had e-ink and PDF reflow, or was I misinformed? If it has e-ink, I asked if it is determined by the screen (TFT, etc)? I also asked about the "adobe digital editions" program that appears among the folders in LIBRE.

The tech support (TS) informed me that the reflow feature is 'encoded' onto PDFs and is only available if the publisher of the PDF includes it. The TS also said that the LIBRE just interprets the encoding. TS also suggested that I might be confusing the ePaper technology of the LIBRE's display with "e-ink". E Ink, TS said, is the electronic ink technology used by Amazon's Kindle ebook reader (and, I guess, a few other readers). TS also clarified the Adobe program, saying "Adobe Digital Editions does not convert text, Digital Editions allows the user [to] save ebooks in its Library to the LIBRE and authorizes purchased or DRM-restricted ePub and PDF ebooks to be opened and read on the LIBRE."
I'll admit, I have a lot to learn in using the LIBRE and finding my way in the Forum and in Calibre.

[doug38]

P.S. I post this info only for those newbies like myself, in case they know as little about e-readers as I do

[Xanthe]

Every little bit of information helps those of us who are new to ebooks.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by doug38

The tech support (TS) informed me that the reflow feature is 'encoded' onto PDFs and is only available if the publisher of the PDF includes it.

This isn't the case. Mobile Adobe Digital Editions does not rely on what the publisher does to the PDF. It attempts to reflow all PDFs and if it fails it will do so on a page by page basis and this depends on what is on the page and how this is arranged in the PDF. I think what Technical Support is trying to tell you is that there is nothing they can do. Either the PDF reflows or it does not, and if not it is because of the combination of the PDF and the (limited) reflow capabilities of Adobe Digital Editions.

Things that might make reflow fail include: graphics and text on the same page, pages that are themselves images (e.g. scans of a physical book), some multi-column pages, PDF text that isn't in the PDF as words (sometimes individual letters are arranged on the page instead). This is a long list, and there are lots of other things I have left out, but many PDFs do reflow well enough to read. In particular, most fiction ebook PDFs work ok.