Anyone ended up hating his/her jBook?

[greenapple]

Does anyone have a love affair with their jBook at first, but gradually became disenchanted with it and started to hate it?

I have lots of epub/html files that couldn't, wouldn't be opened by my jBook. The technical jargon probably is, it 'hangs' when it tries to open them. I'm not sure if they would eventually open, but after 5 minutes of waiting, I'd just reset the jBook. The same files could be opened by my iRiver Story in 2 seconds.

Also, the line spacing is really too wide and not adjustable.

I'm not sure if I've already crossed the line from loving the jBook to disliking it. I just hope ectaco would come with a fix soon.

[Kralik]

Perhaps you could try converting the ePUB to something like MOBI with Calibre and see if it works better for you?

[Desertway]

I have a Libre and reconvert all my ePubs back to ePub using Calibre and it smooths out all the formatting.

[DJHARKAVY]

Originally Posted by greenapple

Does anyone have a love affair with their jBook at first, but gradually became disenchanted with it and started to hate it?

I have lots of epub/html files that couldn't, wouldn't be opened by my jBook. The technical jargon probably is, it 'hangs' when it tries to open them. I'm not sure if they would eventually open, but after 5 minutes of waiting, I'd just reset the jBook. The same files could be opened by my iRiver Story in 2 seconds.

Also, the line spacing is really too wide and not adjustable.

I'm not sure if I've already crossed the line from loving the jBook to disliking it. I just hope ectaco would come with a fix soon.

How big are the files?

[GhostHawk]

Personally I much prefer .rtf to almost anything else.

And no, I have become so accustomed to my Jetbook and JBL that I refuse to touch paper books. I just don't see why I should bother.

Gave my Father in law a jetbook fri evening, by sat he was walking around the house picking up all the paperbacks and boxing them to send back with us. Read, unread, made no difference. He's hooked after a day.

[GA Russell]

I've had some problems, but I'm not disenchanted yet. The price is a major component of my positive attitude. I see plenty of other folks here with more expensive units who are having their problems as well. I haven't seen any complaints about the PocketBook 360, but that costs double what my initial outlay was.

Friday I had my JBL hooked up to my desktop, and when I finished it went to Russian! Since Cyrillic is nonsense to me, I pressed a few buttons to see what would happen. The Lord must have been with me, because I soon came up with a screen giving me the language option. That is to say, there were four choices, and the only word I understood was "English"! So I clicked on that, and everything returned to normal.

[DJHARKAVY]

I love my JBL. It is a much easier read than my Blackberry.

I have had a few books that I could not open up on my JBL, but I was able to use Calibre and a zip program to separate them into smaller books that opened easily.

I refuse to read paper books if I have a choice. The current Agency model disturbs me, because I don't want to pay hardcover prices for ebooks, but I hear that when the books go to paperback, the price will drop commensurately.

[bob1xxx]

Ive got a libre pro and my biggest dislike so far is less than stellar battery life 12 hours tops, I have to charge at least one a week. I love the easy to read screen and the libre pro's ability to handle drm'd epub book formats because I do like to ready some popular sci fic, mystery, spy series books that I can buy online or download from public library's , so no I don't hate my libre pro but I do find it battery life disappointing. P.S. honestly my favorite format so far is plan text it seems fill the screen the best and give the best battery life, Why ? Have no clue

[greenapple]

I've always liked its portability and price, but the frequency that I have to reset the jBook, retry, reset, retry, reset.. it isn't funny anymore.

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by greenapple

I've always liked its portability and price, but the frequency that I have to reset the jBook, retry, reset, retry, reset.. it isn't funny anymore.

If that is the case then it is safe to say that there is something wrong with
the one you have. What you describe is not what is normally encountered
using these devices.

Luck;
Ken

[macminer]

No need to hate my Jetbook!
However, two things disappointed me. One of them is the empty promises by Ectaco to provide an upgraded firmware.
The other is the unnecessary delay when switching the device on. Maybe I am spoilt by the previous palmtops I owned (Handspring Visor, Palm TX, HP Ipaq hw2xxx series), but I expected that the wake-up from standby would be almost instantaneous. With PDAs, it was certainly so, no matter which program was used to read the ebook - be it Mobipocket, Isilo or Palm Reader. It seems things are different with Jetbook. Every time it wakes up from standby, it seems to do something, so there's a delay that is quite noticeable when compared to the palmtops. Perhaps this is just a software problem that can be healed by improving some bits in the firmware, but there's no new firmware, so we're back to square one...

[DJHARKAVY]

Originally Posted by macminer

No need to hate my Jetbook!
However, two things disappointed me. One of them is the empty promises by Ectaco to provide an upgraded firmware.
The other is the unnecessary delay when switching the device on. Maybe I am spoilt by the previous palmtops I owned (Handspring Visor, Palm TX, HP Ipaq hw2xxx series), but I expected that the wake-up from standby would be almost instantaneous. With PDAs, it was certainly so, no matter which program was used to read the ebook - be it Mobipocket, Isilo or Palm Reader. It seems things are different with Jetbook. Every time it wakes up from standby, it seems to do something, so there's a delay that is quite noticeable when compared to the palmtops. Perhaps this is just a software problem that can be healed by improving some bits in the firmware, but there's no new firmware, so we're back to square one...

Mine takes about 4 seconds.

My Blackberry takes over a minute to open any reader program.

Edit: I know that I sound like a cheerleader, but I really like my JBL.

[greenapple]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

If that is the case then it is safe to say that there is something wrong with
the one you have. What you describe is not what is normally encountered
using these devices.

Luck;
Ken

I doubt if there's anything particular wrong with my jBook. I'm quite sure if I exchanged it for a new one, it'd have the same problem. I've read more than a few books on it, so I guess it's workable. But I've also encountered more than enough ebooks that couldn't be opened by it, or where the hourglass would seem to flip endlessly.

[Kris777]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

If that is the case then it is safe to say that there is something wrong with
the one you have. What you describe is not what is normally encountered
using these devices.

Luck;
Ken

Agree. I don't remember when I reset my jetBook or jetBook-Lite.

[Ken Maltby]

You should not be encountering a need for "reset, retry, reset, retry, ect...". If you
are doing so and it sometimes works, for a given file, then there is really something
wrong.

All e-reading devices have "ebooks that can't be opened", they all are limited to a
particular set of formats that they will work with, they all can only read those among
the supported formats that are constructed in a manner acceptable to the ereader.

The JetBook series seem to be able to handle more formats and file types than many
of the others.

I don't know where you are getting these ebooks that are supposed to be in a format
that your JB can read, but that can't be opened by your JB. If you need to continue
obtaining such ebooks from those sources, you should consider converting them in
Calibre with the output format set (in the preferences) for "JetBooK 5-inch". It is a
quick enough process, that is easy to master.

For instances where the loading is taking so long; you should checkout the "Hourglass
of Death" threads, for how your JB library should be structured. And note that the
embedded graphics of an ebook can be the cause of long loading times. The JB & JBL
function much better with 8-bit grayscale images. The display is only black&white, so
you are loosing nothing by converting the images.

The process of converting the embedded images is not as much of a hassle as you
might expect. (In fact it is harder to explain than to do.)

WinRAR can un-zip most eBook formats into a HTML directory structure. Within that,
you should be able to find the image files.

Any good graphic editing program like the free GIMP2 can change the image into an
8-bit grayscale image. You would replace the image files in the HTML directory
structure, with these changed images, retaining the original file names.

Then Calibre can create a new ebook, in the format of your choice, that will load much
faster, from the HTML structure (There will be a base .html file, you would load into
Calibre). [ You may prefer to re-zip the HTML file structure that you un-zipped, and
load that into Calibre. ]

Luck;
Ken