First sample units arrived - review by Friday or Monday!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by penty

A progress bar makes more sense.

Yes, I agree. The other versions of MobiPocket Reader use a progress bar and it works well. Its other benefit is that it need only use up a few pixels - not a full line of text.

[delphidb96]

JSWolf,

I would rather have a small battery display and either a page progress bar or a page/total pages indicator - but I think that could be done in a default smaller size. And yes, IMO, the header is too large. The header and page number footer use the same size and family as the body text - so they both shrink and grow - not a good thing if the person is using a really *LARGE* font size for the text section.

And I've noticed that at the smallest two font sizes, a couple of the fonts are so small as to be unreadable without my prescription reading glasses - that's *SMALL*!!!

And please remember that this is a beta version software - 0.91 to be accurate. Some things will be added or changed in the production release. Hopefully including hyphenation support.

Derek

Originally Posted by JSWolf

1. Nothing wrong withthe way the book is formatted. How would you have formatted it?
2. I wonder why there is no battery meter display.
3. The header is quite large as well.

I also notice that the Cybook also does not have hyphenation support.

[MikeF74]

How close is the Gen3 to production? Is it safe to assume that the hardware has been locked down, and it is now just a matter of tweaking the software? Are we talking mid-October to get units out to customers, or are we really talking about Christmas season?

I hope they would tell us, since they need to compete against what must be an impending release of Sony's PRS-505 (since they're released marketing material to retailers). Will Bookeen give a firm date, or just "soon"? To be fair, Sony hasn't set a date either, but they must really be close if a retailer had information. Plus, their latest $199 Classics deal has a firm must-use-by 9/30 date, so I'm guessing Oct. 1 for release of the Sony. If Bookeen says they can deliver by mid-October, I might just wait it out. Then again, if they set a date and break it, all bets are off. I won't be strung along.

I do like the less-button, cleaner look of the Cyboook. Despite my loathing of DRM, I do like the Mobipocket support. I don't have time to futz around breaking DRM and converting books right now, so a reader with Mobipocket support is somewhat appealing.

Sorry about all of that, its just a really frustrating time for an eInk purchaser.

[MikeF74]

Something which I have seen mentioned yet...

Does the Gen 3 have attachment points for a book-style cover?

[delphidb96]

Mike,

As we don't actually *work* for Bookeen, I can't say what the firm release date is. I can say that I believe the control layout is fixed. And the software, as I mentioned earlier is up to release 0.91. But if not the final, the hardware is very close to production level. I don't know yet how they intend to attach the cover. I don't see attachment points on this case - but this may well be a pre-production case. I'll know more later.

Derek

Originally Posted by MikeF74

Something which I have seen mentioned yet...

Does the Gen 3 have attachment points for a book-style cover?

[guguy]

delphidb96, does the gen3 have a suspended mode like the sony reader ?

thx

[Jadon]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

1. Nothing wrong with the way the book is formatted. How would you have formatted it?

Correctly? Look at it: in seven different places you're in the middle of a sentence, and the text moves to the next line and indents as if it's a new paragraph. The input text clearly had hard breaks, and these weren't removed in the display text. Broken reflow isn't a killer, but it is inelegant.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Jadon

Correctly? Look at it: in seven different places you're in the middle of a sentence, and the text moves to the next line and indents as if it's a new paragraph. The input text clearly had hard breaks, and these weren't removed in the display text. Broken reflow isn't a killer, but it is inelegant.

Ok, so the format of the book is not a problem. The book itself is the problem. That you can get when you have a book you've either downloaded from the net someplace or even in some PG text.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

JSWolf,

I would rather have a small battery display and either a page progress bar or a page/total pages indicator - but I think that could be done in a default smaller size. And yes, IMO, the header is too large. The header and page number footer use the same size and family as the body text - so they both shrink and grow - not a good thing if the person is using a really *LARGE* font size for the text section.

And I've noticed that at the smallest two font sizes, a couple of the fonts are so small as to be unreadable without my prescription reading glasses - that's *SMALL*!!!

And please remember that this is a beta version software - 0.91 to be accurate. Some things will be added or changed in the production release. Hopefully including hyphenation support.

Derek

So MobiPocket formatted books seems to have some of the same issues as books formatted for the Connect Store as far as text size goes.

Hyphenation support is only doable if you have dictionary support for looking up words and where to hyphenate unless you add in soft hyphen support which you cannot do as the standard is now. But it's not an issue to modify the reader to allow hyphen's via a dictionary without modifying any of the functionality.

[delphidb96]

Guguy,

I don't know. Please remember that this is an engineering sample. That means, among other things, they didn't include a User's Guide. It may well have a suspend mode and I just don't know how to get it at this point. Then again, it may not.

Derek

Originally Posted by guguy

delphidb96, does the gen3 have a suspended mode like the sony reader ?

thx

[delphidb96]

Could be. I've mostly used my Axim for reading and used either MS Reader or eReader Pro as my ebook apps. I've used Mobi on my PC, but that's a much bigger piece of real estate. If I knew more, I'd tell you, but I've passed the soft-hyphenation idea along to Bookeen.

Derek

Originally Posted by JSWolf

So MobiPocket formatted books seems to have some of the same issues as books formatted for the Connect Store as far as text size goes.

Hyphenation support is only doable if you have dictionary support for looking up words and where to hyphenate unless you add in soft hyphen support which you cannot do as the standard is now. But it's not an issue to modify the reader to allow hyphen's via a dictionary without modifying any of the functionality.

[guguy]

I think I kinda become to enjoy the cybook design...
It's minimalistic but in the end it's quite cool

[wallcraft]

For a book to compare the Sony and Cybook, I suggest Wells, H.G.: War of the Worlds. In LRF and PRC. I don't have a Sony, but the PRC version looks good in MobiPocket Reader and FBReader (manually select windows-1252 encoding).

My favorite test text is Ring of Fire, which is a Baen free book. I use the .prc version in FBReader, but I don't know what the best way to import it to the Sony would be. FBReader screenshots often show the start of "The Wallenstein Gambit" because it has an embedded image.

[Ravenflight]

I'd really like to know about ghosting on the Cybook compared to the Sony. Does the vizplex have the same amount of ghosting as the old e-ink display? Or have they solved that issue?

[CommanderROR]

Nice to see a new ereader coming out although I must say that I share some of the concerns others have already voiced here...

It appears that the STAReBOOK design was used but slightly altered to create this device. The side buttons are the same, but the main control unit and the strip at the bottom front were redesigned.
I'd love to try flashing the Cybook firmware onto my STAReBOOK, but I'm not sure whether the drivers for the Vizplex display would be included and might kill my STAReBOOK (although I might risk it anyway since the guys at stareread have still not finished the new Firmware and I've long ago grown tired of broken formatting...and have returned to the Iliad with it's mobipocket support).

Concerning suspend mode...if they went with the same core OS as the STAReBOOK, then it'll be only low-power mode and will run out of juice after about a week of lying around doing nothing (and about the same with regular reading). The stareread folks never gave me a clear answer on this matter and since I haven't been able to reach them for quite some time now I've given up on the matter.

I'm looking forward to hearing what the Cybook behaves like and if you have a firmware flasher and firmware file somewhere, then I'll certainly consider giving the cross-flashing to the STAReBOOK a try. Since the device is not really in use anymore and I never paid anything for it I might risk giving it a try.