A PDA guy reviews the 5" Pocket PRO

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

So, here’s the operative question: Will this old PDA reading dude switch to the spiffy new eInk device? In this case, I’m afraid not. Although it did a great job with ePub files, its slow on-off and menu functions felt glacial next to my PDA.

Why would you turn it off? Doesn't it have a stand by mode. I think you said it did, and it took 5 seconds to come back on and to the very place you left off. Seems if this is your main reason for not getting one you might want to change your usage of it. If you really think you need to turn it off, do it at the end of the day when you feel you won't use it again that day, and turn it back on the next day that you use it.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

But if I was planning to switch to an eInk reader, I’d pick this one up. The 5-inch size was great for reading, the screen is excellent (and everyone I showed it to agreed, bar none), it’s lightweight and jacket-pocketable (I carried it around in the pocket of my cargo pants for days), and its basic design is well-executed and utilitarian-attractive. It’s a nice machine, worth the price of admission for a basic dedicated reader.

Interesting considering there are two other 5inch devices on the market that you haven't tried. You might want to compare. I'm not saying it would change you decision, but it's worth the comparison.

Oh, and I'm pretty sure where you got that "state of the art" statement from... I've seen RobertB post it several times. Sounds more like marketing speak than technical fact. I have a Garmin GPSs that has excellent TTS compared to the TTS I have heard from book readers.

Overall a very good and candid review. Thanks.

BOb

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

You guys might be right about the TTS function: I've not heard others in dedicated readers, so I cannot compare them directly. Yes, I've also heard better readers in GPS and some other devices, but I don't have another reader to compare it to (other than the one time I heard a Kindle speak in a Bezos TV interview, and I wasn't impressed).

CharlieBird: Besides the brightness setting, depending on the monitor you're using, many of them also have contrast and even sharpness settings like a CRT. Also, setting background colors and changing text color (dark gray texts on 10-20% gray or lower-brightness screens can be easier on the eyes than solid black text on a solid white screen) can make reading much easier.

With Windows PCs and laptops, there is also a setting called "Cleartype" that you usually access through the monitor settings (Right-click on an empty portion of the screen and select Properties, or access Display through the Control Panel; go to the Display Properties window, select the Appearance tab, then click the Effects button). Cleartype actually de-pixelates text, removing the sharp edges and making text easier to read. It's one of Windows' best-kept secrets, apparently, lots of people don't even know it's there.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Why would you turn it off? Doesn't it have a stand by mode. I think you said it did, and it took 5 seconds to come back on and to the very place you left off. Seems if this is your main reason for not getting one you might want to change your usage of it. If you really think you need to turn it off, do it at the end of the day when you feel you won't use it again that day, and turn it back on the next day that you use it.

My usage is only 2-4 hours per day, with lots of time between those hours. Seems silly to power it up, use it for an hour, then leave it on for 6-8 hours until I get back to it. (That's another reason why the long battery storage capacity of the eInk devices is no advantage to me.)

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

My usage is only 2-4 hours per day, with lots of time between those hours. Seems silly to power it up, use it for an hour, then leave it on for 6-8 hours until I get back to it. (That's another reason why the long battery storage capacity of the eInk devices is no advantage to me.)

Why not? That's about all I use my reader. I don't turn it off. Not that I think the Kindle really goes "off". But, I would expect even not turning it off you would get at least a week out of it, or maybe more.

BOb

[orwell2k]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

The Pocket PRO advertises that it can read multiple e-book formats, and I tried all of them. The good news is Yes, it can open and display them all; but some formats don’t display well unless they are optimized for the Astak’s screen size. Letter-sized Word docs, for instance, display at such a small font that they are for all intents and purposes illegible. Although you have some font resizing control, it generally only allows you 3-4 font size settings with most formats. Different formats also render differently, varying in font type, line spacing, paragraph indents, etc, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to see some examples of formats displayed by the Pocket PRO, so you know what to expect before you buy.

Did you try any FB2 formatted books? On the BeBook1 (Hanlin V3) this is the best format for display, and although I haven't used a V5 Clone I would expect a similar capability. Just curious... because you would probably find FB2 giving you the most flexibility with controlling how the book is displayed.

Cheers!

[bjrnfrdnnd]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

It has a search function but not in all formats. It does not have a dictionary yet.

Dale

Thanks for the quick reply.

On which formats does the search function work? pdf?
Do you know about plans to extend the search function to all formats?
"yet" implies that a dictionary is coming up? when?
How about a dedicated zoom feature that allows to enlarge PDF's as images?
Is this feature implemented?

[m-reader]

This is a great and honest review Steve, well done.
I am a PDA reader from way back too, but since I switched to an e-Ink screen, there's no way I'd go back.
Then again, as you pointed out, not all eyes are made the same

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by theducks

I use Calibre to set a right margin of "13" on epub, that seems to fix the "smeared" text when there is a page number.

That's what I did with my epubs, add a margin. Too bad it won't apply that margin on the top and bottom...

Originally Posted by DaleDe

If you just press the Menu/OK button you will see the progress indicator as a page/number of pages. Press again to get rid of it. For me this is adequate, I don't need to see it on every page and I prefer to have the extra text available on the page and extra space for images. YMMV.

Dale

I like to see how far I am at all times and I genrally use the left buttons for navigation and my thumb isn't large enough to reach the menu button...

Originally Posted by CharlieBird

Steve, I do like reading on LCD screens and while it's fairly obvious about brightness, I wonder if you could go into a little detail about adjusting other settings for reading?

I frequently read at night and hate messing w/the light for the Pocket PRO.
d

My PDA and JE100 (both LCD) have a black background with a dark gray letter. And the backlight turned all the way down. The PDA has a lighter dark than my JE100, but both are perfectly readable in a dark bedroom. If I would use a whitish background with dark letters, I'd be blinded...

Originally Posted by orwell2k

Did you try any FB2 formatted books? On the BeBook1 (Hanlin V3) this is the best format for display, and although I haven't used a V5 Clone I would expect a similar capability. Just curious... because you would probably find FB2 giving you the most flexibility with controlling how the book is displayed.

Cheers!

I heard about those FB2 formatted books, but those aren't text based. So, I can't just take my source and create a FB2 book (the same as I created my epub and mobipocket books). I'd need a third party tool for conversion.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by orwell2k

Did you try any FB2 formatted books? On the BeBook1 (Hanlin V3) this is the best format for display, and although I haven't used a V5 Clone I would expect a similar capability. Just curious... because you would probably find FB2 giving you the most flexibility with controlling how the book is displayed.

I looked at at least one FB2 book, which displayed okay with no anomalies that I remember (other than the italics overlap, I'm pretty sure).

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Why not? That's about all I use my reader. I don't turn it off. Not that I think the Kindle really goes "off". But, I would expect even not turning it off you would get at least a week out of it, or maybe more.

Leaving it powered up for 6-8 hours, without being used, just seems like a waste of energy to me (however small), so I tend to avoid that. I try to power down all appliances I'm not using for an extended period of time.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I looked at at least one FB2 book, which displayed okay with no anomalies that I remember (other than the italics overlap, I'm pretty sure).

Sounds like perhaps it was a ligature issue rather than italics?

BOb

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Sounds like perhaps it was a ligature issue rather than italics?

It didn't look like the letters were intended to be joined to me... they were individual letters that do not normally get joined, and in fact were displayed properly in other formats.

As I described, it was as if the rendering engine handled each letter as if it was a playing card with the letter inscribed on it. Some italic letters (like capitals, "f"s with tails, etc) had wider "cards," but because spacing between wider cards would be noticeable and distracting, those wide cards would be pushed to overlap the card in front of it. This resulted in the white space of the letter on the right partially covering the letter to the left, just like looking at a fanned set of playing cards.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by bjrnfrdnnd

Thanks for the quick reply.

On which formats does the search function work? pdf?
Do you know about plans to extend the search function to all formats?
"yet" implies that a dictionary is coming up? when?
How about a dedicated zoom feature that allows to enlarge PDF's as images?
Is this feature implemented?

You can compare the features available on the various format on our wiki Hanlin eBook formats. It is not complete yet but can be added to.

I am not aware of future plans for search or dictionary but they are often requested features and Jinke does listen. Typically eReader has a dictionary so it may come when we get that port.

There is XPDF which does allow some zooming of PDF files. It is an alternate reader to the Adobe one and was the earlier PDF reader before the Adobe port. It comes and goes in the various eBook firmware updates as Jinke doesn't seem to know whether to include it or not. It is missing from the latest V5 but added to the latest V3. Go figure.

Dale

[bjrnfrdnnd]

Thanks DaleDe,
The matrix with the features is nice.
It remains unclear, however, what can be done with pdf.
The wikipage states that there are two pdf readers on the V5, but only one
of these is described (it is a reader that does not allow zoom).
I would therefore conclude that there should be a second reader on the device with (for me) unknown features.
You seem to say that there only is one pdf reader on the device, with features corresponding to the wikipedia website.
I am confused.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by bjrnfrdnnd

Thanks DaleDe,
The matrix with the features is nice.
It remains unclear, however, what can be done with pdf.
The wikipage states that there are two pdf readers on the V5, but only one
of these is described (it is a reader that does not allow zoom).
I would therefore conclude that there should be a second reader on the device with (for me) unknown features.
You seem to say that there only is one pdf reader on the device, with features corresponding to the wikipedia website.
I am confused.

When the V5 was first released it had two PDF readers. The new one with reflow and the old one with zoom. Only the zoom version had tts (which obviously does not work with text in the form of images). Later a firmware release added TTS to the reflow version and the zoom version was removed from the V5. (This all happened in a flurry of releases in about a month.) The lastest 6 inch V3 model added the xpdf zoom version into its firmware even though there isn't room in the ROM for TTS support. I too am a bit confused about what they are doing. I do think, because of the zoom feature there is a need for both versions but it remains to be seen what Jinke will do long term.

Dale