Pocketbook 360 test diary

mtravellerh · 11-26-2009, 06:25 AM

26 nov noon

My (better: my daughter's) Pocketbook 360 showed up half an hour ago! The courier service was faster than I first thought. Nice!

The package was really secure and the 360 made it without a hitch. I won't offer depackaging pics as they abound already around here. The case and the screen appear small, smaller than I thought at first. In fact, it seems to be only half as big as the Cool-er. There is a surprising amount of text on the screen, though! It is very very lightweight, too.

Although the battery was fully loaded, I connected the engine to my netbook (Ubuntu 9.10) at once. It was recognized by Calibre as EB600 at once! It rests as Pocket101 on my desktop as I'm writing this.

I couldn't stop myself from playing around with it a bit before connecting, of course.

There were a few epubs and one FB2 installed. The ePub looks a lot crisper than on my Cool-er, too while the FB2 is a sensation (it's some Sherlock Holmes, by the way). The page numbers on the side in the epubs are VERY frustrating! Note to self: Find out as fast as possible how to open those epubs with FBReader!

The cover is handy and seems surprisingly sturdy! I like the easy way it can be handled. The moving sensor works fine (I am surprised by this, as some people said the contrary). I think it's quite irritating, though, so I changed it to manual. The color of the 360 is more silver than ivory, by the way, and seems quite glossy!

I am surprised, too, by the overal speed of navigationin the menu and when turning pages!

Note: I will continue this diary as I will go along. You're, of course free to jump in whenever you feel the itch!

orwell2k · 11-26-2009, 07:17 AM

Any chance of uploading some pics of the FB2 and ePub files displayed? I'm especially interested in FB2.

BTW, I see most people referring to FBReader on the 360. Is it possible to get CoolReader installed - anyone?

mtravellerh · 11-26-2009, 07:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by orwell2k

Any chance of uploading some pics of the FB2 and ePub files displayed? I'm especially interested in FB2.

BTW, I see most people referring to FBReader on the 360. Is it possible to get CoolReader installed - anyone?

Of course. Will do as soon as the thing has finished charging. errm, isn't there a screenshot integrated? How do I access that?

pennpin · 11-26-2009, 08:37 AM

I think going to Settings -> key mapping -> short press on/off -> screenshot

configs it so that when you tap the power button it takes a pic

mtravellerh · 11-26-2009, 10:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pennpin

I think going to Settings -> key mapping -> short press on/off -> screenshot

configs it so that when you tap the power button it takes a pic

Thanks, got it working now.

Here I have posted three screenshots of a german book that I made. It's richly illustrated and therefore quite good to make a comparison:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...7&postcount=16

1) ePub with ADE (margin on the right side and PN)
2) ePub with FBReader
3) FB2 with FBReader (not centered illustration is my mistake, sorry)

Font: DejaVu Serif

mtravellerh · 11-26-2009, 10:52 AM

When my wife came home, she saw the 360, cried: "What a cutie" and wanted to "test" it thoroughly. I valiantly defended the reader just for YOU, of course. My wife's mildly disgusted with me, of course!

I tried out a Mobi file with a linked footnote. Jumping to the link and automatically back works fine with the 360! Generally, Mobi/PRC files seem to render great! Page breaks seem not to work, though!

BTW, Aportis Doc files are supported by the 360, even if they're not mentioned!

I tried out some PDF files. I'm highly impressed!! More about that later on!

mtravellerh · 11-27-2009, 01:56 AM

About the authorizing-deautorizing problem arising with the new firmware: With CTRL-Shift-e, you can bring up a hidden menu where you may deauthorize your reader. But: Even if you deauthorize your device, it will still be counted towards your 6 allowed devices!
Some little hope on the horizon: Adobe might adjust the number of devices allowable to your account in the course of time and you may contact Adobe so they give you a higher number of devices. No comment!

On our german pages, user SciFiFan tells us that he has tweaked the FBReaderApp available on Pocketbook to enhance the ePub reading faculties of FBR.Now the app does find the illustrations that were lost before!

You can find his post here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...2&postcount=21
and his compiled app here:FBReader
Before pasting this in /system/bin of your reader, please do not forget to back up your original app for security purposes! Of course this works for the 301, too! Mucho karma to SciFiFan!

Try as I might, I can't bring the 360 to freeze on me! A corrupt file sneakily proposed doesn't faze the device, either! I'm only quietly informed that the file can't be read! Battery's still all the way up there, by the way!

I do not use the "wings" to paginate! Just can't get used to the weird sound! The cross works just fine, thank you, and my thumb's resting there all the time anyway! That gives me 4 keys (2 buttons-short and long press) that I can freely assign. I put the note/screenshot utility on the upper wing as my on/off-button is already assigned otherwise. Keymapper is a breeze and easily configurable.

PDF reading on the 360 is better as on the Cool-er, the Gen3 and even the PRS700. Tried them all, prefer the small one unreservedly! Strange, isn't it? Later today I will make a longer post on the PDF capabilities of our mighty midget!

Handling your files on the 360 is a breeze. Hold your ok button and a menu springs up that lets you move, copy, delete, make folders, delete folders, move folders and so on! This should be normal on a reading hardware device. It isn't! At all! Well done, folks!

Oh, those wings! They look cute, but are pretty useless to turn pages! Furthermore, there seems to be a problem as far as the color goes. There are very thin lines visible on the hinge between "wing" and "body". Nothing really bad yet, but not that pretty, either!

PS: Please feel free to post your comments. This thread is open for questions and opinions, of course!

orwell2k · 11-27-2009, 06:01 AM

Thanks for all the info. This little device seems great, and as it supports FB2 and offers a far better alternative to ADE for ePub display I'm seriously interested! Apparently they will be purchaseable through the German web site (for Euor buyers) from 01.12.2009 at €239:

http://my-ebook-reader.de/

FBReader looks like it works well, and it is a good app, but I like CoolReader (on my Hanlin V3 clone - BeBook running latest LBook firmware). So I'm wondering if someone will port that app for use on the 360. Of course, it may not be necessary since we have FBReader, but it would be nice.

Cheers!

mtravellerh · 11-27-2009, 06:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by orwell2k

Thanks for all the info. This little device seems great, and as it supports FB2 and offers a far better alternative to ADE for ePub display I'm seriously interested! Apparently they will be purchaseable through the German web site (for Euor buyers) from 01.12.2009 at €239:

http://my-ebook-reader.de/

FBReader looks like it works well, and it is a good app, but I like CoolReader (on my Hanlin V3 clone - BeBook running latest LBook firmware). So I'm wondering if someone will port that app for use on the 360. Of course, it may not be necessary since we have FBReader, but it would be nice.

Cheers!

Can CR read lit files? I have all my book formats covered with the 360 except those Microsoft books I downloaded eons ago! I could convert them, but then again if I just could read them without conversion, that would be also very nice.

orwell2k · 11-27-2009, 06:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mtravellerh

Can CR read lit files? I have all my book formats covered with the 360 except those Microsoft books I downloaded eons ago! I could convert them, but then again if I just could read them without conversion, that would be also very nice.

No, don't think so. According their page (http://coolreader.org/e-index.htm):

# Opens books from .txt, .doc, .html, .fb2 or .rtf formats with automatic codepage (cp866,cp1251,KOI-8r,latin-1,unicode,utf-8) and format recognition (headers, paragraphs, etc...)
# Supports RAR, ZIP, HA, ARJ, LHA archieves

But LIT is easy to convert to FB2 using BookDesigner, or even if you just use ConvertLIT to extract the book as HTML and convert to ePub, etc. A little work, I know, but my experience with LIT books is they look pretty crap on ant reader (BeBook, PC (using MS Reader), etc.).

Couple other questions:

(1) How do HTML pages dispay on the 360 - can you follow links, etc.? And do links work in FB2 files or not?

(2) I assume you can change fonts, install your own, etc. Have you tried the Gentium Book Basic font:

http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/p...=Gentium_basic
Download:
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/r...mBasic_110.zip

I can't get it to work on the V3, but it's a little fussy about fonts. I was wondering if it would work on the 360, because I think it will look good (esp. the Book Basic font). Of course, I could be wrong, so I'm hoping someone will try it out...

BTW, I use Bookman Old Style on my V3 and really like it, so you might want to try that on your 360 (you can test it by copying the font set (Regular, Bold, Italic, Bold Italic) from your \Windows\Fonts\ directory).

mtravellerh · 11-27-2009, 11:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by orwell2k

(1) How do HTML pages dispay on the 360 - can you follow links, etc.? And do links work in FB2 files or not?

(2) I assume you can change fonts, install your own, etc. Have you tried the Gentium Book Basic font:

http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/p...=Gentium_basic
Download:
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/r...mBasic_110.zip

I can't get it to work on the V3, but it's a little fussy about fonts. I was wondering if it would work on the 360, because I think it will look good (esp. the Book Basic font). Of course, I could be wrong, so I'm hoping someone will try it out...

BTW, I use Bookman Old Style on my V3 and really like it, so you might want to try that on your 360 (you can test it by copying the font set (Regular, Bold, Italic, Bold Italic) from your \Windows\Fonts\ directory).

I have downloaded the Gentium. Will test that and post the result here. I have also put the Droid font on my Reader! That one looks cool!

Sorry, no Win, so no Win/Fonts, but I know that font. I do not like it too much!

I also will install the Fontin font!

mtravellerh · 11-27-2009, 12:38 PM

MM (Mighty Mouse) went through the ultimate resistance test this afternoon!

I was driving in the city and had, quite innocently, put my 360 on the co-pilot's seat. Then I was forced to throw out the anchor because the car in front of me decided brusquely to let someone vacate a parking spot (to take possession of it, of course).

This caused MM to take flight with an emergency landing on the board and a subsequent downfall! Oh, the dread!

On destined arrival, I dived for my my little friend, fully prepared for doom, but behold: not a scratch, not a bump, screen not damaged and in full working order! Pheww!

Please don't do this at home, though, this stunt was performed by professional stuntmen!

BTW: The cover was still in place!

luqmaninbmore · 11-27-2009, 01:08 PM

HTML displays quite well: the formatting is good, hyperlinks work, and the pictures show up.

Quote:

Originally Posted by orwell2k

No, don't think so. According their page (http://coolreader.org/e-index.htm):

# Opens books from .txt, .doc, .html, .fb2 or .rtf formats with automatic codepage (cp866,cp1251,KOI-8r,latin-1,unicode,utf-8) and format recognition (headers, paragraphs, etc...)
# Supports RAR, ZIP, HA, ARJ, LHA archieves

But LIT is easy to convert to FB2 using BookDesigner, or even if you just use ConvertLIT to extract the book as HTML and convert to ePub, etc. A little work, I know, but my experience with LIT books is they look pretty crap on ant reader (BeBook, PC (using MS Reader), etc.).

Couple other questions:

(1) How do HTML pages dispay on the 360 - can you follow links, etc.? And do links work in FB2 files or not?

(2) I assume you can change fonts, install your own, etc. Have you tried the Gentium Book Basic font:

http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/p...=Gentium_basic
Download:
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/r...mBasic_110.zip

I can't get it to work on the V3, but it's a little fussy about fonts. I was wondering if it would work on the 360, because I think it will look good (esp. the Book Basic font). Of course, I could be wrong, so I'm hoping someone will try it out...

BTW, I use Bookman Old Style on my V3 and really like it, so you might want to try that on your 360 (you can test it by copying the font set (Regular, Bold, Italic, Bold Italic) from your \Windows\Fonts\ directory).

mtravellerh · 11-27-2009, 01:45 PM

All rightie gents. Here are the font pics. Gentium worked okay, Fontin and Droid, too.

Now on my PB and working nicely, thank you: Liberation, Fontin, DejaVu, Droid, Gentium, Cyrillic and one script font that I don't remember now. I like Droid and DejaVu most so far. Here are Droid, Gentium and Fontin on more or less the same page. The text is not exactly the same, of course, as the font sizes don't match exactly.

Fontin

Gentium

Droid

zelda_pinwheel · 11-27-2009, 01:48 PM

thanks for all these screenshots !

11-26-2009, 06:25 AM	#1
mtravellerh book creator Posts: 9,635 Karma: 3856660 Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Luxembourg Device: PB360°	Pocketbook 360 test diary 26 nov noon My (better: my daughter's) Pocketbook 360 showed up half an hour ago! The courier service was faster than I first thought. Nice! The package was really secure and the 360 made it without a hitch. I won't offer depackaging pics as they abound already around here. The case and the screen appear small, smaller than I thought at first. In fact, it seems to be only half as big as the Cool-er. There is a surprising amount of text on the screen, though! It is very very lightweight, too. Although the battery was fully loaded, I connected the engine to my netbook (Ubuntu 9.10) at once. It was recognized by Calibre as EB600 at once! It rests as Pocket101 on my desktop as I'm writing this. I couldn't stop myself from playing around with it a bit before connecting, of course. There were a few epubs and one FB2 installed. The ePub looks a lot crisper than on my Cool-er, too while the FB2 is a sensation (it's some Sherlock Holmes, by the way). The page numbers on the side in the epubs are VERY frustrating! Note to self: Find out as fast as possible how to open those epubs with FBReader! The cover is handy and seems surprisingly sturdy! I like the easy way it can be handled. The moving sensor works fine (I am surprised by this, as some people said the contrary). I think it's quite irritating, though, so I changed it to manual. The color of the 360 is more silver than ivory, by the way, and seems quite glossy! I am surprised, too, by the overal speed of navigationin the menu and when turning pages! Note: I will continue this diary as I will go along. You're, of course free to jump in whenever you feel the itch! Last edited by mtravellerh; 11-26-2009 at 07:36 AM.

11-26-2009, 10:52 AM	#6
mtravellerh book creator Posts: 9,635 Karma: 3856660 Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Luxembourg Device: PB360°	Attack on my 360 When my wife came home, she saw the 360, cried: "What a cutie" and wanted to "test" it thoroughly. I valiantly defended the reader just for YOU, of course. My wife's mildly disgusted with me, of course! I tried out a Mobi file with a linked footnote. Jumping to the link and automatically back works fine with the 360! Generally, Mobi/PRC files seem to render great! Page breaks seem not to work, though! BTW, Aportis Doc files are supported by the 360, even if they're not mentioned! I tried out some PDF files. I'm highly impressed!! More about that later on!

11-27-2009, 01:56 AM	#7
mtravellerh book creator Posts: 9,635 Karma: 3856660 Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Luxembourg Device: PB360°	About the authorizing-deautorizing problem arising with the new firmware: With CTRL-Shift-e, you can bring up a hidden menu where you may deauthorize your reader. But: Even if you deauthorize your device, it will still be counted towards your 6 allowed devices! Some little hope on the horizon: Adobe might adjust the number of devices allowable to your account in the course of time and you may contact Adobe so they give you a higher number of devices. No comment! On our german pages, user SciFiFan tells us that he has tweaked the FBReaderApp available on Pocketbook to enhance the ePub reading faculties of FBR.Now the app does find the illustrations that were lost before! You can find his post here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...2&postcount=21 and his compiled app here:FBReader Before pasting this in /system/bin of your reader, please do not forget to back up your original app for security purposes! Of course this works for the 301, too! Mucho karma to SciFiFan! Try as I might, I can't bring the 360 to freeze on me! A corrupt file sneakily proposed doesn't faze the device, either! I'm only quietly informed that the file can't be read! Battery's still all the way up there, by the way! I do not use the "wings" to paginate! Just can't get used to the weird sound! The cross works just fine, thank you, and my thumb's resting there all the time anyway! That gives me 4 keys (2 buttons-short and long press) that I can freely assign. I put the note/screenshot utility on the upper wing as my on/off-button is already assigned otherwise. Keymapper is a breeze and easily configurable. PDF reading on the 360 is better as on the Cool-er, the Gen3 and even the PRS700. Tried them all, prefer the small one unreservedly! Strange, isn't it? Later today I will make a longer post on the PDF capabilities of our mighty midget! Handling your files on the 360 is a breeze. Hold your ok button and a menu springs up that lets you move, copy, delete, make folders, delete folders, move folders and so on! This should be normal on a reading hardware device. It isn't! At all! Well done, folks! Oh, those wings! They look cute, but are pretty useless to turn pages! Furthermore, there seems to be a problem as far as the color goes. There are very thin lines visible on the hinge between "wing" and "body". Nothing really bad yet, but not that pretty, either! PS: Please feel free to post your comments. This thread is open for questions and opinions, of course! Last edited by mtravellerh; 11-27-2009 at 01:59 AM.

11-27-2009, 12:38 PM	#12
mtravellerh book creator Posts: 9,635 Karma: 3856660 Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Luxembourg Device: PB360°	Hardcore test MM (Mighty Mouse) went through the ultimate resistance test this afternoon! I was driving in the city and had, quite innocently, put my 360 on the co-pilot's seat. Then I was forced to throw out the anchor because the car in front of me decided brusquely to let someone vacate a parking spot (to take possession of it, of course). This caused MM to take flight with an emergency landing on the board and a subsequent downfall! Oh, the dread! On destined arrival, I dived for my my little friend, fully prepared for doom, but behold: not a scratch, not a bump, screen not damaged and in full working order! Pheww! Please don't do this at home, though, this stunt was performed by professional stuntmen! BTW: The cover was still in place!

11-27-2009, 01:45 PM	#14
mtravellerh book creator Posts: 9,635 Karma: 3856660 Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Luxembourg Device: PB360°	Font pics All rightie gents. Here are the font pics. Gentium worked okay, Fontin and Droid, too. Now on my PB and working nicely, thank you: Liberation, Fontin, DejaVu, Droid, Gentium, Cyrillic and one script font that I don't remember now. I like Droid and DejaVu most so far. Here are Droid, Gentium and Fontin on more or less the same page. The text is not exactly the same, of course, as the font sizes don't match exactly. Fontin Gentium Droid

11-26-2009, 07:17 AM	#2
orwell2k Addict Posts: 357 Karma: 1112 Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Euroland Device: PocketBook 360°, BeBook (Hanlin V3), iRex DR1000S, iPad	Any chance of uploading some pics of the FB2 and ePub files displayed? I'm especially interested in FB2. BTW, I see most people referring to FBReader on the 360. Is it possible to get CoolReader installed - anyone?

11-26-2009, 08:37 AM	#4
pennpin Member Posts: 21 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2008 Device: sony 505 with broken screen. pocketbook 360 now.	I think going to Settings -> key mapping -> short press on/off -> screenshot configs it so that when you tap the power button it takes a pic

11-27-2009, 06:01 AM	#8
orwell2k Addict Posts: 357 Karma: 1112 Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Euroland Device: PocketBook 360°, BeBook (Hanlin V3), iRex DR1000S, iPad	Thanks for all the info. This little device seems great, and as it supports FB2 and offers a far better alternative to ADE for ePub display I'm seriously interested! Apparently they will be purchaseable through the German web site (for Euor buyers) from 01.12.2009 at €239: http://my-ebook-reader.de/ FBReader looks like it works well, and it is a good app, but I like CoolReader (on my Hanlin V3 clone - BeBook running latest LBook firmware). So I'm wondering if someone will port that app for use on the 360. Of course, it may not be necessary since we have FBReader, but it would be nice. Cheers!

11-27-2009, 01:48 PM	#15
zelda_pinwheel zeldinha zippy zeldissima Posts: 27,827 Karma: 921169 Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Paris, France Device: eb1150 & is that a nook in her pocket, or she just happy to see you?	thanks for all these screenshots !

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