Opus First impressions of the Opus

[EowynCarter]

What are talking about ?

[Saud]

I guess Jon means this :
http://dir.salon.com/topics/berkeley_breathed/

maybe they actually have meant this:
Opus: "in architecture, a technique or a method or a style of connecting building elements, following the studies on Roman architecture" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus

[Godzil]

I think it's more from the latin meaning. (Work or Book.) This is explain on the french wikipedia "Opus est le mot latin pour ouvrage ou œuvre." (ie in english "Opus is a latin word for Work or Book") but not on the english version...

[JSWolf]

I did indeed mean Opus the penguin from the comics.

[imaredr]

Here is a comparison photo

Ellen

[Gaurnim]

Right to left : a 6'' jetBook, the 5'' Opus and some kind of Palm/PDA ?

EDIT :
Looks like the jetBook is a 5'' as well ...

[Godzil]

Gaurnim: From left to the right? Are you sure?

[Gaurnim]

Where did you see "left to right" ?

[emellaich]

The thing on the left is/was an ebookman. I used mine until the jog dial broke. Bigger/nicer screen than a pda. However it had way too much glare and wasn't quite enough contrast so it made reading a bit of a chore. On the other hand, there wasn't much else too choose from when it came out in 1999.

[Gaurnim]

Originally Posted by emellaich

The thing on the left is/was an ebookman.

Thanks for the info.
It indeed seemed larger than the PDAs I'm used to.
The area at the bottom of the screen clearly recalls his PDA ancestors, though.

[imaredr]

Sorry, I was posting in a hurry this morning. I forgot to label the comparison shot. I thought that it would be nice nostalgia showing the Ebookman. I always thought that the Ebookman was a great pocket size reader.

I also have other readers around if anyone wants a comparison shot.
Ellen

[mjmcleod]

I've had my Opus for a few days now. I'm reasonably happy with it, though I hadn't quite expected the ePub support to be so uncustomisable -- shall have to see if the MOBI version is any better about that if and when that firmware eventually arrives.

In the meantime it's perfectly usable for my needs. Which don't include PDF.

[bobowvu]

At first glance, Im thrilled with the Opus. Here are my initial comments:

Pros:
- Very portable, I cant get over that it fits in my front shirt pocket.
- Page transitions are much faster than on the Gen3
- Folder Support! Works great so far.
- Accelerometer. It works quickly and in all directions.

Cons:
- In general principle, it annoys me that Bookeen completely drops mobi for epub at the drop of a hat. Makes me wonder what next years model will support. Not a big deal tho.
- The accelerometer works well, but i have to tilt the reader to an angle that is slightly more severe than my typical reading angle
- The Opus uses the same user interface that is on the Gen3. Unfortunately they did not scale the font of the interface accordingly, so the finer print (status bar) is too small. It doesnt affect reading books, tho.
- No ability to change fonts. Surprisingly one of my bigger complaints.
- I wish they would have used a white backplate, it somehow looks like you slavaged the backplate off of some other device or something.

Overall, my complaints are nitpickey and half-hearted. Ive owned the Iliad, Gen3, and now Opus. The Opus is hands down my favorite. It is the perfect size for standard reading.

[mjmcleod]

Originally Posted by bobowvu

- No ability to change fonts. Surprisingly one of my bigger complaints.

This only applies to ePub. If you put on a regular text file you can set the font to whatever you want, provided you copy the font files to the device.

I have however noticed that it isn't happy about using all the fonts I've put on. I copied over Georgia, Fontin, and Fontin Smallcaps. It'll use the built-in Verdana and Fontin Smallcaps, but not the other two. The three I copied over were all Truetype.

If the 'embolden' option were available while reading ePubs I think I could probably reduce the font size by one level. I may have to play around with Calibre and see if I can't get suitable results that way instead.

As to the accelerometer, I think they got the balance about right: it doesn't switch orientations at the drop of a hat, but when you want it to switch it'll do it. This is something I've had some trouble with on my iPhone.

[Gaurnim]

Originally Posted by bobowvu

- In general principle, it annoys me that Bookeen completely drops mobi for epub at the drop of a hat. Makes me wonder what next years model will support. Not a big deal tho.
- The accelerometer works well, but i have to tilt the reader to an angle that is slightly more severe than my typical reading angle

A quick note about those two.

Bookeen is not dropping Mobi support, but they can't include both Mobi and Epub support in the same version of the firmware.
So there will be 2 versions of the firmware, one for Mobi, one for Epub.
While it's not really convenient for us, at least it allows some form of liberty in the choice of format.

The Opus has to be completely vertical for the accelerometer to take the movement into account. After that, though, you can use at you preferred angle.