Questions for Jetbook owners

[RichL]

I am considering picking up either the mini or the lite (Any suggestions on which?) and have a few questions that the company doesn't seem to address directly.

First, and most inportant to me, is whether or not they render all character encoding formats such as latin1, utf8 and the upteen hundred iso's correctly.

Second, the specs on the lite says it reads prc, epub, etc. Does it read those formats natively or do they need to be converted to read properly?

And last. Way back in the day when there was but one gameboy model a clip on light with it's own battery supply was offered for it for dim light use, is there a similar item made for either the lite or the mini?

Thanks much
Rich L

[West Virginia]

I can tell you absolutely JBL supports epub, txt and rtf, prc I have not tried. To my knowledge nothing that JBL says it supports needs to be converted.

As for lights, check out earlights on Amazon.com. I know that these things are made just for this purpose.

j

[booklover6]

I have no idea about your 2nd paragraph.

It will read many, many formats, and no conversion is necessary. However PDF is very small and I always convert it. It will NOT read books bought from Amazon.

I love my Belkin ebook light, works great on both Jetbook and Jetbook Lite.

[RichL]

Thank you both.

My primary reader is an Axim x51v and though I am quite happy with it I've decided to try an lcd based reader (can't stand e-ink) with a bit larger screen.

[booklover6]

Also I should mention that Jetbook will read the B&N DRM epub books with no conversion. You just have to have Adobe ADE on your computer and authorize your device.

[Ken Maltby]

Between the Lite and the Mini, you have opposite ends of the spectrum, with regard to
file and format support. The Mini has two. The Lite supports most of them. (Even a few
that never get listed, like HTML. It also supports .pdb and three of the DRM scams.)

The reflective TFT LCD display they both use is somewhat unique, and very good, with
a few usually minor problematic characteristics. There is a shimmer to the text when
viewed in bright sunlight, this can depend on how it is held in relation to the angle of the
sun. It appears to be more of a problem for some units than for others.

[ You don't really need ADE authorization to read B&N DRM .epub, you just need the
0.16e firmware (which did add ADE support) to get the better .epub reader. After adding
an ebook infected with the B&N DRM (.epub) or the Secure eReader DRM (.pdb), you will
be asked for the unlocking data [your name as it is on record at B&N, without spaces, and
the Credit Card # used to buy the book. After the first ebook bought with a particular CC#
has been unlocked all the subsequent ebooks that use that same CC# will open without
having to enter the unlocking data.]

Luck;
Ken

[RichL]

I have decided to go with the lite . I prefer text to other formats so by far the majority of my books are text but there is the occasional prc, html and even a very few pdb (3) so the lite seems to be the way to go (sounds like gowerpoints µbook in a dedicated reader).

For those of you that have wondered why I don't go for a small tablet (besides price) being powered by AA batteries totally sold me on the JetBook.

Thanks again for the input.
Rich L

[cromag]

I picked up a Pandigital Novel android tablet at Kohl's when they were blowing them out for $60. It's fun to play with, but I wouldn't want to read on it for an extended period of time.

On the other hand, I read on my JBL for hours and hours at a time!

I think you'll be happy with it!

[RichL]

Picked up the Lite (locally) several days ago and gave it away today. The unit worked fine, nice layout and all, pretty much what I expected except for the screen. Outdoors it was fine but indoors it left a lot to be desired unless I had my back to a window. It was a step up from my old MobielPro 400 (which I still have) but not a very big step. Guess I'll just have to wait for Jetbook to come out with a back lit screen or go for a small tablet of some sort.

Think part of the problem is that after 6 years I've just gotten to darned used to being able to pop my Axim in and out of my shirt pocket and being able to turn on/off the back light at will.

[Ken Maltby]

Interesting reaction, I guess I should have expected that sooner or later there would be
those who were accustomed to reading from a backlit screen, instead of paper books.
The JBL works fine indoors under the lighting conditions that work for paper books.

Luck;
Ken

[RichL]

Frankly I hadn't thought of it that way either. Now, looking around I realize that other than my Richard Brautigan books the only other ones I still have are poetry, reference and a few received as gifts.

[jlg432]

I have the JB and the Alurateck Libre Pro and I am quite satisfied with it's display screen. Yes you do need the same lighting required to read a real paper book.

Another alternative that reads epub, FB2 and txt is the Nintendo DSi-XL.

I focus on this unit because of it's larger screens but even the regular DS and DS-Lite works as well.

Check out ikureader and DSLibris on the Internet.
IkuReader will open most ePubs, fb2 and txt. When ikuReader has an error opening an epub I usually find that DSLibris can open it.

All you need is a NDS flash cartridge such as R4i or EZFlash-Vi, a micro SD/SDHC, the card firmware and homebrew software such as DSLibris and ikuReader. I would get the (i) versions of the flash card as they are usually backward compatible with the DS/DS-Lite.

All these readers deal with non-DRM e-books. IkuReader opens ePub, fb2 and txt and if it has a problem opening an ePub I find that DSLibris can usually handle it.

There is even a Standalone dictionary Homebrew app that can be loaded. It doesn't work while reading e-books but you don't have to haul around a dictionary.

A lot of people have these devices already.

The additional flash card/software also allows you to play multimedia.

Other good homebrew software are DSOrganize, DS-Notes, DSDictionary not to mention loading it up with all your favorite DS games and puzzels. There is even a Super Nintendo emulator available.

Just another option.

John

[jlg432]

W/re to PDF's I believe that both the JB and JBL support text-reflow which makes reading most PDF's easier and still supports the imbedded graphics.

John

[DebbyS]

First post I've been scanning a lot of books, from paper back size to hard back. I dismantle them, scan them in page order (I have access to a scanner with a feeder than can scan both sides of the page at once), edit them down to just the text (practically no margins), then save them as PDF files. They're larger than ones I would buy, I think, but I usually scan at a resolution of 300dpi to make sure the words are sharp. I know that the text in these will not flow as they are basically pictures, like the many comic books I've already scanned, but the books are in black and white or shades of gray. (Old paperback books tend to yellow with age so I scan them in gray-scale, then enhance the contrast; newer books I scan in B&W, usually with good results -- and a smaller PDF.)

I like the idea of the Jetbook Lite due to the replaceable common batteries. I believe the device would show me my PDFs if I loaded some into it (directly or via a card), but I haven't read anything that tells me that the JBL will allow me to scroll through the book as I hold the device in landscape for improved reading of my PDF'd paperbacks. If it shows a whole page only (someone on this site mentioned the PDFs are small and hard to read), then that's no good. However, if I can change the size of the page (like I can on a computer screen), and then scroll down as I read, that would be perfect and make the Jetbook Lite even more tempting. I've noted that the JBL seems to have "page up/page down" buttons, but never the mention of scrolling.

My current status with ereaders is... I don't have any. I have a small desktop computer, to which my flatbed scanner is hooked, and I also have an ~3-year-old netbook (a Wind U100 worth a lot more these days than I paid for it ). Both computers have the lovely Windows XP (whereas nowadays netbooks seem to come with the terrifying Windows "Starter"). I can see using the netbook for reading ebooks and my comic books (and PDF'd web pages, using cutePDF), but only reading ebooks on, say, JBL, which has the advantage of being a bit easier to carry around than the netbook. Thus, every time I see a likely candidate in an ebook reader, I have to say "That's cool, but it has some flaws [I read tons of reviews] and it's rather expensive... is it a good idea to buy that toy when I already have the netbook which does work?"

If the JBL can scroll my home-made PDFs, the answer may be yes! So if anyone can answer my question, please do

[Ken Maltby]

The JBL's current firmware uses Adobe Reader Mobile to read PDFs. You can turn off
the PDF Reflow and treat the page as an image, with zoom and pan and scroll.
It works the same in both portrait and landscape modes. PDFs have different options
depending on whether the Reflow option is on or off. With reflow off you have the
options for "Full Screen" and "Fit Width". The scrolling is not a smooth function like on
a computer screen, but jumps a displayed portion worth at a time.

No 5 inch display is going to do a very good job displaying PDF images designed to be
displayed as a full page in a book or magazine. As you are making your own you can
make the PDF to match any display you wish, but it will require some editing of the
larger source to rebuild pages of the proper size.

You can also use an OCR program (like TopOCR) to extract the text from your scans,
and make reflowable PDFs or any other format that can fit itself to different sized pages.

Luck;
Ken