New E-Ink reader, Soribook.

[Nate the great]

I would only get one if you are willing to accept the risk of spending $400 for a device that doesn't do anything yet. There is an Adobe PDF viewer for WinCE. There are ebook readers for WinCE. The problem is we don't know if they will run well under WinCE5.0.

I was planning to get one. Are they shipping out of Korea yet? Do they accept credit cards?

[moz]

I have asked my co-worker to send another email, but I'm not optimistic. Getting Wince to do anything useful is never easy, and they're already a couple of weeks past their estimated delivery time for the English version. I am beginning to think more seriously about an iLiad.

[DaleDe]

I would not depend on loading third party applications if I were you. There is no guarantee that the core version of WinCE can be reached after a boot and that it contains any extra stuff that might be needed to run other apps anyway. Being on the leading edge is not far from being on the bleeding edge. I suggest you wait a bit.

Dale

[14391988]

Hi all

Thanks for the advice. I think I will wait until they have the English version fully ready. They have not been able to give me a date for when this will be.

As far as I know, they are currently undertaking their third pre-order. I'm not sure if they are shipping out of Korea, or if they accept credit cards. You can contact them via email at web@soribook.com- they have been very good at communicating with me.

One more question for the knowledgeable people out there. I know that none of you have seen the Soribook in action, but from the little you have seen via web page translation, would you recommend it above other readers? I'm starting to think I should get a different ebook reader. The 400$ they are asking is at the upper end of the price range for most of the ebooks I have looked at. If I do look elsewhere, which reader in this price range would you recommend?

[soilwork]

Originally Posted by 14391988

I know that none of you have seen the Soribook in action

I did not see it myself but a Korean user posted several photos of Soribook.
http://blog.naver.com/newcape/50030923853
http://blog.naver.com/newcape/50030968828

He mentioned many things in detail but I will translate his main points only.
However the following information may not be correct since his Soribook seems to be defective.

- It is hard to see whether the unit is properly working or frozen with the screen on
- WinCE does not seem to be properly optimized for the machine
- 2 sec per screen refresh and no partial screen update
- touch pad is fairly limited
- limited functionality of included 'integrated reader' program (almost 'notepad' like)
- Hard to charge the battery and battery drains in two days

[14391988]

Hi Soilwork

Thank you for your post. I really want to get an ebook reader, but it looks like it might be a good idea to avoid the Soribook for a while. I see you have a Sony. Are you happy with it? What is it like with reading PDF's?

[soilwork]

Originally Posted by 14391988

Hi Soilwork

Thank you for your post. I really want to get an ebook reader, but it looks like it might be a good idea to avoid the Soribook for a while. I see you have a Sony. Are you happy with it? What is it like with reading PDF's?

Hi, glad to be of help.

If you main intention is to read PDFs, you may be better off waiting for Astak/Netronix 9.7 inch e-ink reader. It is supposed to be priced between 299~349$ and it promises a decent set of features. Even if it does not live up to its expectation, hopefully it will drive down the price of the other e-ink devices.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22658

If you want a e-ink device for PDFs right now, iLiad will be the best option AFAIK.
However, sony PRS 505 works fairly well if you are willing to do some conversion using either PDFLRF or Calibre(Libprs500). If you have PDFs, I would recommend you to try both programs and see whether the conversion results are satisfactory to you.
If PDF is mainly text, Calibre(Libprs500) will do a pretty good job of converting it to LRF. If your PDF is graphics heavy (illustration, math equations, and so on), PDFLRF can do a fairly good job of making PDF readable on PRS 505. PDFLRF have preview function and Calibre has its own LRF viewer. So you can check how converted PDFs will look on PRS 505.

I played with PDFLRF before I purchased PRS505 and I am quite happy with my purchase since I knew what it can do and cannot do in advance. My main usage of PRS 505 is to read PDFs converted by PDFLRF. I have several freely available statistics/econometric textbook on them and about 50+ academic journals. I found a) most of 2 columned papers and b) 1 column paper with relatively narrow text work fine. Of course, not all PDFs will work fine but as long as I can reduce the time staring at LCD, I am quite satisfied.

[moz]

Thanks for the blog links. Looks as though it also has a non-standard USB port and cable, which is not good. The touch screen problems are also a worry, since to me that's the major advantage over the Sony that I already have. I'm concerned... I'm much less inclined to buy one now. I think I will wait and see.

[Nate the great]

I got a response from Soribook:

Summary: Don't get your hopes up. The Soribook is still in beta.

Currently, only Korean version is available.
At this point, we can ship to you only windows CE 5.0 core installed.


As you might know, the CPU is Freescale MX31(L) ARM11, 532 MHz.
We needed high speed CPU for automatic layout analysis which also uses
artificial intelligence algorithm. Some people here already developed
software which has automatic layout analysis for PC. Ours is different
and we have almost finished implementing.

The product needs some fine tuning in power management and
further customization of windows ce. To use the machine,
the user needs to know how to operate Windows CE.

Our Windows CE implementation is slow ( about 2~3 seconds for
rendering), but we believed software compatibility is more important.
Moreover, we will eventually make our software as fast as Linux based one
by directly manupulating eink hardware rather than going through CE GDI
bottleneck.


Many people asked about mobipocket compatibility already, but
unfortunately none of binaries of manual download section worked.
In another googling, we have found

http://www.mobipocket.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7920

this might be the reason why the above downloaded files do not work properly.
We checked several other programs, and some work and some don't.

If you are still interested, please let me know. You can pay by paypal.
(credit card is OK)

- SoriBOOK management team