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Old 05-26-2010, 07:13 AM   #1
repods
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MAIN DEFECTS OF THE DR800S/SG DEVICE

So after a good period of using this device with the new beta2 firmware I think
I can state the two main defects of this device:

1) the way the user have to read the zoomed documents: you are forced to use the pen plus the flip bar to turn the pages if all the words of the page don't fit the screen due to the zooming level..
in this situation, I mean, you are forced to stay in panning mode, and this means that you can move the page with the flip bar but you have to use the pen over the arrows to turn the page.

2) the fact that THE WACOM IS NEVER TURNED OFF while reading any kind of document..
differently by the DR1000, where when you place the pen in its internal box the wacom layer get turned off thus preventing the battery drain, here the pen is always active, in any situation; but while it's obvious that the pen must be active during scribble, the main use of the reader by the point of view of time, is obviously just the one of reading..
and while simply reading the pen is of no-use.. so I guess that if an option to turn off wacom would be added the battery could last way more time..
(the fact the the wacom is always on can be verified by simply considering that in any situation the menu button and the arrows can be pressed)


I'm just curious to know what you think about those issues..
let me know..
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Old 05-26-2010, 07:40 AM   #2
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Quote:
Originally Posted by repods View Post
So after a good period of using this device with the new beta2 firmware I think
I can state the two main defects of this device:

1) the way the user have to read the zoomed documents: you are forced to use the pen plus the flip bar to turn the pages if all the words of the page don't fit the screen due to the zooming level..
in this situation, I mean, you are forced to stay in panning mode, and this means that you can move the page with the flip bar but you have to use the pen over the arrows to turn the page.

2) the fact that THE WACOM IS NEVER TURNED OFF while reading any kind of document..
differently by the DR1000, where when you place the pen in its internal box the wacom layer get turned off thus preventing the battery drain, here the pen is always active, in any situation; but while it's obvious that the pen must be active during scribble, the main use of the reader by the point of view of time, is obviously just the one of reading..
and while simply reading the pen is of no-use.. so I guess that if an option to turn off wacom would be added the battery could last way more time..
(the fact the the wacom is always on can be verified by simply considering that in any situation the menu button and the arrows can be pressed)

I'm just curious to know what you think about those issues..
let me know..
2.)I don't know if that is true (regarding the DR1000, since I don't have one) but considering the fact that the battery on the DR800 lasts that much longer it probably isn't very important. What impacts battery life much more is the fact that the DR800 does not always go into sleep mode. One night when the DR800 has not gone into sleep mode and the battery goes from full to 50% empty. But that is not much more than a nuisance, I just have to remember to turn it off manually. Other than that, the battery life would be very good.

1.)Yes, that is a pain.
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Old 05-26-2010, 12:19 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by repods View Post
1) the way the user have to read the zoomed documents: you are forced to use the pen plus the flip bar to turn the pages if all the words of the page don't fit the screen due to the zooming level..
in this situation, I mean, you are forced to stay in panning mode, and this means that you can move the page with the flip bar but you have to use the pen over the arrows to turn the page.
It was previously discussed/suggested that the flip bar should pan until it reaches the end of the page, and then the next press of the flip bar would be a regular page turn. I'm pretty sure iRex developers on here were participating in that discussion, but I don't remember whether or not they said it would be something added before the final 2.0 release, or if they had something else in mind.

Quote:
2) the fact that THE WACOM IS NEVER TURNED OFF while reading any kind of document..
differently by the DR1000, where when you place the pen in its internal box the wacom layer get turned off thus preventing the battery drain, here the pen is always active, in any situation; but while it's obvious that the pen must be active during scribble, the main use of the reader by the point of view of time, is obviously just the one of reading..
and while simply reading the pen is of no-use.. so I guess that if an option to turn off wacom would be added the battery could last way more time..
(the fact the the wacom is always on can be verified by simply considering that in any situation the menu button and the arrows can be pressed)
This is something that a lot of people have some misconceptions about. First off, the iLiad is the only device that turns off the WACOM layer when the pen is put in the device. The DR1000 does not have that feature.

The real misunderstanding though, is in how the WACOM layer draws power. There was some extensive testing done back in the iLiad days that showed that writing on the screen is what really causes the WACOM to draw power. Whether or not the layer is disabled when the pen is stored in the device doesn't actually make any significant difference to the battery drain. In this case, the WACOM layer is basically idle and doesn't really draw much power.

So, technically you are correct that it does not disable the WACOM layer, but the main reason they don't is because it wouldn't really make any noticeable difference. The real battery conservation comes from just not writing on the screen.
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Old 05-26-2010, 12:23 PM   #4
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Originally Posted by HansTWN View Post
What impacts battery life much more is the fact that the DR800 does not always go into sleep mode. One night when the DR800 has not gone into sleep mode and the battery goes from full to 50% empty. But that is not much more than a nuisance, I just have to remember to turn it off manually. Other than that, the battery life would be very good.
Hopefully they'll get this figured out before the final release. My understanding is that it's related to certain documents preventing the viewers from suspending correctly. I think the original firmware had a bug that they said was related to page counting in PDB documents, but there seems to be a couple other instances of this happening with ePub and PDF as well.

This is just speculation, but maybe trying to track that bug down is what's holding up the final release?
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Old 05-26-2010, 02:52 PM   #5
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Originally Posted by Shaggy View Post
So, technically you are correct that it does not disable the WACOM layer, but the main reason they don't is because it wouldn't really make any noticeable difference. The real battery conservation comes from just not writing on the screen.
but if you think about it, when the device goes in sleep mode it actually turn off wacom, that is you can not wake up it by the pen..
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Old 05-26-2010, 04:06 PM   #6
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Originally Posted by repods View Post
but if you think about it, when the device goes in sleep mode it actually turn off wacom, that is you can not wake up it by the pen..
Yes, it is turned off in sleep mode, but not while reading. As I mentioned though, there really isn't any significant benefit to turning it off while reading.
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Old 05-26-2010, 04:29 PM   #7
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After using the device for a few days, my biggest disappointments are:

1) Lack of djvu support (I expected that 3rd party plugins will be available)
2) PDFs going into landscape mode do not have "fit width" view - the text is even smaller than in normal portrait view. I do not see an option anywhere to enable fit-width zoom.
3) Nowhere do I see instructions on how to add new fonts in the device - chinese epubs do not work, and I do not plan to embed huge fonts in every document.
4) No margins crop in PDFs?
5) Changing memory extension card requires a screwdriver

The device does not look solid. Sometimes it is not too responsive to the flipbar nor to the stylus.
I use the leather etui, which makes access to the flipbar unconvenient. It does not have enything like the magnetic clip in bebook, so I still need to wrap the book in the plastic bag to protect the screen from accidental damage in the bag.

In short, I am rather disappointed in the device. It has its advantages (SDK availability - once it gets out, bigger screen, more robust PDF viewer, better rendering of epub), but the disadvantages (djvu + fonts) together with price twice of the alternative device - I would probably not buy it again (this opinion may still change)
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Old 05-26-2010, 05:09 PM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Haqqax View Post
1) Lack of djvu support (I expected that 3rd party plugins will be available)
I thought there were some available, just not for the beta firmware. I could be wrong though, I don't follow the djvu support closely since it isn't a format that I need. It might be that they're still working on it.

Quote:
2) PDFs going into landscape mode do not have "fit width" view - the text is even smaller than in normal portrait view. I do not see an option anywhere to enable fit-width zoom.
Yep, there's been discussion with iRex developers about this in other threads on the forum. If my memory is right, I think they said they were going to add it?

Quote:
3) Nowhere do I see instructions on how to add new fonts in the device - chinese epubs do not work, and I do not plan to embed huge fonts in every document.
I'm pretty sure there have been a couple threads showing how to add fonts. I'd have to go find them, but if you look through the site you may be able to find them too.

Quote:
4) No margins crop in PDFs?
Nope. That's one feature that is lost in the new Adobe based viewers. I think iRex said that the Adobe library doesn't have a margin crop feature? I'm not 100% sure on that though, it's been a while since it was talked about. You should be able to do a selection zoom to crop the margins though.

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5) Changing memory extension card requires a screwdriver
Yeah. Kind of a pain if you need to swap the cards a lot. I would expect though that most people will just get a big card and not really change it.
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Old 05-26-2010, 05:18 PM   #9
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Originally Posted by Haqqax View Post
After using the device for a few days, my biggest disappointments are:
FYI, this may help answer several of your questions:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...635#post863635

In short, they are aware of and agree with the "fit-width" and "margin crop" issues, and are working on them.

I also found the discussion on the djvu support. There is a plugin for the current DR1000 firmware. The 3rd party developers who work on it are just waiting for the beta firmware to be released before they create a new version of it to work with 2.0 (and I assume the DR800).

I know I've seen instructions for adding fonts, but haven't found the right thread yet.
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Old 05-26-2010, 07:44 PM   #10
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2) PDFs going into landscape mode do not have "fit width" view - the text is even smaller than in normal portrait view. I do not see an option anywhere to enable fit-width zoom.
this is not a problem.. you can zoom it with the pen even in landscape mode..
try it..
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Old 05-26-2010, 08:54 PM   #11
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And margin crop works fine with that TechPDF add-on.
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Old 05-26-2010, 11:57 PM   #12
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x.) The flip bar kind of stinks. I like it in theory, but in practice, it turns more than one page about 20% of the time. It's only supposed to do that if you hold it for multiple seconds.
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Old 05-27-2010, 12:28 AM   #13
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x.) The flip bar kind of stinks. I like it in theory, but in practice, it turns more than one page about 20% of the time. It's only supposed to do that if you hold it for multiple seconds.
You are really pushing that fast! :-) Never happened to me. Anyway, you should report this to IREX, this should be a very simple fix.
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Old 05-27-2010, 03:14 AM   #14
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x.) The flip bar kind of stinks. I like it in theory, but in practice, it turns more than one page about 20% of the time. It's only supposed to do that if you hold it for multiple seconds.
Same here. I thought it was a known problem that hopefully would be fixed with the final 2.0 firmware. But after CoolDragon's response I wonder if it's a rare thing.
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Old 05-27-2010, 05:29 AM   #15
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x.) The flip bar kind of stinks. I like it in theory, but in practice, it turns more than one page about 20% of the time. It's only supposed to do that if you hold it for multiple seconds.
Too much fire in your belly! Happened to me only 3 times since I have the device.
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