Augen The Book: Preliminary evaluations

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Kurt

I'm finding the comments and "reviews" just a bit harsh for a $90 ebook reader
This is my very first so i guess i don't know what to expect - heheh

Welcome to MobielRead!

I happen to agree with you. I think this is the best 90$ e-reader on the market. But it still has problems, and it's only fair that we mention things like bad Wifi reception, how it keeps forgetting the SD card, and other issues.

[rscudder]

Well, as of some point much too late last night I had decided Augen was lying through their teeth about jpg format being supported by TB. It isn't quite that bad.

TB only supports picture files of a certain size.

I had put a bunch of family photos on and went to view them, and kept getting 'unsupported format' After checking the manual, it still said jpg was supported. Just by accident, as I was going down the list of 10 or so pictures I had imported, I hit one I had been sent by a friend of my daughter - which was only 79k. It showed up! I then found a cat picture that was just under 300k. It appeared.


On a roll, I picked the next smallest- one of my mother reading- just under 1mb. I waited. The hourglass sat there. After a minute or so, I tried moving the joystick. Nothing happened. I hit home. Nothing happened. I waited (a little) longer. The hourglass sat there. I tried hitting the off button. The hourglass sat there. I tried holding the off button down for 10 seconds. The hourglass sat there. I wondered how I had managed to freeze or otherwise break my new reader by asking it to look at a picture. Some 5 long minutes later, I got a very very brief glance of part of the picture of my mother, and then TB turned off.

Undocumented anywhere I looked (although there is not much documentation around) it seems that TB only supports pictures of a certain size.

Theory - to be tested- is to shrink a picture down to the same resolution as the screen, and see if the whole picture appears. The pictures that did appear only showed the middle of the picture. Luckily, most of them were artistically centered.

Based on the length of time it took to pull up a 950k + jpg, 1mb is probably the absolute limit it will open. At least if a file is too big, it just tells you it is unsupported, rather than trying to open it for 5 minutes. So, resize your pictures you want to put on the reader to about 300k or smaller. 300k opened in a reasonable amount of time, although they only showed the center of the pictures. I think I recollect that png is a file type that saves as a pretty small size, so I will be experimenting with that too.

It may be that just resizing your picture to the screen pixel resolution is the solution, but I will also experiment with file sizes there too.

Due to the shape of TB, and the gravity detector, I would advise against putting on pictures in widescreen. Even if you try to trick it by turning them 180 degrees, because of the gravity detector, it is going to continuously try to put it sideways to your orientation of TB.

In the previous thread, Marcy mentioned setting rotation to stop- as long as you kept TB flat at that point, and that might allow you to look at a picture in widescreen view. It is a little odd- video automatically plays in widescreen, and ignores the gravity detector. I think the widescreen setting is another of the firmware fixes needed.

Rebecca

[kilohertz53]

Originally Posted by rscudder

Have you tried the PDF menu options of fit to width or height?

I am going to pull a PDF into a program and see if I can do any resizing of it. Results to follow...
Rebecca

I'm not knocking the Augen. Most small, portable e-readers do a less than stellar job with pdfs. In trying to retain graphic design elements for a trade paperback with a diagonal measurement of 12", ebook versions just shrink the pages to fit a smaller screen, often rendering the text to an unreadable size in the process.

Using the "fit to" height, width, or page options reminds me of the part of the eye exam where the optometrist keeps asking, "Which looks better, ONE (flip the lens), or TWO?", and the eye chart looks about the same either way.

[Lastblade]

Originally Posted by rscudder

If you do get your hands on one to try, would you post how it handles night reading as opposed to your iPad, which I noticed you had listed under your devices?

I am still debating whether I should get one. Today is the last day I can run to a Kmart...

In any case, the iPad is my wife's, so I don't do a lot of reading on it. I don't have any issue reading it at night though, as long as I dim it to 30% or so.

[Highroller]

I think some people expected a bit much from this device for the price. Considering how inexpensive it is I think Augen got a LOT right and relatively little wrong. I will be keeping mine and hoping most of the wrong things are fixed by a firmware release. I find it quite usable for my purposes as is. I am happy to see competition finally driving ereader prices down to a level I consider reasonable.

[ebsebs]

I definitely agree with Highroller. The Book works reasonably well and can be improved by firmware updates.

I really hope Augen intends to actively fix bugs and make improvements. Here are my suggestions for the first things to fix:

1. I have found that the power switch does indeed turn off the device, and returns directly to the page you were reading when the TB is turned back on. The problem is that it does so inconsistently - sometimes one press works, sometimes multiple presses are needed, sometimes you have to press and hold, and sometimes it just doesn't work! Fixing this simple thing would go a long way towards making the TB more usable.

2. Fix the problem with the TB "forgetting" about an inserted SD card - sometimes it knows that the card is there, sometimes it doesn't. Right now, I'm keeping all of my books in the internal memory, since SD card operation is flaky.

3. Make pressing the joystick equivalent to the "enter" key in all places.

4. The page formatting options under the "Style" menu are great, but you can adjust the margin settings only in increments of 10. The default setting for the top margin is 4. I wanted to increase this to 6 or 7, but I couldn't. In fact, once you change the setting to 10, there is no way to get back to anything lower (other than 0).

5. Last for now - please remove the requirement to be approved by the moderator before becoming a member of their forum (http://augen.lefora.com/). I would have posted this on their forum, but I'm still waiting for my registration to be approved.

I originally intended to return the TB to K-Mart, but I (wisely) decided to work with it for a few days, and I changed my mind. There's a lot to like about the TB and it can get better if Augen listens to its users.

[ebsebs]

OK, just one more...

Please add an "auto-off after X minutes" feature!

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Highroller

I think some people expected a bit much from this device for the price. Considering how inexpensive it is I think Augen got a LOT right and relatively little wrong. I will be keeping mine and hoping most of the wrong things are fixed by a firmware release. I find it quite usable for my purposes as is. I am happy to see competition finally driving ereader prices down to a level I consider reasonable.

Most of the complaints I've seen are folks complaining about it not doing things the manufacturer says it does. I don't think that expecting the features to work as advertised is too much.


I think it's great that such an inexpensive device has hit the market and wish them every success with it. I just hope they work out the issues (WiFi, SD card) folks are having so that it will be successful.

[Highroller]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Most of the complaints I've seen are folks complaining about it not doing things the manufacturer says it does. I don't think that expecting the features to work as advertised is too much.

I think its been more people complaining that it didn't do things as well as they expected. Mostly things that are in addition to being an ebook reader. ie its VERY slow if you try to surf the net with it. It seems to do audio and video files at best sorta decent. As I said a while back, I could care less about that kind of stuff. I got it to read ebooks on.

I didn't really notice the losing the SD card bit since with 2 gig internal I only used an SD card long enough to see that it did work with it. I had noticed the problem with the on/off switch not always working but if that is stubborn I have always had the Poweroff selection on the main menu work. It doesn't perform miracles on pdf files but it displays them better than any other reader I have seen. Lets face it, for pdfs to do well you need a HUGE screen. I pretty much avoid pdf whenever possible. I have seen several complaints about battery life. 8 hours is pretty darn good for it to be color and backlit and 7 inches really. I rarely if ever am away from an electrical outlet 8 hours of reading time.

[kilohertz53]

Originally Posted by ebsebs

5. Last for now - please remove the requirement to be approved by the moderator before becoming a member of their forum (http://augen.lefora.com/). I would have posted this on their forum, but I'm still waiting for my registration to be approved.

Yes to this. I've had mortgage loans approved (back when they were difficult to get) in less time than it's taking the moderator to grant me permission to make a few comments in the Augen customer forum.

[gintzj]

I can not wait to get mine from Heratland it seems that 8/7 is far away. I ordered on 5/28

I am very excited about all things I am learning from you dear guys.

I can not wait to have one in my hands.

however thank you for everyone who has joined this group

This will be my first ereader.

[Barnone]

I picked one up at Kmart the other day for $89.95 plus tax and took it back after two days of use. Mine was missing the USB cable and the free ebooks. It is too slow for net use.

[Highroller]

Well yeah with no usb cable it would be a problem. You still would have option of dropping books on an SD card and then putting card in reader but that would be even more roundabout. The free books missing was no biggie. 1000's more can be gotten same place they got those )

[Kurt]

Originally Posted by rscudder

Hi Kurt,

Welcome to the ebook world!

I think that the reviews are not trying to be harsh, as much as we are all learning about it. Augen did tout its virtues!

I think that the ability to have resizable type is wonderful for people with variable eyesight- your comments put that virtue into perspective

There are a lot of places where you can get free- and legal- ebooks- if you mention the type of books you like to read, I think many people will chime in. My advice on putting the books on the reader is to do it through a computer- either directly on it (not really fast) or on an SD card, where you can play with the hierarchies for the books. A computer browser will make getting books much easier than using the browser in TB. (even though mine is working )

I would avoid ebooks in PDF for this reader for one reason- the resizing / zoom is most limited for PDF ebooks.

Have you tried the text to speech function yet?

Rebecca

Hey, thanks for the warm welcome and the excellent tips

I actually called Augen today to see if there was some kind of hidden function to get website pages to "fit to screen"
I knew this was unlikely but hey, worth a shot
Pleasantly surprised by the nice gentleman on the phone (and the very short wait) who was trying to be more than helpful, but of course there is no fit to screen or zoom in/out
He seemed pretty certain though that TB is not "locked" and there will be a firmware update very soon(tm) - heheh

I did try the text to speech function and it wasn't too bad but i also have issues with audio books as i prefer the voice in my head than someone reading to me

Managed to download several books from "Feedbooks" today - haven't had time yet to try to transfer them to TB
Still hesitant to actually purchase a new book until i learn a bit more
Lots of stuff to do this weekend it looks like inclouding checking out the wiki here

Before i had to give up reading books about a decade ago was heavily into sci-fi, fantasy and historical fiction with a smattering of everything else
Kinda lost now as i don't know authors and the magazine subs i had with plentiful reviews and author interviews and such are either gone or don't remember their names - oh well, starting over
I feel like a kid on christmas eve

[clayw1pi]

Use the Freeware program "Caliber" to convert to the CBR format.