MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Augen has an eBook Reader called "The Book"

kilohertz53 · 07-19-2010, 08:48 AM

A few more observations:

The Augen is okay as an ebook reader. It displays pdf files pretty well, although the menu options for pdfs are quite limited. Non-Adobe epubs work well, as do prc files, with lots of customizaton (fonts, margins, etc.) possible. Those are my primary formats, so I haven't checked any txt, rtf, html, or other supported files. Unfortunately, Adobe drm'ed epubs get treated as though they are pdfs -- slaved to the embedded page numbers that don't always fall at the end of a page. This results in missing chunks of text. I haven't tried stripping the drm and I don't know if that would make any difference without actually manipulating the file further.

The EBA701 is not going to be your primary audio or video player. I downloaded a couple of .mp4 podcast files that featured people speaking. Although the video portion was smooth enough (without obvious jerkiness or dropped frames), the audio track quickly got ahead of the video, and the longer the clip, the worse it got. Video and audio functions have no menu options. They're "on" or they're "off". I don't know if it's the same for .avi files. Has anyone tried? For very short clips where audio synchronization doesn't matter, I suppose it's okay.

One other nitpick is that there is no menu option to delete files on the unit. It appears that it has to be synced to a computer to delete files.

I think many of the problems with the EBA701 could be addressed by upgrading the firmware (it's a linux OS, after all), but so far, the Augen has absolutely no support information for "The Book" on its website. I think we're all beta-testers in this instance.

07-19-2010, 08:48 AM	#48
kilohertz53 Zealot Posts: 141 Karma: 671 Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Harwichport, MA Device: Sony PRS-500, Sony PRS-350, Augen "The Book"	A few more observations: The Augen is okay as an ebook reader. It displays pdf files pretty well, although the menu options for pdfs are quite limited. Non-Adobe epubs work well, as do prc files, with lots of customizaton (fonts, margins, etc.) possible. Those are my primary formats, so I haven't checked any txt, rtf, html, or other supported files. Unfortunately, Adobe drm'ed epubs get treated as though they are pdfs -- slaved to the embedded page numbers that don't always fall at the end of a page. This results in missing chunks of text. I haven't tried stripping the drm and I don't know if that would make any difference without actually manipulating the file further. The EBA701 is not going to be your primary audio or video player. I downloaded a couple of .mp4 podcast files that featured people speaking. Although the video portion was smooth enough (without obvious jerkiness or dropped frames), the audio track quickly got ahead of the video, and the longer the clip, the worse it got. Video and audio functions have no menu options. They're "on" or they're "off". I don't know if it's the same for .avi files. Has anyone tried? For very short clips where audio synchronization doesn't matter, I suppose it's okay. One other nitpick is that there is no menu option to delete files on the unit. It appears that it has to be synced to a computer to delete files. I think many of the problems with the EBA701 could be addressed by upgrading the firmware (it's a linux OS, after all), but so far, the Augen has absolutely no support information for "The Book" on its website. I think we're all beta-testers in this instance. Last edited by kilohertz53; 07-19-2010 at 01:41 PM.