Quote:
Originally Posted by Sweetpea
How can you hold it comfortably with your right hand? It has that huge bezel there, with those buttons. And there are no buttons on the left side and no buttons on the bottom. If I look how I use my BBMini, I use the bottom ones the most, then the left side, and only then the right...
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How?
Easy. I hold it like a book, not like a cellphone or PDA.
In otherwords, you don't grip it from the sides like a vise; you rest it on your palm and keep your thumb above the paging button.
More precisely; *I* rest it on the inner edge of my small finger, let the back of the reader rest on my other finger and then my thumb does what thumbs are supposed to do. Paging is a function of a bit of added pressure by the thumb.
On my BeBook, which is has pretty much the same layout of your mini, I put it into the case upside down so I can weave the fingers through the folder cover because it is too big to rest on my finger. he effect is still similar, but it only works with the left hand. Which is okay since I read that way more often than not, despite being an extreme righty. (Normally my left arm is only good to keep me from tipping over.)
On my PB360, I remapped the paging functions to the central rocker ring so that my thumb naturally and by itself (no stress!) falls right on the edge of the ring. If you look at the Sony vs JB Mini video you'll notice that is how the mini pages.
I can see that people would want their readers to be tall and thin if they see them as oversized cellphones (and, to be honest; a lot of the generic chinese designers are building them that way) but if you see them as small light books then proper ergonomic design is for one-handed use. The old rocket reader (still around as the Ebookwise 1150) used that design philosophy to great effect. Today that school of design is evident in the Jetbook/Aluratech readers, the PB360, the Papyrus One, and to a lesser extent in the K3, PB302iRex, and Nook. The combination of spine-mounted controls and vertical symmetry (with screen rotation in software) is also very lefty-friendly. So you're not only reaching out to that extra 12% of the market at no added cost, you also save on the manufacturing cost of the extra buttons. Which is why I said the horizontally-symmetrical K3 and PB302 follow the philosophy to an extent; instead of designing for rotation, they design for hand-swapping. Which isn't bad but adds cost.
Anyway, if I'm right and the rainbow hues of the JB Mini means tey're going to target younger readers the matter of whether or not it fits in a sport coat pocket is likely moot; the target audience is more likely going to pop it into a backpack or shoulder bag. I just hope they do offer a PB360-style snap-on cover. Cause it does look pretty thin.
The way I see it, the reader business is now reaching a point where metoo hardware designs are going to be at a disadvantage over the well thought-out iconoclasts. We're going to be up to our gills in Kindle-wannabees and iPad lookalikes. The survivors from now on are going to the ones that stand out from the crowd. Cause, as I said, I doubt anybody is going to out-kindle Kindle any time soon.