Hello everyone,
I thought i'd try to see how well the PRS-650 could be used in reading comics. These are early days yet so I appreciate any input.
Before we get to the reading experience there are some database issues I should go over. First time around I put on about 2600 pages, BIG MISTAKE. I put the memory stick in and the Reader paused for about 2 hours as it generated thumbnails for each one. Next time I only put on 212 though which was actually pretty quick, like 5 minutes. So don't be too ambitious in loading it up unless you leave it overnight :P
Now loading times are fine IMO because the Reader only does it once, if you take the memory card out when it's done you dont have to worry about a repeat performance either.
The first major issue I encountered was the file system. Pictures are arranged either by date or title and the reader does not see them in folders. Unfortunately for me I had 10+ chapters each with the file names 1,2,3...12. So when flicking through you would read page 1 of chapter 1 then page 1 of chapter 2 ect. I got around this by using a free program called Renamer. Basically it can batch rename files adding their folder name as a prefix. So I renamed and put on 9 chapters (10 would make the file name 1001 and I wasn't sure if that would mess up the order, will have to test that one.)
All in all this isn't too big a deal. The program renames files almost instantly and unless you load up 1000+ files I don't think the load time is that bad.
OK so i've got 9 chapters on in sequential file names I can now start reading. How is it?
Well as you can see by (1) the image quality is very nice. Looks great in black and white and I like the contrast.
Problems began to occur when there is dialogue however. As you can see by (2) the Reader is just a bit too small to fit a whole page so you have to squint a bit to read the text.
At this point I was thinking, 'hey i remember them saying that you could lock the zoom for PDFs, i'm going to try that!'
Well to my disappointment I found that the zooming interface for pictures is completely stripped down. You will see in (3) that when looking at a normal book there is a neat zoom lock feature at the top of the page.
In (4) this is completely absent! Without a way to lock zoom it is impossible to read in landscape mode because unless it's a double page spread the reader tries to display the whole page without zooming in, leaving massive black borders, see (5.)
I found landscape mode pretty much unreadable and only really useful to take in the gist of a double page spread.
My conclusions?
Well I might try reading a bit in portrait mode and see how it goes but I do find the text a bit small. Zooming each separate page is too much work and I guess i would only use it for double pages when there's no other option. The screen is just so nice though, I can't resist giving it another go
What needs to be fixed? A few things IMO. Here's what really stuck out for me:
There is no way to view folders (get used to a massive list of JPEGS)
Scrolling through files alphabetically only (again, give me folders. lots of files are just named after the page numbers)
No zoom lock for pictures (
)
Maybe some third party applications will be out eventually that can do some of those things? Anyway I did get the PRS-650 to read books so i'm not going to dwell on this too much. Still I like to experiment with the gadgets so this was a fun little test for me.
Hope someone was helped by this information.