MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Good compact reader for PDF viewing as well as ebooks?

ePingus · 12-14-2011, 10:04 AM

Ok coming back to this posting after a while having now purchased a small eReader arsenal.

I bought the Aluratek Libre Pro and the Sony PRS350 in the mean time and had a chance to play around with both and get to know both.

Yes they saved my life while taking a trip to an interview as the 1.5 hour train ride felt like nothing and I wasn't carrying around a breifcase or backpack either which would've not been fun for the 3 hour journey time.

Anyway, some comments:

Both device are the same size and both feel increadibly solid and well built. The Libre feels a little chunkier but that's due to the casing and it is slightly heavier I do believe too. - which I actually prefer!
Both devices if not mistaken run a Linux kernel or at least true for the Sony which has GPL and GNU plastered all over the user manual.
I prefer the interface to the Libre as I'm not a big fan of touch screens, but also the Libre's GUI design (if one could call it that) is slightly more efficient and faster then the Sony even though the tech specs of the Sony are higher.
The Sony's UI (user interface) looks sheek being totally iconified but seems to be more stable then the Aluratek's. The Aluratek has a nasty habbit of crashing if using the MP3 background option. I tried a kernel upgrade unsuccessfully as the reader wouldn't take it for whatever reason.
The storage space on the Libre is much better with external card slot, I have a 16GB in there at the moment for books and music which is really nice. Meaning I don't have to get my MP3 player out too when I go around.
Both readers after being shutdown remember the last page that was being read.
The Aluratek has an issue/strange-design with it's ecard in the fact that it doesn't unmount it from the filesystem when the device is to be shutdown. This results in not being able to copy information from the file manager on my desktop however, CLI transfers of files do work.
When docked as a USB device the Aluratek doesn't work very well as high volume transfers end up not getting transferred properly. Checking dmesg and /var/log/messages logs tells me that there's something wrong with the buffer on the recieving end. Meaning that the USB chipset used was low cost or doesn't have enough memory allocated to it for consistant synchronous transfer. - To get round this I simply end up taking the SD card out of the Aluratek and insert it into the card-reader of my notebook then do the transfer from there. Although come to think about it, it might just be that I was docking the device to my FreeBSD server of which that might have not liked the reader??

Well as per the list eBooks and technical PDF's such as the Oracle Solaris Admin guide and various Cisco documentation and even RedHat admin guide work really well on both devices although the Sony has better res so I mainly use that for tech PDF's. The Libre is then used for normal fiction based novels.

I must admit that I really do like both devices a lot and am really glad that I went bought two instead of just one. The size of the devices themselves are brilliant and they've been a really great investment and no doubt will help me for a long time in service.

Hope this was useful to anyone thinking of going for a 5" reader!!!

12-14-2011, 10:04 AM	#18
ePingus Member Posts: 17 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2011 Device: Aluratek Libre Pro & Sony PRS350	Ok coming back to this posting after a while having now purchased a small eReader arsenal. I bought the Aluratek Libre Pro and the Sony PRS350 in the mean time and had a chance to play around with both and get to know both. Yes they saved my life while taking a trip to an interview as the 1.5 hour train ride felt like nothing and I wasn't carrying around a breifcase or backpack either which would've not been fun for the 3 hour journey time. Anyway, some comments: Both device are the same size and both feel increadibly solid and well built. The Libre feels a little chunkier but that's due to the casing and it is slightly heavier I do believe too. - which I actually prefer! Both devices if not mistaken run a Linux kernel or at least true for the Sony which has GPL and GNU plastered all over the user manual. I prefer the interface to the Libre as I'm not a big fan of touch screens, but also the Libre's GUI design (if one could call it that) is slightly more efficient and faster then the Sony even though the tech specs of the Sony are higher. The Sony's UI (user interface) looks sheek being totally iconified but seems to be more stable then the Aluratek's. The Aluratek has a nasty habbit of crashing if using the MP3 background option. I tried a kernel upgrade unsuccessfully as the reader wouldn't take it for whatever reason. The storage space on the Libre is much better with external card slot, I have a 16GB in there at the moment for books and music which is really nice. Meaning I don't have to get my MP3 player out too when I go around. Both readers after being shutdown remember the last page that was being read. The Aluratek has an issue/strange-design with it's ecard in the fact that it doesn't unmount it from the filesystem when the device is to be shutdown. This results in not being able to copy information from the file manager on my desktop however, CLI transfers of files do work. When docked as a USB device the Aluratek doesn't work very well as high volume transfers end up not getting transferred properly. Checking dmesg and /var/log/messages logs tells me that there's something wrong with the buffer on the recieving end. Meaning that the USB chipset used was low cost or doesn't have enough memory allocated to it for consistant synchronous transfer. - To get round this I simply end up taking the SD card out of the Aluratek and insert it into the card-reader of my notebook then do the transfer from there. Although come to think about it, it might just be that I was docking the device to my FreeBSD server of which that might have not liked the reader?? Well as per the list eBooks and technical PDF's such as the Oracle Solaris Admin guide and various Cisco documentation and even RedHat admin guide work really well on both devices although the Sony has better res so I mainly use that for tech PDF's. The Libre is then used for normal fiction based novels. I must admit that I really do like both devices a lot and am really glad that I went bought two instead of just one. The size of the devices themselves are brilliant and they've been a really great investment and no doubt will help me for a long time in service. Hope this was useful to anyone thinking of going for a 5" reader!!!