I’ve been lurking this thread for quite awhile because the Mentor looks fascinating, I especially like its use of eReader on an eInk display.
I’ve used eReader Pro on my PC and my Sony Clie. On the PC, eReader makes a good research tool. It’s easy to read the screen--I like to use it on the PC in two page layout--and I like the way it can quickly search a book on the PC as well as making bookmarks. I love how it lets me highlight text even in DRMed books and copy and paste the quote I need for my paper. And I love the dictionary lookup feature.
I love the eReader DRM scheme: some mobipocket DRM books I had became unreadable after a system crash because my PDA couldn’t read the Mobi books I’d restored from my backup, while the eReader books came through the crisis fine. After that I’ve made it a point to buy eReader formatted books only. I like that I can read a book I’m researching on my PC and put it on my PDA to take with me. I also like that I’ve been able to find books in eReader format that I couldn’t even get for my Sony Reader.
It seems more logical to me to use eBook Studio to build books from PG text format. I don’t know HTML and don’t plan to learn: life’s too short and you have to make choices. I like the different skins eReader allows on the PC screen and I like having a selection of fonts I can add to eReader. Admittedly, I have to pay a few dollars for eBook Studio and extra fonts also cost a few dollars, but I don’t have to use them.
Does anyone know if eReader will function the same way on the Mentor as it does on a Palm based PDA? I mean, are the functions of eReader I like a function of the software or the hardware-and-operating system? And because Astak's specs talk about four gray-scale images I'm wondering if they are using a Vistek screen or something with less contrast. eReader renders images well, but the larger ones are only visible on a larger screen (they're rendered as a thumbnail on the tiny PDA screen) and four-scale images are a little washed out on the Sony PRS500.
