[DuckieTigger]

sorry for lengthy post, but better more information than not enough. hard to find much on the odyssey yet - when i decided to get one it was a huge gamble, but i don't think i regret getting it at all - love it so far ...

and also hello and welcome. i have been reading mobileread for a while now, but waited to post 'til i had the odyssery physically in my hand

Originally Posted by vishcompany

OT: Some questions to owners of both the PRS-T1 and the Odyssey...

i do not have a prs-t1, but have a prs-300 (prs+'ed) and got my odyssey in the mail today shipped from europe to the usa. and no, not through bookeen, but through my parents from bookeen -> germany -> usa for christmas. the cold temperature and the almost 3 week jorney unfortunately drained the battery so it is recharging right now. i did get to play with it a bit though before it died.

1. Could you tell us about the screen compared to a PRS-T1, does the touch layer of the Odyssey affect the contrast in any way?

as EowynCarter said, contrast is not affected. the background color is almost identical to my prs-300, but the blacks look deeper (probably b/c of the pearl). the reason for the contrast beeing uneffected is the capacitive touch screen. it does not have a "layer" per se, but a wire mesh embedded into the display that is diagonally to the screen approximately 1/5 inch appart between wire lines. it will only work with your fingers (not the nail since that is non-conductive). i tried it with thin wool gloves (still works), but leather gloves do not. also a stylus won't work (tried it). it is possible that this type of touch screen uses less energy than the infrared type the t1 has. the response is very fast - BUT since it is capacitive it works better if you use a "fat" finger - using just the tip w/o pushing down has a lot of hit and miss, pushing down on a larger area almost always works. you won't accidentely push puttons when the cover is closed (if you choose to get the cover). the cover by the way is quite nice - looks about like the prs-300 sony leather cover except the front is reenforced and sturdy and the back snaps onto the odyssey. and compared to the prs-300 cover it easily bends all the way around to the back. im afraid to do it on the sony, don't want to break my cover.

I really like the Odyssey, the dict-lookup function looks great, but I would need different dictionaries.

i would need different dictionaries as well. but coming from the prs-300 i don't really miss the dictionary yet. the only thing i dont like - if you look up a word, the dictionary will say "dictionary" or whatever it is saying up top in french - that should be the language of your selected language, not the language of the dictionary imo (especially if future updates hopefully support switching dictionaries).

2. Is the webbrowser as good as the one in the T1?

can't say - since i dont have a t1 or any ebook reader other than odyssey that has a browser.

3. The fonts-treatment looks great. You can install your own fonts?

yes i believe (again see EowynCarter's reply). right out of the box it does come with a variety of different fonts. it also lets you ignore the stylesheet that came embedded with the epub - which will make the margins good looking and the font size and type the way you selected it to be. i would imagine it would work for drm'd books too, but have not bought one for the odyssey - Eowyn, any idea? have you tried "ignore publisher style" on a drm'ed book? if that is the case that would already be a huge selling factor for the odyssey - i don't believe any other brand allows that (at least not with official firmware).
EDIT: sorry for misleading, i played around with it some more today. and the "ignore publisher styles" does ignore everything BUT the margins. the books i tested it on already had nice looking margins. i tried one today - and the god-aweful looking huge margins did not change - everything else changed though. sent a request asking about it to bookeen - let's see if they will answer sometime ...

4. Still no tags/collections support (but folder view)?

i prefer folder view myself and sort by file name. this way the library can be just copied from one device to other. was really nice to plug both the prs-300 and odyssey in at same time and just copy it all over. i gave up on collections when i got frustrated with the inability of the prs-300 to manage and sort my books the way i wanted it - thank you for prs+ and folder view/sort by filename. and thank you bookeen for folder view and ability to sort by filename. so now to force my books in a certain collection to be in order, i just add 01, 02, 03 ... infront of the filename. another really nice feature of epub is the uniform page numbers - my books have the same amount of pages in the sony and in the bookeen.

and again sorry for lengthy first post on mobileread