MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Onyx Boox M92 sample has arrived. First imression

janek · 02-24-2012, 10:49 AM

Hello forum!
This is my first post here, but I've been lurking for quite a while - you helped me a lot when I was making a decision to buy a reader.

So to return the favour

I'd like to share my m92 experience with you. I just received my Boox from ereader-store (which is recommendable - it took them 4 days to deliver the device from Germany to Poland).

There's also Polish distributor of Onyx out there - Artatech, but they don't have M92 yet and keep on moaning about "Chinese holidays" when asked about plans to introduce it - and I wanted the thing asap. I'm mentioning this because there's one thing about Polish distribution that might be interesting for general Onyx audience, which is that they include Ivona tts application, which is *truly outstanding* in terms of speech quality. Sadly for license reasons it is not available from Artatech for devices not purchased in Polish distribution, and may or may not be installed as an add-on by the users themselves (it looks very fiddly), but perhaps the cooperation with the guys from Artatech or Ivona Software would be helpful for other distributors (I've seen people asking here about tts in German - and Ivona speaks many strange voices, including Welsh, Romanian or Polish).

Anyway, I bought the Boox because I wanted to get my pdfs out of netbook jail. I have tons of scholarly papers and books in all possible pdf flavours and Boox seemed the only reasonable option to read them on eInk, beside PocketBook 9XX (Kindle DX is way too proprietary/closed source/we-spy-you-and-drm-your-life for my liking). And, I must stay, it does this basic job very well. Text quality is very good, the device is very responsive when reading pdfs and not sluggish at all. Page enlargement works very well, even on scanned pdf. Also two-page crude A4 scans work well - they must be enlarged by some 150% but then joystick is helpful for panning around the page. I was also surprised by how good scribbling option works. I was able to write in very small script very quickly, and the Boox did catch up, so it is almost fit for doing lecture/conference/seminar notes (see below why "almost"). Annotations work as promised, so does scribbling and merging them with files (both regular and scanned pdfs).

Build quality is good, the device feels solid, the enclosing is ok. Stylus is perhaps a little bit too tiny. After two days of playing with the Boox the battery remains at 60%.

Now to the usability in academic work, which apparently is relevant for many of us here. Both annotations and scribbling are the key features, and it seems that in the current state of development they will allow me to keep/improve my workflow (I use a local installation of Wikindx for storing references, notes and for indexing pdfs, so I can use a bash scripts to sync my books on PC and Boox and to update Wikindx entries automagically with new annotations/scribbles whenever I export them. A ssh server on Boox would be better for that, though, rather than usb cable - any progress on that?). On the other hand, downloading papers straight off Wikindx installed on a networked PC doesn't seem to work, nor from commercial databases like jstor.

Now for the downsides/glitches I noticed over two days of playing with my m92 (firmware 20120221):
- [Hardware design] I find it strange that the headphone socket is located at the bottom edge of the device. If I try to read a book while listening to music AND lying on my sofa (lazy researcher I am

), the headphone jack sticking out of Boox will force me to hold the device up in the air, or it'll bruise my stomach. Of course I can rotate the device upside down but then I have to operate the stylus/joystick with my left hand and buttons with right hand - uncomfortable.
- [Web slow] Web browsing generally works and even complex pages are rendered properly. Still, the browser is very basic. It is slow, at times the device becomes unresponsive. This of course may be due to hardware limitations.
- [Web - no new window handling] Also, it is impossible to work with websites that require opening new windows, even if there are no other technical reasons why they shouldn't work (try playing a game at www.kurnik.pl). This is perhaps due to the lack of multitasking, but it could be overcome somehow.
- [Web forms] Entering data to forms on websites is painstakingly slow. This is definitely a software problem that should be fixed - virtual keyboard is responsive enough in annotations. Also clicking on a form does not start the keyboard, one has to do that manually.
- [Web] I was unable to download files from websites. This is an important drawback because it makes it impossible to download your books/articles straight from www.
- [Web/virtual keyboard layout] Virtual keyboard should feature the dot sign on the first "page" so that it is not necessary to click Symbol button twice just to type a dot. Try typing in a web address like www.something.important.com - current layout buys you six unnecessary strokes of the stylus... Or is this so only with Polish keyboard?
- [Translation/Virtual keyboard] Polish virtual keyboard lacks some important characters, like slash, backslash and quotation mark. This is probably because we have so many special characters in Polish (zażółć gęślą jaźń), but still the keyboard has two types of dash, out of which only one appears to work :nuts:. This should be fixed ASAP, it is very annoyoing to switch to other languages just to ask questions (or type a full web addresses).
- [Scribbling bug] Scribbling on a blank page (when you enter the scribble app from main menu) and exporting the scribble produces a blank png file with no scribbles at all, but that only when the scribble has more than one page. This is a really nasty bug - the device should produce a number of pngs instead of one.
- [Power management bug] Auto-shutdown doesn't seem to work if you leave the device in the web browsing mode.
- [Apps] Calendar applet is very basic, to say the least. Some basic time planning features are needed, not to mention syncing with other calendars.
- [Browsing filesystem] If you browse the filesystem (SD card or internal storage) with joystick and there are too many files to be displayed on one page, the expected behaviour would be that the page flips automatically whenever you reach the last file on the current page. Instead the highlighting moves to the first file on current page.

All in all, I'm a happy camper. This device is generally fit for serious work, UNLESS (like some people here) you expect an eInk tablet, which Boox clearly is not. Book reading and annotating work mostly as they should. Usability must be improved though, with limited web browsing being the most acute problem for me.

Correction: downloading files actually works. It is just infuriatingly slow and the browser does not recognize "file://" type of link. A 3.5 mb journal paper took about 5 mins to load on my local network! Also, the browser asks if I want to open the file and then does nothing - the file has to be accessed manually from "downloads" directory... I also played some more with "blank slate" scribbles to discover that exporting them sometimes works, but only for odd pages. Odd.

02-24-2012, 10:49 AM	#407
janek Groupie Posts: 175 Karma: 23456 Join Date: Feb 2012 Device: Boox m92	Hello forum! This is my first post here, but I've been lurking for quite a while - you helped me a lot when I was making a decision to buy a reader. So to return the favour I'd like to share my m92 experience with you. I just received my Boox from ereader-store (which is recommendable - it took them 4 days to deliver the device from Germany to Poland). There's also Polish distributor of Onyx out there - Artatech, but they don't have M92 yet and keep on moaning about "Chinese holidays" when asked about plans to introduce it - and I wanted the thing asap. I'm mentioning this because there's one thing about Polish distribution that might be interesting for general Onyx audience, which is that they include Ivona tts application, which is truly outstanding in terms of speech quality. Sadly for license reasons it is not available from Artatech for devices not purchased in Polish distribution, and may or may not be installed as an add-on by the users themselves (it looks very fiddly), but perhaps the cooperation with the guys from Artatech or Ivona Software would be helpful for other distributors (I've seen people asking here about tts in German - and Ivona speaks many strange voices, including Welsh, Romanian or Polish). Anyway, I bought the Boox because I wanted to get my pdfs out of netbook jail. I have tons of scholarly papers and books in all possible pdf flavours and Boox seemed the only reasonable option to read them on eInk, beside PocketBook 9XX (Kindle DX is way too proprietary/closed source/we-spy-you-and-drm-your-life for my liking). And, I must stay, it does this basic job very well. Text quality is very good, the device is very responsive when reading pdfs and not sluggish at all. Page enlargement works very well, even on scanned pdf. Also two-page crude A4 scans work well - they must be enlarged by some 150% but then joystick is helpful for panning around the page. I was also surprised by how good scribbling option works. I was able to write in very small script very quickly, and the Boox did catch up, so it is almost fit for doing lecture/conference/seminar notes (see below why "almost"). Annotations work as promised, so does scribbling and merging them with files (both regular and scanned pdfs). Build quality is good, the device feels solid, the enclosing is ok. Stylus is perhaps a little bit too tiny. After two days of playing with the Boox the battery remains at 60%. Now to the usability in academic work, which apparently is relevant for many of us here. Both annotations and scribbling are the key features, and it seems that in the current state of development they will allow me to keep/improve my workflow (I use a local installation of Wikindx for storing references, notes and for indexing pdfs, so I can use a bash scripts to sync my books on PC and Boox and to update Wikindx entries automagically with new annotations/scribbles whenever I export them. A ssh server on Boox would be better for that, though, rather than usb cable - any progress on that?). On the other hand, downloading papers straight off Wikindx installed on a networked PC doesn't seem to work, nor from commercial databases like jstor. Now for the downsides/glitches I noticed over two days of playing with my m92 (firmware 20120221): - [Hardware design] I find it strange that the headphone socket is located at the bottom edge of the device. If I try to read a book while listening to music AND lying on my sofa (lazy researcher I am ), the headphone jack sticking out of Boox will force me to hold the device up in the air, or it'll bruise my stomach. Of course I can rotate the device upside down but then I have to operate the stylus/joystick with my left hand and buttons with right hand - uncomfortable. - [Web slow] Web browsing generally works and even complex pages are rendered properly. Still, the browser is very basic. It is slow, at times the device becomes unresponsive. This of course may be due to hardware limitations. - [Web - no new window handling] Also, it is impossible to work with websites that require opening new windows, even if there are no other technical reasons why they shouldn't work (try playing a game at www.kurnik.pl). This is perhaps due to the lack of multitasking, but it could be overcome somehow. - [Web forms] Entering data to forms on websites is painstakingly slow. This is definitely a software problem that should be fixed - virtual keyboard is responsive enough in annotations. Also clicking on a form does not start the keyboard, one has to do that manually. - [Web] I was unable to download files from websites. This is an important drawback because it makes it impossible to download your books/articles straight from www. - [Web/virtual keyboard layout] Virtual keyboard should feature the dot sign on the first "page" so that it is not necessary to click Symbol button twice just to type a dot. Try typing in a web address like www.something.important.com - current layout buys you six unnecessary strokes of the stylus... Or is this so only with Polish keyboard? - [Translation/Virtual keyboard] Polish virtual keyboard lacks some important characters, like slash, backslash and quotation mark. This is probably because we have so many special characters in Polish (zażółć gęślą jaźń), but still the keyboard has two types of dash, out of which only one appears to work :nuts:. This should be fixed ASAP, it is very annoyoing to switch to other languages just to ask questions (or type a full web addresses). - [Scribbling bug] Scribbling on a blank page (when you enter the scribble app from main menu) and exporting the scribble produces a blank png file with no scribbles at all, but that only when the scribble has more than one page. This is a really nasty bug - the device should produce a number of pngs instead of one. - [Power management bug] Auto-shutdown doesn't seem to work if you leave the device in the web browsing mode. - [Apps] Calendar applet is very basic, to say the least. Some basic time planning features are needed, not to mention syncing with other calendars. - [Browsing filesystem] If you browse the filesystem (SD card or internal storage) with joystick and there are too many files to be displayed on one page, the expected behaviour would be that the page flips automatically whenever you reach the last file on the current page. Instead the highlighting moves to the first file on current page. All in all, I'm a happy camper. This device is generally fit for serious work, UNLESS (like some people here) you expect an eInk tablet, which Boox clearly is not. Book reading and annotating work mostly as they should. Usability must be improved though, with limited web browsing being the most acute problem for me. Correction: downloading files actually works. It is just infuriatingly slow and the browser does not recognize "file://" type of link. A 3.5 mb journal paper took about 5 mins to load on my local network! Also, the browser asks if I want to open the file and then does nothing - the file has to be accessed manually from "downloads" directory... I also played some more with "blank slate" scribbles to discover that exporting them sometimes works, but only for odd pages. Odd. Last edited by janek; 02-24-2012 at 01:05 PM.