[orwell2k]

I'll answer the technical question here, and leave the political one to another reply

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Orwell,

Hi great review. Just a few comments and questions.

So, if you turn the BeBook over in the case, does the cover then open on the right side of the device? If not, I'm confused.

The case opens in the normal sense (like a book, you open the top from right to left). The confusion comes in with the clasp, which I am used to being connected to the back cover and being secured on the front cover when closed. This one is secured to the front cover and clips onto the back when closed. Hence (my) natural instinct to open the case with the back cover facing up (i.e. the clip facing up).

The BeBook comes secured on the right side when the case is open, but I have personally found that I prefer the BeBook rotated 180 degrees so it's on the left side when open (and oriented for reading). This means the case opens from the left (opposite to a "normal" book), but it places the page turn buttons on the left case edge, making it easy to hold the BeBook/case in your left hand and page turn as desired.

That seems a nice touch. I assume this is not so much so that the drives don't mount on the PC, but so that you can read while the device is charging. Is that the case if you just select to "charge battery"? Also, does this prompt display if you plug it into a mains USB charger?

Yes, when you choose charge only you can still read. When you choose connect you get a little picture of a BeBook connected to a PC, telling you you can transfer files and when you disconnect, the reader will return to normal mode (i.e. for reading).

Good question on the USB charger! I assume so, since it just detects the USB connection, not the actual PC. I guess if you happen to choose OK it will attempt to connect then give you some failure message - I will try this and let you know.

I think all the other devices do this too. What you may be thinking of is that on the CyBook if you turn it off/sleep it opens back to the library/book list rather than to the page you left of on. Both my Kindle and Sony always come back to the exact page I left off... however, I don't turn them "off".

I understand. The BeBook functions the same way. If you power down, the BeBook boots to the main bookshelf screen when you power on. When you put an SD-card in it switches automatically to that Bookshelf (you can switch back to internal memory if you wish).

The "sleep" in the BeBook seems to be the keylock function (push power button once without holding 3 secs) - in this mode the screen blanks except for the little message at the bottom saying it's in keylock. When you push the power button again, the BeBook returns to whatever page/book you were last at (assuming you haven't removed the SD-card in the meantime).

Ok... two questions to this.

1. What size page was the PDF formated for. Many PDF eBooks at not actually 8.5x11 but a smaller trade paperback page size.
2. How old are you?

How old? Not sure of the relevance, but I'm 40

The PDF sizes I used were mainly A4 (metric equivalent to US Letter 8.5 x 11, although A4 is a few mm taller and a few mm thinner). They were basically PDF prints I made of work documents, PPT slideshows, etc. The one real eBook I tested was 144mm x 230mm (~75% dimensions of A4, ~54% page area of A4)

Now a couple of questions that you didn't answer.

1. What is the font selection like?

2. What about justification, can you set Left or Full justification for all the flow able formats?

3. Are you willing to try OpenInkpot on it...? I would love to see a great review on that also. You can do it without replacing the current firmware.

1. Font selection is limited at the moment, but I haven't played with it much. It seems you can load TTF fonts in a "Fonts" directory on your SD-card, and then in the settings menu you can choose to substitute the iBook font with one of them. Depending on the reader (FB2, MOBI, etc.) you can usually choose between a couple of fonts, but I would like to see much more flexibility (e.g. load your Fonts folder and be able to choose from any of them in any reader).

2. Justification seems to be set at FULL, and I haven't seen a way to select any other. It seems to work well, although I wish you could deselect hyphenation in FB2 formats as it sometimes overdoes this. For TXT and RTF it also seems to be FULL justify, while for Word docs it seems to use LEFT justify, and again no way to change any. Strangely enough in RTF mode I noticed in the settings you can choose page orientation (i.e. you can force it to rotate to either 90, 180 or 270 degrees - could be useful, but I've only seen this in RTF).

3. I saw some info on the BeBook forum regarding OpenInkpot, and you can run a "live" version from the SD card, so I will try it soon - I'm also very interested to see how it goes. Any Open Standard is worth supporting if it does the job well!

Cheers!