[Saud]

I have been reading on palms, pocket pcs, mobiles and most recently the iphone

Been following the Eink scene and lately was contemplating on buying a Gen3 or a Sony, but the Opus is what caught my eye, since size was important to me, and the opus was perfect for my needs

As far as first impressions and usage:

I have not used it alot since it completely charged late at night, but I had abit of time to play with it before sleeping and dreaming of it lol

Hardware: good, sturdy, feels perfect on the hand, device fits on the palm and the light weight makes it easy to hold the device from the side for some great reading

Nice to have a battery compartment, though changing the battery does not look as easy as your TV remote control. noticed the reset button which is located beside the battery slot.

Startup:
Nice Opus splash screen, (ok come on.. turn on...counting the seconds) Will have to get used to the slow UI since I am used to speedy flashy PDAs and mobiles.
No loading clock/meter: not having an indication of what the opus is doing made me initially think twice.. is it loading or got stuck and needed a reset.

After sometime I did grap the time lag between menus and screens, so its ok now.

I have loaded a 2gb microSD on to the opus

connecting to PC:
got the opus connected to the computer, Opus drive came up, fairly fast, easy to browse and load folders of ebooks

But hey where is the microSD drive, did not appear at all, not even on the opus folder view.
Later today I am going to try load the microSD with ebooks directly, I will also try using different microSD cards as well.

Loading PDFs:
This is what I initially tried, since it was a main concern and wanted to know how the opus performed.
I loaded 2 pdfs of different sizes 1.8mb and 29mb. I am happy to report that the opus handled both very well, and loaded them with no issues and no lag.
zooming : good feature but could not go above 100%
but the highlight of the opus should be the accelerometer when I heard about it being implemented I didnt think this would matter alot but what a huge difference it makes to the reading experience of PDFs, with zooming better enhanced for the landscape view.

As others noted, lack of bookmarks is an issue but I hope this gets rectified with a firmware update. for now opening the ebook on the same page I left it will do.

last word
I have always liked devices that does it all (reading browsing music emails apps etc) but having the opus for just reading made me rediscover the pleasure of having a dedicated device, it is a very pleasing experince since I would focus on reading not expecting an SMS pop up or thinking of the latest apps or browsing the web. The mindset changes where I hold the device knowing I would get what I want which is total focus on reading.

and sure I would miss the fast UI, highlighting, copy/paste and dictionary support (for now, finger crossed for a firmware update) but I would say to the backlit reading "good riddence" nothing beats the pleasing easy on the eyes reading experince of eink on a good sturdy light weight small device such as the opus.