MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - New EZ-Reader Firmware Review Sort Of

derrell · 08-20-2009, 12:32 AM

This isn't intended to be a complete review just my thoughts after trying it out.

I've been testing the new firmware for the Astak 6" EZ-Reader for a couple of weeks now and have to say that it seems jinke did a better job on it than I expected. The constant system crashes that I could only avoid by using Open Inkpot seem to be gone. I've read several books now in mobi, fb2, epub and pdf and it hasn't frozen or rebooted once.

The digial editions software for reading epub has rough edges as mentioned by others here in the forums. The font sizes change in large leaps rather than being incremental, and the page numbers on the right side of screen cover some of the text. Whoever thought that was a good idea was wrong. I don't have any epub books that have drm so I don't know how it handles that but I'm assuming they are the same.

As for the pdf books I don't have any that need to make use of the reflow and I didn't really try zooming. All of the pdf books that I have are ones that I've made myself and are sized to fit on the six inch screen. One thing I did notice though was the closer you get to the end of the book the longer it takes to change pages, but that is a minor consideration it wasn't all that annoying just hit the page turn button while you are still a few lines from the bottom of the screen.

The drm free mobi support seems to be pretty good but the font size choices are limited wouldn't go quite large enough for me, my eyesight is not what it used to be. Don't know what software they are using to render the mobi files but it seems adequate.

FB2 is handled well and would be my preferred format if it was easier to perform conversions.

I'm still looking forward to the ereader support and will try that out as well once they release it. Hopefully the reading software for that new format will be a little better than this first digital editions software. I hope it will get better as time goes by and updates are released.

I'm going back to OI, for now I just prefer that firmware and since it was the only firmware that didn't constanly crash my EZ-Reader when I first bought it I've gotten used to it.

Here is the direct link to firmware page for Astak.

08-20-2009, 12:32 AM	#1
derrell Jack O' Apes Posts: 227 Karma: 1939 Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Oklahoma Device: Ebookwise 1150, Nokia N810, EZ-Reader, HTC Droid Incredible, Archos 70	New EZ-Reader Firmware Review Sort Of This isn't intended to be a complete review just my thoughts after trying it out. I've been testing the new firmware for the Astak 6" EZ-Reader for a couple of weeks now and have to say that it seems jinke did a better job on it than I expected. The constant system crashes that I could only avoid by using Open Inkpot seem to be gone. I've read several books now in mobi, fb2, epub and pdf and it hasn't frozen or rebooted once. The digial editions software for reading epub has rough edges as mentioned by others here in the forums. The font sizes change in large leaps rather than being incremental, and the page numbers on the right side of screen cover some of the text. Whoever thought that was a good idea was wrong. I don't have any epub books that have drm so I don't know how it handles that but I'm assuming they are the same. As for the pdf books I don't have any that need to make use of the reflow and I didn't really try zooming. All of the pdf books that I have are ones that I've made myself and are sized to fit on the six inch screen. One thing I did notice though was the closer you get to the end of the book the longer it takes to change pages, but that is a minor consideration it wasn't all that annoying just hit the page turn button while you are still a few lines from the bottom of the screen. The drm free mobi support seems to be pretty good but the font size choices are limited wouldn't go quite large enough for me, my eyesight is not what it used to be. Don't know what software they are using to render the mobi files but it seems adequate. FB2 is handled well and would be my preferred format if it was easier to perform conversions. I'm still looking forward to the ereader support and will try that out as well once they release it. Hopefully the reading software for that new format will be a little better than this first digital editions software. I hope it will get better as time goes by and updates are released. I'm going back to OI, for now I just prefer that firmware and since it was the only firmware that didn't constanly crash my EZ-Reader when I first bought it I've gotten used to it. Here is the direct link to firmware page for Astak.