Quote:
Originally Posted by melmike
Oh, one other question please...what the &&** is Dithering Off under the Option key?
And what is dithering, and why can I only turn it off...when does one dither...does one dither alone, in pairs or in groups?
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Hi Melmike,
Welcome to iRiver!
"Dithering" is a term used for the way the edges of graphics are rendered on-screen. The edges of the strokes and spurs of the letters are reproduced with differing shades of grey, rather than merely two colours, black and white (1-bit). To the human eye, it makes the lines of the letters seem more fully-formed -- turning dithering off makes the letters seem more spindly. Dithering is also used in printed books and newsprint, so having dithering on makes the display seem less "electronic" and more "printed book". The downside is that it will slightly reduce the time between having to recharge your battery, since it increases the calculations necessary to display a page of text.
The menus of the iRiver seem on occasion to function by some parallel-universe logic, as well as occasionally being written in Koreanglish. When the menu says "Dithering off", it means that dithering is currently turned
on, and so the menu is displaying the only available option.
It's personal taste whether you have dithering on or off. For myself, I keep it switched on, since I find the display more pleasing that way. (Uprights seem less spindly, serifs more fully-formed.) Unfortunately, iRiver seems to view this setting as a per-book choice, not as a global setting, and it defaults to dithering off (add that to the list of things I'd like to see changed in an update to the OS). So I find that each time I load and open a new book, I have to go into the menu and set dithering to on.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melmike
what are the bookmarks for if we don't need them?
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Depending on the type of book you're reading -- or if you're using it for reference -- you may want more bookmarks than just the latest point you were up to in sequential reading. It's the electronic equivalent of sticky-notes or
->shudder!!<- turning down the corner of the page.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melmike
Do I create any new folders via Adode Digital Editions on my PC..is that how it works?
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If you hook up the Story to your PC, it opens a file explorer window to show the files on your device (and a second one if you have an SD card in the Story). Then you can simply use the normal file explorer window to create or delete folders and add or remove files. I find that a lot easier than Digital Editions, and it also works for mp3 files.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melmike
It drives me crazy that I can't see a proper list of the books. I re-named them in Adobe Digital Editions so the title was first, but can still only see half the title.
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I completely agree. It drives me nuts -- if you have the 3 books in a trilogy, for instance, and put the name of the trilogy first in the book title, then the name of the individual volumes generally disappear off the side of the screen and they become indistinguishable. And just forget about trying to list the author, even if only by surname. I think that's a significant shortcoming in a device (whether it be by iRiver or any other manufacturer) that positions itself as an electronic library.
It seems to spring from the same family of thought that treats text as a mere string of characters, that can be broken after a certain number of them displayed in the line and not have negative consequences on the meaning of the text. That's what the Story does with .TXT files, and I can't help wondering if it's an offshoot of the device being Korean in origin and design -- that's the way Korean orthography works. But if it's going to sell in the English-language market, I think it needs to clean that aspect up.
I posted elsewhere that I nearly drooled in jealousy recently when I first saw a Kobo in a Borders bookshop. The menuing on that device is gorgeous, so it can be done. It just requires iRiver to recognise there are problems with its current offering.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melmike
Now I am a bit sad I purchased the IRiver Story instead of another Bebook. The User Manual for IRiver is useless and there seems to be very little support (??)
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Overall, I'm really, really happy with the iRiver Story, though I too have gone through moments of wishing I'd bought something else. I've had mine for about three months now, and when I'm sitting down by the nearby lake reading a well-formatted ePub on it, able to read the screen comfortably in almost-direct sunlight, holding a device which is large enough for my big hands but not so heavy it gets uncomfortable, then I find a lot of reasons to be glad for the choice I made.
But yes, the manual is ridiculous and rarely helpful, and there are too many features and functions and contexts where you want to know what to do that the manual makes no mention of whatsoever. I think that's unacceptable in a commercial product, especially one that's so ... ummm,
eclectic ... in the way many of its options function or are accessed. I've mused on occasion on trying to co-ordinate a user-generated group effort that does a better and fuller job. Hopefully I would get my own questions answered that way.
What makes me pause is mostly the lack of user support by iRiver. There's no way I've been able to find to get user questions raised and answered. The company that distributes the iRiver in my country does supply a technical support team on the phones, and I've raised questions with them, but they seem to know no more about the product than I do. They've told me they get no support documentation from iRiver and have no procedure for even raising questions with iRiver and getting answers back, let alone tracking incidents and reporting back to the customer. Of the iRiver websites I've found, only the Korean one seems to be being updated; iRiver has recently launched a blog, but it doesn't have much to offer, seems more marketing guff than user-focussed and is mostly interested in getting people to "follow" on Twitter without actually posting anything of substance. It's made what I consider the classic website mistake: create an identity and then do
nothing with it, and all you really do is confirm in people's minds that you're a lame duck.
So the iRiver Story is a bit of a mixed bag, isn't it?