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Old 10-03-2006, 11:55 AM   #1
Slava
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Posts: 285
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Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: New England
Device: PRS-500 · iPad · K3
Random notes (and pics)

I've posted some pictures of the Reader last night in a different thread, so here are some initial impressions.

Packaging: The box is "disappointedly" small. So is reader. For some reason it looks bigger in pictures, then in hands.

Screen: Looks and "reads" very well. Again online pictures don’t show it well. Background is some shade of gray, not white. But eyes adapt really fast and it's very easy to read.

Screen refresh/Page turns: Good and bad. BBEB/TXT/RTF refresh is quite fast, probably 0.5 - 1 seconds. It doesn't distract. With PDFs it's a different story. PDFs without embedded fonts take 1.5 - 2 seconds, and ones with embedded fonts close to 4 seconds. It gets annoying very fast. Since PDFs with embedded fonts is the only way (for now) to read non-English books, I'll have to get used to it.

*It looks like, pdfFactory was the issue in this case. Same PDF with embedded fonts, but created with PrimoPDF takes about 2 seconds.

*For 700+ paged PDF page turn time significantly increased once I passed 500 or so first pages. Moving file from memory card to main memory didn't help. For 1000+ paged BBEB I have not noticed any time increas though.

Fonts: It depends on book format, font typeface and if it's built-in or not. Built-in fonts look better and readable at smaller sizes then ones that embedded into PDF. I'll post some pictures tonight with Font typeface/Size comparison.

Navigation: Not bad at all. I actually like 1-0 keys.

Case: The one that came with the Reader is good enough for me. The way it connected to the reader is a bit weird strange. And one has to apply considerable pressure to attache the case.

Memory slot cover: It looks and feels flimsy. So for now, I'm using USB transfer instead of taking memory stick in and out.

CONNECT Software: Like it. Easy to install and easy to use. Once Reader connected it shows it (and its memory card if there is one inside). You can drug and drop your files directly from hard drive to reader/card without adding them to library. Once you disconnect USB cable, reader will refresh list of books from internal memory/card.

RSS: Well .... it's not what I expected. I think I'll write more about it and post some pictures later tonight.

Reading Letter/A4 sized PDFs: I've put some Oracle documentation, and doesn't look well. Fonts are too small (which makes them too light) even in Landscape mode and zoomed to "M" size. I guess, readability depends on font size used in PDF and document structure (tables, examples of code, etc).


So far, so good. I like the Reader, and hope that the issues will be fixed as time goes by.

Last edited by Slava; 10-08-2006 at 04:33 PM.
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