Jetbook arrived

[bill_mchale]

Well, the Jetbook arrived yesterday. Unfortunately by the time I got home it was already quite late and so I had to plug it in and let it charge overnight before playing with it. That being said, the Graphite/Black I ordered it in looks quite nice. My initial first impression on the screen is that it looks in many respects much like the eInk screens... though I haven't had a chance to do a side by side comparison. Its also a bit bigger than I thought it would be; a bit too large for a shirt pocket (though it should fit fine in a jacket pocket).

Regarding the screen-size, after reading with the iPod for the last month, I have to say, this screen is much bigger. I believe the minimum font size is 12 pt which is a little big for my tastes, but should allow a greater period between page turns than with the iPod touch. That being said, I haven't actually used it to read yet, so I don't know. Also, I would like to continue with my experiments regarding converting html into properly sized pdfs; that should allow some more flexibility in terms of document formatting.

Hey, I know some here don't quite understand my reasons for choosing the Jetbook, but so far, I like it quite a bit.

--
Bill

P.S. When I get home tonight, I will download some fb2 books to it and start reading .

[DixieGal]

Congrats! I'll be looking out for your update after you get it up and reading.

[DDHarriman]

Great!

Please let us know how it's going with your experiences, also pros and cons!

Wish you much fun and ROI out of your reader.

[Lemurion]

I may not understand or agree with your reasons for buying a Jetbook-- but you didn't spend a penny of my money to do it so I've no right or reason to complain.

I hope you enjoy it and wish you much luck with it. Let us know what you think and you may even convince more people to choose the Jetbook. My biggest concern with it (and the reason I'm not interested) is that it provides less of the functionality I want than the Sony at a higher price point.

[HarryT]

I'll be interested to know what the battery life is. That's generally the biggest "downside" of LCD vs. eInk devices.

[bill_mchale]

Don't worry. I will keep everyone updated .

The book came with a fairly decent sized library on it already. Quite a few Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain and others. One thing I found amusing though was that Moby Dick was included (not the amusing part), but it was placed in the Children's literature section of the device .

One slightly annoying thing I have noticed so far, and this I think is more a Mac issue (I will have to test it with my Linux Box tonight) is that when I tell the Mac to eject the device, it will remount it several seconds later; if I am ready to unplug I have to re-eject.

I did download a couple of .fb2 books last night; I had already converted 1633 by Eric Flint and David Weber. That loaded like a champ. I also loaded David Weber's The Honor of the Queen. Had a little more difficulty with that, but I did discover that for .fb2 books, one doesn't need to follow the author_name#title format. It reads the info from the file.

There is plenty of latitude for adjusting the font size. I am not sure if their font size listings are accurate; their 12pt type (the smallest on the device) looks rather small to me (indeed it is the smallest I can imagine anyone comfortably reading with). I personally find that 16pt provides plenty of text on page.

Also, my general observation is that txt and .fb2 page turns are faster than the pdf page turns, though I haven't tried timing it yet.

That being said, the one caveat I have about this reader is that it really does need to add support for other formats. If it could support the ePub books that Stanza creates that would be great; html might be even better. And certainly I wouldn't object to eReader. I still hope they don't support DRM (Though I wouldn't mind eReader's too much). As it is, its not hard to convert a book to .fb2, but it is not exactly something that a non-technical person would be comfortable with.

--
Bill

[DixieGal]

You mentioned the font sizes. Would you please do me a favor? Sometime when you are near a ruler (measure, not royalty), would you measure the largest font for me? I have bad eyes and need supersized fonts.

THANKS!

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

You mentioned the font sizes. Would you please do me a favor? Sometime when you are near a ruler (measure, not royalty), would you measure the largest font for me? I have bad eyes and need supersized fonts.

THANKS!

Sure thing. I will say this; the default font (20pt) seems to me to be fairly large; the 36pt font (The largest) should meet most people's requirements. I will see what I can do about giving you a better measure though.

--
Bill

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

Sure thing. I will say this; the default font (20pt) seems to me to be fairly large; the 36pt font (The largest) should meet most people's requirements. I will see what I can do about giving you a better measure though

See Font Sizes for screenshots of the Kindle. The largest is about 18pt, although Amazon calls it 20pt, see Does the new CyBook support ultra-large fonts (>72 points)? - which includes mockups of 24pt, 36pt, and 48pt on a 6" page. There may not be much difference between a 5" screen and the Kindle's 6" screen, particularly since the Kindle uses wide margins.

Can you rotate to landscape mode with FB2 ebooks? This may be best for large font sizes.

[bill_mchale]

Wallcraft,
I believe you can rotate to landscape mode with any book; though obviously it makes more sense in some cases than others. I will double check to night and let you know.

--
Bill

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

See Font Sizes for screenshots of the Kindle. The largest is about 18pt, although Amazon calls it 20pt, see Does the new CyBook support ultra-large fonts (>72 points)? - which includes mockups of 24pt, 36pt, and 48pt on a 6" page.

I'm not really much into typography... but I always wondered this. Is a 12pt fount supposed to produce the same size glyph on a device no matter it's size and resolution? For example, is a 12pt font on a 6inch device the same size as a 12pt font on a 20 inch monitor? Isn't there another way to specify font size, I seem to remember earlier PCs used something other than point sizes... also I think it was the inverse where the bigger the number the smaller the font.

That said, is there any device size independent way to specify a font size whether it be on screen or paper?

Thanks,
BOb

[bill_mchale]

Bob,
Well, back from my days on the High School Yearbook, I remember that font size actually had a definitive relationship to real world measurements. If I remember correctly, 36pt type was such that a capital letter would be 1" tall.

With a computer never knowing how large a monitor it is going to be connected to, this relationship has gotten fuzzy over the years. But on an ebook reader, where one knows how large the screen will be, it should be easy to scale the letters such that the pt size is connected to the actual screen size seen.

--
Bill

[DixieGal]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

I'm not really much into typography... but I always wondered this. Is a 12pt fount supposed to produce the same size glyph on a device no matter it's size and resolution? For example, is a 12pt font on a 6inch device the same size as a 12pt font on a 20 inch monitor? Isn't there another way to specify font size, I seem to remember earlier PCs used something other than point sizes... also I think it was the inverse where the bigger the number the smaller the font.

That said, is there any device size independent way to specify a font size whether it be on screen or paper?

Thanks,
BOb

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

Bob,
Well, back from my days on the High School Yearbook, I remember that font size actually had a definitive relationship to real world measurements. If I remember correctly, 36pt type was such that a capital letter would be 1" tall.

With a computer never knowing how large a monitor it is going to be connected to, this relationship has gotten fuzzy over the years. But on an ebook reader, where one knows how large the screen will be, it should be easy to scale the letters such that the pt size is connected to the actual screen size seen.

--
Bill

Hi Guys! Back in the day, the HS typing teacher had a font ruler. She used it to demonstrate the difference of the spinning wheel striker thing on those new fangled electric typewriters. With those, all you had to do to change fonts was unsnap the wheel, disentangle the ribbon, re-entangle the ribbon on a new wheel, and then try to get the new wheel snapped back in correctly. No problem is something needed to be bolded - all you had to do was backspace over the word and retype it a few times to make heavy print. Couldn't use that trick with italics, so it better be a good reason to go to all the trouble to switch to the italic wheel.

[JSWolf]

Bill, if I create a FB2 using Book Designer, will you give it a go on your Jetbook and see how it comes out? I'll do a conversion of Dracula.

[bill_mchale]

Sure, Jon I would be glad to. Though I already have a copy of Dracula on it . I have already converted some books to fb2 and they seem to work fine. Is there something in particular you wanted me to check out?

--
Bill