DR1000S: First impressions...

[algol]

Hello guys!

Just received my DR1000S. It has charged for 3h, and now I've started to play a little bit with it. But... I have some questions about it, and would be glad if anyone around could help me to solve them.

Important issues (questions!):

1. When I connect it to my MacBook, should it mount the SD card? If it should, it is not doing it... if it "shouldn't by the specs.", hehe, in fact it "should for usability reasons"... I shouldn't need to take out the SD card everytime I need to transfer a file to it.

2. Depending of what it shows in the screen, it "marks" the screen and I get a "ghost" image of the last page. It's soft, but it is there... Is this normal??

Not so important coments about it (but important anyway!):

3. I had never seen a DR1000S before. I confess that I decided to buy it after using a Sony for a while... Well, I must say that I am quite disappointed with the dithering algorithm implemented on this device!!! It is usable, but I expected to have at least the same kind of quality I saw in the Sony... And this, specially considering the DR1000S price level and its intended audience (B2B, or in other words, editors, publishers, etc., or am I wrong?).

4. The form factor... fells just... cheap. Come on... at this price level? iRex guys, please, seriously consider a better design for the next version of this device... Take a look at an iPhone... and... HIRE A GOOD INDUSTRIAL DESIGNER (i am not one).

However, I must say that I am happy with my device, because its software is open, now I do have decent "screen" size for reading scientific papers and mainly because I do have acess to thousands of scientific eBooks through my University... ok, and also because after spending all this money, I need to tell myself that I am happy for psychological reasons

But I fell that this device could be much better if iRex team had spent a little bit more time on the drawing board...

PS: Still cannot speak a lot about the GUI, but I've noticed that some things are a little bit awkward.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by algol

2. Depending of what it shows in the screen, it "marks" the screen and I get a "ghost" image of the last page. It's soft, but it is there... Is this normal??

Limited ghosting is a normal part of eInk, it's just the state of the current technology. It is not permanent, and should go away after a couple refreshes, etc. If it is really significant, or is interfering with the readability, then you can contact iRex and see if you have a defective display. In general though, it's nothing to worry about.

It seems to be a little worse depending on how "dark" the image is that you're looking at. Areas with a lot of black in them tend to cause a bit more ghosting than just text, etc. The various manufacturers do different things during a refresh of the page to try and minimize it (refreshing to an inverted image first, and then the next page...). But, it's a trade off between how much "cleanup" you want to do on the ghosting versus how long it takes to turn a page. I've heard that the Sony is a little better about ghosting, but also that they do more steps during a refresh than iRex does, so it's a little slower.

3. I had never seen a DR1000S before. I confess that I decided to buy it after using a Sony for a while... Well, I must say that I am quite disappointed with the dithering algorithm implemented on this device!!! It is usable, but I expected to have at least the same kind of quality I saw in the Sony... And this, specially considering the DR1000S price level and its intended audience (B2B, or in other words, editors, publishers, etc., or am I wrong?).

This is a known issue, and iRex is aware of it as well. The good news is that it is something they can fix in software by improving the dithering algorithm. They haven't made any official statements on when they'll fix it, but I would guess they'll start to look at it once they get the power management issues worked out. They've basically said it has their attention, but they can't promise a time frame.

[pthwaite]

Algol,
On the Mac, when you mount the DR1000, it is only the SD card that is mounted. It doesn't access the DR's internal memory. Mine mounts as "DR1000s", though I cannot remember now if that is because I renamed the SD car to that...(getting old?)

[algol]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Limited ghosting is a normal part of eInk, it's just the state of the current technology. It is not permanent, and should go away after a couple refreshes, etc.

So, I agree that it is better to be faster, and since the ghosts don't interfer with the readability... we can live with them for the moment.

Originally Posted by Shaggy

The good news is that it is something they can fix in software by improving the dithering algorithm. They haven't made any official statements on when they'll fix it, but I would guess they'll start to look at it once they get the power management issues worked out.

Noted! Will wait anxiously for the next software updates... Mainly for the power issues, though, but also for the dithering... that I doubt is space technology, and that I am sure they will end up with a very improved version of it.

[algol]

Originally Posted by pthwaite

Algol,
On the Mac, when you mount the DR1000, it is only the SD card that is mounted. It doesn't access the DR's internal memory. Mine mounts as "DR1000s", though I cannot remember now if that is because I renamed the SD car to that...(getting old?)

Yep, I don't know why, but now, as soon as I connect the usb cable, I get a message on the iRex asking if I want to mount or not the SD card in the computer. I guess that before I was always connecting the iRex while it was turned off (in this case it turns on, but after the boot it doesn't ask whether your want to mount the device or not).

Thanks anyway!