Astak Mentor eBook readers with WiFi and Touchscreen (read-only)

[Lemurion]

As far as color goes, anything dark is fine by me. I don't want shiny or reflective because it draws my eyes away from the screen. It's much easier to read on my Palm T|X with its dark blue shell than my iPaq with its brushed aluminum shell.

[power100]

How much will the 6" one?

Originally Posted by Robertb

Dear Axel:

Yes... slip of the tongue on the "almost". I just always fear saying "never ever ever locks up". My philosophy is that anything can be made to lock up if you try long enough and hard enough and get unlucky. Let me just say that our team of batterers could not get it to lock up or skip a beat!

It is a little depressing to hear that "thinner and lighter" ranked far down the list. Myself, I hate the bulkiness and weight of other devices. I guess it is just me then... but to me thin and small and light are prime considerations for comfort. We must have talked to about 50 book publishers who owned one of the other eBook Readers and kept hearing "cumbersom, no fun to hold, hard to pack, and particularly the general layout makes it impossible to hold for more than an hour". To them, our device was a major leap forward in ergonomics.

I did note another reader commenting on the delay for the Astak device. I do sympathize; but wanted to explain that this is brand new to us. We are not an Amazon or a Sony. Also, you initially set schedules based on what you think it will take. However, no man is an island... we were forced to work with Adobe, Microsoft, Mobiepocket and other formats. A device without a format is not a device. We expected they would fall all over themselves to get their format on our devices. Reality is they fell all over themselves not doing anything. Agreements took months and then it came to getting it actually ported. Silly me... I thought it would take a few weeks at most. Porting takes forever and there is little help. You either pay $200,000 to have someone else do it (raising the price you charge for the device) or you try to slog thru it yourself with engineers who never did it before. I do not think the average MobileRead Forum experts truly understand what porting is... an endless nightmare.

Yes, I agree that there are more pressing issues than "thinner and lighter" but at least I am open to hearing them. I did invite the readers to come to CES and chat. I cannot solve all of the problems with eBook Readers in one effort. I can just try to keep the price down and generate the best one yet. Will there be a Version 2? Yes, I think so. This is because technology keeps moving forward and eBook Readers are a compilation of the parts... panels, controllers, embedded flash, e-paper, micro-electronics, and copyrights. By the time you get one device to market, advancements have come out that you wish you had.

I do appreciate your comments!!

[Luigino]

Hello robertb,

glad to hear some news from you! At the present most important questions are two for me, and also for most of mobileread's users:

1) Will ASTAK adopt for 6" model then also for 9.7" model Epson's screen controller S1D13521 mentioned in earlier posts? I don't think it would expect some deep programming for it since it's something hardware...

2) Will the 6" model be splitted in two versions: one full featured and one just with base functionalities with a lower price for no-budgeted people?...

That would be interesting if you could give us an answer, even a simple "actually I don't know the commercial plan" and stuffs... :-)

Thanks
Ciao,
Luigi

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Robertb

Hello everyone. Let me try to update a bit on Astak's devices.

Dear Robetb.
Thank you for sharing information with us.
Some of people will be angry, some will grumble, others will accuse you of unspeakable things, but it is only because there is a high level of anticipation. The worst thing that could happen is that people would not care ..

Originally Posted by Robertb

We have had our entire staff deliberately trying to make it mess up and it seems to be rock-solid.

Do not worry.
The customers will do things even the most pessimistic engineer did not imagine in his worst dream, and some computer literate Luddite will make it crash in 5 minutes . Or a genius hacker will think of some very clever thing to do ...

I hope you did try loading the full capacity of memory card with many thousands books. Engineers at Sony did not try this and as a result the Reader chokes (or at least becomes VERY slowly responding and sluggish) if you load it up with as little as several hundred e-books.
I hope you did try to load badly formatted, damaged or othervise abnormal files. Also try "funny" filenames - in other character sets (for example generated on russian version of windows), too long, too deep in nested subdirectories, containing illegal characters.

Please send me Private Message if you are interested in "a few" such files.

[axel77]

Originally Posted by Robertb

Dear Axel:
[...]
Yes, I agree that there are more pressing issues than "thinner and lighter" but at least I am open to hearing them. I did invite the readers to come to CES and chat. I cannot solve all of the problems with eBook Readers in one effort. I can just try to keep the price down and generate the best one yet. Will there be a Version 2? Yes, I think so. This is because technology keeps moving forward and eBook Readers are a compilation of the parts... panels, controllers, embedded flash, e-paper, micro-electronics, and copyrights. By the time you get one device to market, advancements have come out that you wish you had.

I do appreciate your comments!!

Hey, I can only reflect from my Iliad... Its thin and leight enough than I could hope for, especially compared to any notebook. Sure thinner and leighter is nice, but really not a hot shot IMHO. Here are some things not necessarily in order:

Think the obvious answer we all know is screen size. Current reader maybe fine aleady for books, but many people want to read A4 Pdf files, and this is a pain. Yes I know there are technical limitations and we will need to still wait a while for the 9" series.

Physical stability, also no big secret, and also a problem all devices have, because at the end they currently all cook with the same water. The flexible screens might be a hugh benefit. Also I think its time for ereaders to discover what notebooks and other devices learned already before years. This is folding, a folded device usually can take much more impact than an unfolded or notfoldable. Look at the XO2, other than this device never might get reality the design is very, very smart.

Also the missing speed is an issue, but its also in the technology, I know. But currently I still happen to print out papers when working with them, because skimming through papers is a pain. On the iLIad its not only the 1 second for the screen people blame it for, its often still quite a bit slower due to processor stuff, sometime taking 5 seconds to flip a scanned page. (I know rendering the image of the scanned page is not a CPU friendly task, but its still a thumbs down on using ereaders)

Aside from screen tech, I think the biggest frontiers right now is the software side. Yes we got a pdf reader, and we got a adobe reader... and we got a notetaker, but there isn't any good software than combines all these. That allows one to make notes to pdf files (that is to attach a note to a point in the file, not scribbling ontop of the page like the current iLiad does). That allows to link pages for pdf files with other pages of other files, that allows to view to things side by side. Much like you work with traditional paper, if you work with that paper, other than reading for pleasure. Easily buying stuff online is another one of this content things. This is the secret of Amazon, its so quick and easy to buy stuff, people like to do that. Even in the paper world, I'm quite a good costumer to amazon, because getting a book you want is click-click-click-done, and a few days later the postman comes it within his hands... Newspapers is the same, its always what people market eReaders for, but in reality its quite difficult to get your newspaper on your reader.

Another big issue on the iLiad is the writting gap, that is the gap where you really put your pen upon and where the device thinks your pen is. Its an underlying problem with WACOM technology... however a gap less scribbling would be a real advantage. BTW, scribbling I consider a very important thing, and the iLiad is currently the one and only device that supports this at all.

Another issue that strikes me more, than I actually read people complaining about. is reflectivity of the screen. The screen is quite different reflective than paper, meaning if you have a light source directly over it, it will reflect in it like in a window, making reading impossible until you have to hold it differently. This a problem paper doesn't have. The sun never will reflect itself in paper, if it isn't one of this high gloss magazines. I don't know how this could be fought, if putting an anti-reflective film onto the screen will help. I read somewhere someone did it with the iLiad putting on of the films you can buy for other things onto its screen. But never heared how well it really worked out.

Another issue I'm sure that will split people into groups is operating system. I know some people like to use windows also on their embedded devices, because thats the OS they also grew up with, which the computer had when they were kids, and which the only thing is they really feel comfortable with. But on the embedded market (and I speak as ex-embedded developer) this as limits in how much it really makes sense. And funny enough some markets quite differ if you go from product type to product type. Try nowadays to get an oscilloscope which is not a PC with f*** windows on it. Especially e.g. the HP one, we managed to bluescreen it within the first 10 minutes trying Also I had already to watch cash-machines rebooting with a windows splash screen after I inserted my card... which of course it never gave back. I thanked got the eReader market was one of this product types where obviously smarter techs were at the work. I don't know what made you guys think, lets use CE, because it is better... hmmm... but I understand that this is nothing you can change anymore gone that far already. I'm sure there are quite a number of costumers that won't mind.

[squonk]

hallo , this is for europeans : plastic logic is from england and the firm is in Dresda, germany, ....... waiting for an answer to my email about the device, however born for pdf files tooo !!!!!
bye
A.

[squonk]

... a readable and writable device......
A.

[TheRealBillc]

Robert, I know that you said earlier that a dictionary will not be in the device out of the gate but I hope it is on the short list for the immediate future. File folders are a big priority too, but I haven't heard much about that. I'm with you with the lighter and thinner device (tho bigger and color are always in the back of my mind). Considering I have to add a cover and a light source, I want it as light and thin as possible, while still having a durable device. I did not plan to buy until December, so the delay hasn't affected me so far, but it would be a shame if you miss the Christmas buying season. Getting a device with a faster controller is a real plus, I just hope it will have wifi and possibly bluetooth when its released. That would mean less gadgets and wires to deal with, so I consider that a plus. I have "free" wifi where I live so that is why that is possibly more important to me than others. I could go for the metallic blue, but any dark color would do. I plan on having two devices. A 6 inch for casual reading and something larger that can display a letter size page for professional use. My ideal professional letter sized device would have to display Word, Excel and Powerpoint, while including a touch screen, virtual keyboard, bluetooth and wifi.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by TheRealBillc

Robert, I know that you said earlier that a dictionary will not be in the device out of the gate but I hope it is on the short list for the immediate future.

Any device implementing MobiPocket support should have the ability to use Mobi dictionaries. I would prefer to have the freedom to supply my own dictionary rather than being "stuck" with one default one, which is almost certain not to please the majority of users. Far better, therefore, to implement Mobi dictionary support than to actually supply a dictionary - IMHO, of course.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by squonk

hallo , this is for europeans : plastic logic is from england and the firm is in Dresda, germany, ....... waiting for an answer to my email about the device, however born for pdf files tooo !!!!!
bye
A.

Actually the manufacturing is in Germany but the firm is in Mountain View, CA, USA. (see the wiki)

Dale

[Luigino]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Actually the manufacturing is in Germany but the firm is in Mountain View, CA, USA. (see the wiki)

Dale

Yeah but since the manufacturing is in Germany could be possible Plastic Logic product being sold in Europe before than USA..

Luigi

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Luigino

Yeah but since the manufacturing is in Germany could be possible Plastic Logic product being sold in Europe before than USA..

Luigi

I doubt it. The reader is no good without software. And if the parent is in the USA ...

Dale

[Luigino]

uhm we don't know yet the complete datasheet of this plastic logic product.... by the video at least looks like its read really good but its only a demo prototype for now...

[tirsales]

What a pity about Microsoft. I really wonder why companys still use that crap ...

Will the first devices be shipped with touchscreen? I really dont have *any* use for another recreational reading device - and a device without touchscreen can never be more (apart from being in a direct fight with Sony and Amazon and every other eReader on the market so far)

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by tirsales

Will the first devices be shipped with touchscreen?

Yes. See the wiki.