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

[griffonwing]

Originally Posted by Robertb

...blah blah blah...

Mr.Griffonwing is now sporting a clean and well-groomed look but still has that

..blah blah blah...

That's it, I'm posting a different pic. I can't have everyone saying how well-groomed I am. It's bad for my image.

But I am glad to hear about the finishes of your e-readers. Not having any physical contact with them, I wasn't so sure.

[Robertb]

Dear All:

Finally we have the Under Construction sign up at: www.goEZebook.com

Praise God and Griffonwing who again changed his picture.

Final color selections for EZ Reader Pocket PRO appear to be:

Black

White.... PMS461 (a tannish white)

Maroon... PMS174 (a brownish red that should be pleasing)

Blue... ... PMS2955 (a bluer slate blue)

Purple..... PMS2385 (a violet pinkish purple, really lively and pretty)

Green...... PMS382 (a nice lime green to do something light for a change)

Still open if there is something you really hate!

[griffonwing]

Wow, great choices of color, esp with the maroon, off-white, and blue. The purple and green are even soft colours. These will definately make this line of readers stand out against the bright glossy neons and vibrants of other companies.

[6charlong]

Originally Posted by Robertb

Dear pkovak:
<snip.
Don't worry... Astak is still more than ever into improving the twin lines with useful features.

The Mentor and EZ Reader lines are both coming out with Adobe Digital Editions and eReader formats, 8 and 16 color greyscale, color screens, and bigger processors. <snip>

This is all interesting. Am I right to assume you mean secure ePub and secure eReader? And will it have a user replaceable battery as well?

edit: I should have read your blog http://www.robertbez.blogspot.com/ before posting. It looks like I'd better start saving. Expected in August, right?

[tneken]

For blue would like 280 or 288.
White should be slightly "dark" white (cant seem to find a nice white on the charts)
For green 369
Purple. 2385 looks nice. so does 246.
Maroon. Doesnt like the color so i wont comment on that

[brecklundin]

Originally Posted by Robertb

Sorry, DG25! We will meet with Pixel QI in our offices in very early June and will get a sample. They are not ready to roll out panels yet and there is a lot of planning to accomdate that panel. It is proceeding. I expect working prototypes in October with a major unveiling at CES in early January and release in maybe February, 2010. The first product will be 8.9 inch with a 10.1 at a later date.

The 7 inch color screened "Lectra" is only in for trial tests. It is LCD but gets about 8-10 hours per charge. More will be published on my blog when the trial proceeds to yield results.

Actually 8-10hrs for a prototype is pretty impressive. Give the engineers the time and they will ar least triple that number. And if used as an ebook reader mode only I could see run times approaching 50-60hrs. I expect in real world use we will be looking at 20-30hr run times. It is a significant compromise but if we can get better pocket size readers using eink or an analog to drag along on treks into the wild for a week or more, it would then make sense, maybe, to actually own two devices.

Originally Posted by kacir

You should also consider the finish of the surface. Will it be matte, semi gloss, high gloss, super shiny? For a high gloss surface a "Ferrari red" might be an interesting choice

Very good point. The trend over the past 5ish years toward glossy finish laptops is laughable because a glossy black or white case will show every nick, scuff and scratch. Darker colors are the worst offenders. They also show wear much more quickly. Perhaps there are two reasons for these cases, first joe consumers are attracted to shiny things and second people think if the case looks worn it is time to buy something new, even though the guts of the thing will chug along for another decade doing everything you need just fine. Think about it this way, have you ever seen a business build laptop with a glossy case? I think maybe Dell made some once, but I do not know for certain.

Originally Posted by Robertb

Nobody has mentioned brown yet... a brown not quite to Mahogany could look great!!

You commented about greens and blues and I am happy that you did. The Luchscher Color Tests showed that people respond best to light lime green and light tan.

I will look into the Boxwave Clear Touch Anti-Glare today and see how pricing might work. This is a valuable tip and I appreciate it!!

I actually thought the lime green on the "cooler reader" or whatever that cheap device is called was not an objectible color. Still until seeing it in real life, as you and others have mentioned, color on the display, especially LCD's (even if color calibrated and using a proper color profile) are far from good at representing color accurately.

A tan color might also be interesting as I was serious about the bamboo thing.

One thing is I would be in favor of a satin or even brushed metal type finish. Think about painting wallks in your home, satin paint hides most everything whereas glossy exposes every flaw.

And about the Boxwave screen overlays. A very nice part of the anti-glare overlay is it has a feel just like paper. This helps when writing on the device...but also there are those who do appreciate the improved clarity of a glossy display even if they require near perfect lighting to use w/o eye strain issues.

[griffonwing]

Originally Posted by brecklundin

And about the Boxwave screen overlays. A very nice part of the anti-glare overlay is it has a feel just like paper. This helps when writing on the device...but also there are those who do appreciate the improved clarity of a glossy display even if they require near perfect lighting to use w/o eye strain issues.

I can see an aftermarket product that would be clear, like a clear easy-peel type of plastic, that could be lain over the glass surface of the reader. This could give you the same anti-glare/paper feel for those times when you need to write or simple stop glare. Afterwards, they can be easily removed, rolled up and put back in its case.

Then again, as I am totally out of mine element here, I may simple be speaking out of me arse.

[DrunkenDonkey]

Robertb, I (and some of my colleagues) plan to equip with shiny new ebook reader. Thing is, I'm not happy with the multilingual support as of now, it is either missing or done not completely okay. Just 2 things must be present in the os:
1. Full unicode fonts - I think most readers should have them
2. System setting of what encoding to use to convert ansi text to unicode, one of the:
874 — Thai
1250 — East European Latin
1251 — Cyrillic
1252 — West European Latin
1253 — Greek
1254 — Turkish
1255 — Hebrew
1256 — Arabic
1257 — Baltic
1258 — Vietnamese
This will allow proper reading of both ansi and unicode files, properly displaying file names from the card, etc. On windows all this is done with 1 line of code: calling MultiByteToWideChar, I doubt it will be much harder on linux.
Are there plans of adding such support in the near future? Perhaps the new astak readers on the horizon?
Thanks

[Robertb]

Originally Posted by 6charlong

This is all interesting. Am I right to assume you mean secure ePub and secure eReader? And will it have a user replaceable battery as well?

edit: I should have read your blog http://www.robertbez.blogspot.com/ before posting. It looks like I'd better start saving. Expected in August, right?

Dear 6charlong:

ALL Astak eBook Readers have and will have USER replaceable rechargeable batteries. One screw and you have access. All EZ Readers use a Nokia battery that is readily available online at around $14.95.

We know that batteries do not last forever... and why should you have to send the unit back to the factory for a 3 minute task (if it was designed right in the first place). You have a RIGHT to be able to replace the battery yourself when you want to!

[Robertb]

Originally Posted by brecklundin

Actually 8-10hrs for a prototype is pretty impressive. Give the engineers the time and they will ar least triple that number. And if used as an ebook reader mode only I could see run times approaching 50-60hrs. I expect in real world use we will be looking at 20-30hr run times. It is a significant compromise but if we can get better pocket size readers using eink or an analog to drag along on treks into the wild for a week or more, it would then make sense, maybe, to actually own two devices.




Very good point. The trend over the past 5ish years toward glossy finish laptops is laughable because a glossy black or white case will show every nick, scuff and scratch. Darker colors are the worst offenders. They also show wear much more quickly. Perhaps there are two reasons for these cases, first joe consumers are attracted to shiny things and second people think if the case looks worn it is time to buy something new, even though the guts of the thing will chug along for another decade doing everything you need just fine. Think about it this way, have you ever seen a business build laptop with a glossy case? I think maybe Dell made some once, but I do not know for certain.



I actually thought the lime green on the "cooler reader" or whatever that cheap device is called was not an objectible color. Still until seeing it in real life, as you and others have mentioned, color on the display, especially LCD's (even if color calibrated and using a proper color profile) are far from good at representing color accurately.

A tan color might also be interesting as I was serious about the bamboo thing.

One thing is I would be in favor of a satin or even brushed metal type finish. Think about painting wallks in your home, satin paint hides most everything whereas glossy exposes every flaw.

And about the Boxwave screen overlays. A very nice part of the anti-glare overlay is it has a feel just like paper. This helps when writing on the device...but also there are those who do appreciate the improved clarity of a glossy display even if they require near perfect lighting to use w/o eye strain issues.

Brecklundin makes some great points in here! I like the idea of a brushed metal. I DO want the paint to last and be impregnated into the resin so it will not wear off. I will begin to email with Boxwave!!

[Robertb]

Originally Posted by griffonwing

Wow, great choices of color, esp with the maroon, off-white, and blue. The purple and green are even soft colours. These will definately make this line of readers stand out against the bright glossy neons and vibrants of other companies.

Dear Griffonwing and all:

SO many have asked and I had it verified last night that the EZ Reader 5 inch "Pocket PRO" will have the Epson Controller. Dale wrote a great summary of what the Epson controller means to a device about 3-5 pages back in this thread! In short, it means almost immediate page turns and books display far faster. You do not see the "Black Screen" when you advance or regress a page.

A lot of you have asked about this and I am pleased to say it will be in there!

[Robertb]

Originally Posted by DrunkenDonkey

Robertb, I (and some of my colleagues) plan to equip with shiny new ebook reader. Thing is, I'm not happy with the multilingual support as of now, it is either missing or done not completely okay. Just 2 things must be present in the os:
1. Full unicode fonts - I think most readers should have them
2. System setting of what encoding to use to convert ansi text to unicode, one of the:
874 — Thai
1250 — East European Latin
1251 — Cyrillic
1252 — West European Latin
1253 — Greek
1254 — Turkish
1255 — Hebrew
1256 — Arabic
1257 — Baltic
1258 — Vietnamese
This will allow proper reading of both ansi and unicode files, properly displaying file names from the card, etc. On windows all this is done with 1 line of code: calling MultiByteToWideChar, I doubt it will be much harder on linux.
Are there plans of adding such support in the near future? Perhaps the new astak readers on the horizon?
Thanks

The EZ Reader and EZ Reader Pocket PRO will support: big 5 Chinese, English, French, Russian, Ukranian, Espanol, Turkish, French, Deutsch, Bulgarian, Catala, Czech, Greek, Estonian, Magyar, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Norwegian, Polski, Slovensko.

I have no idea yet about Full Unicode Fonts. That has no come up!

[Robertb]

Originally Posted by tneken

For blue would like 280 or 288.
White should be slightly "dark" white (cant seem to find a nice white on the charts)
For green 369
Purple. 2385 looks nice. so does 246.
Maroon. Doesnt like the color so i wont comment on that

Dear tneken:

Thank you!! we are all kind of sold already on 2955 for blue. We did like 280, but 2955 won out.

We also did like 369: but felt that we had a lot of intense colors ands wanted something really soft for the green so we chose 382!

I am very pleased that you like 2385!! Me too. I wanted to get something that combined pink and purple to fortify the pink and make it interesting while softening the purple. I think 2385 will be a major winner.

Whites are very hard. I do not want a white white (often known as "Arctic White). I want a "dirty white"... something with some interesting tone. If I could find a pearlescent white that might be nice.

[DrunkenDonkey]

Nice, okay, we will see then

[MaggieScratch]

Pearlescent white would be pretty. Will the covers be brown as shown on your blog? Black would more nicely match my slate blue reader...

Great news on the Epson controller.

Also, will the reader allow users to load fonts?