Astak's 5" Pocket Pro $199

[John F]

Originally Posted by Robertb

...

As we go up from 4 level to 8 level to 16 level Grey Scale... each title uses more and more memory.

...

My computer monitor is 32 bit, and my Sony is 8 shades of grey, and the "size of the title" is the same wether it is on my computer or on my reader. Waht kind of weird implemtation is Astak using.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by Robertb

Another point is that I am noticing that some ADE ebooks, because of the graphics, and illustrations, eat up a hell of a lot more memory than some of us are used to.

I agree, although the primary reason may be that many commercial ePubs include "embedded" fonts. I put embedded in quotes because the full font files are zipped into in the .epub container file which is a different approach to conventional font embedding. In any case, the fonts can take up a lot of space and it is likely that every single ePub from a publisher will contain the exactly the same fonts. So they end up "wasting" a lot of space, but this is required because of how fonts are licensed.

[griffonwing]

Originally Posted by Robertb

Harry is likely, as usual, right that 1GB of strorage space may be enough. However, the benefit of an SD card slot is other than carrying around your entire library. With SD card slots you can swap music and non-DRM eBooks very quickly and easily. You can read someone's presentation or paper or thesis easily.

I had assumed that Robert meant that the more gray levels allowed, the more and higher quality images you can include, which, in turn, will make the file larger.

Also, allowing for a larger SD support will allow you that many more larger files you can include on your card, without the need to multiple cards.

[Robertb]

Dear ALL:

The 5 inch EZ Reader Pocket PRO is still due to ship on August 31. Despite the fact that Taiwan and China had the 100 year storm in the form of a Typhoon and half a mountain of mud slid down and many of our employees still are hoping their families are safe, and China got 80 inches of rainfall and is also a mess of death and destruction... the latest report from the factory is they should ship on-time... meaning we will ship out on August 31!

Now, this thread is about the 5 inch Pocket PRO! That is the purpose of this thread. There are a lot of new people who come to this thread and they are not finding the key info.

The Pocket PRO has the new and much faster Epson Controller with a 400MHz processor. It brings up books far faster and tuirns pages far faster. It is still E-Ink technology... meaning it gets 8,000 pages to a single charge when only displaying eBooks and it does not cause eye strain. Of course it has font increase and MP3 stereo, and bookmarking and all the rest. It has Adobe Digital Editions pre-loaded yet still displays 12 formats and 20 languages. You are free to purchase eBooks from hundreds of websites and we are assembling a great list of ADE eBook websites where you can purchase ADE eBooks. It has Text-To-Speech, 8 levels of grey scale, replaceable rechargeable battery, SD card slot to 16GB, and it comes in 6 colors chosen by MobileRead Forum members! It is selling for $199 and that INCLUDES the leather crush-resistant case with magnetic clasp.

For more info, or to pre-order, go to: www.theEZreader.com in the North America or (if International) go to: www.astak.com

[Robertb]

Originally Posted by John F

My computer monitor is 32 bit, and my Sony is 8 shades of grey, and the "size of the title" is the same wether it is on my computer or on my reader. Waht kind of weird implemtation is Astak using.

Dear John:

We do not MAKE eBooks, we make devices. By now, people on this forum are aware of that. What I am getting at is that as grey scale rises and formats permit more pdf... books can be expected to grow larger as illustrations that may have been left out when first turned into eBooks from print are now included. Please do not jump to "weird implementation". It appears to us here that file sizes are getting bigger and the IDPF said the same thing at the industry's biggest meeting.

[John F]

The Pocket PRO has the new and much faster Epson Controller with a 400MHz processor? When did this happen?

[griffonwing]

Originally Posted by John F

The Pocket PRO has the new and much faster Epson Controller with a 400MHz processor? When did this happen?

My pimp-slappin hand is getting quite itchy...

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by Robertb

For more info, or to pre-order, go to: www.theEZreader.com in the North America or (if International) go to: www.astac.com

That should be www.astak.com for International orders.

[slayda]

Originally Posted by Robertb

Dear John:

We do not MAKE eBooks, we make devices. By now, people on this forum are aware of that. What I am getting at is that as grey scale rises and formats permit more pdf... books can be expected to grow larger as illustrations that may have been left out when first turned into eBooks from print are now included. Please do not jump to "weird implementation". It appears to us here that file sizes are getting bigger and the IDPF said the same thing at the industry's biggest meeting.

Even though the readers only display 4 or 8 or 16 shades of gray, the ebooks (especially) PDF ebooks made for viewing on a computer) may be stored as 24 bit color images rather than 4 bit gray scale images. That will cause them to be 6 times larger (uncompressed). If the ebook images are made as 4 bit gray scale (i.e. made for e-ink readers) then the ebooks with images will be correspondingly smaller.

This is something for the publishers to consider unless you want to pre-process all the images in your ebooks. With most of the books I read, the only images are maps of some sort, and unless I bookmark them for future reference, they are mostly useless. For that reason I often just leave them out when converting the format for my personal reading.

Some printed books used to have a black & white drawing at the beginning of each chapter but it's been a long while since I've seen any like that. Some of the classics that HarryT works on may very well still have that though.

[John F]

What I am getting at is that as grey scale rises ...

The ignorant lay person in me doesn't see this. I see very few documents with "grey scale" illustrations. Most of what I see are color illustrations. When you were talking about 4, 8, 16 levels of grey scale, I thought you were ignorant of ebooks in general.

... books can be expected to grow larger as illustrations that may have been left out when first turned into eBooks from print are now included

That makes sense.

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by Robertb

Dear ALL:

The 5 inch EZ Reader Pocket PRO is still due to ship on August 31. Despite the fact that Taiwan and China had the 100 year storm in the form of a Typhoon and half a mountain of mud slid down and many of our employees still are hoping their families are safe, and China got 80 inches of rainfall and is also a mess of death and destruction... the latest report from the factory is they should ship on-time... meaning we will ship out on August 31!

The 80 inches of rain figure was for Alishan in Taiwan, which is normally where the most pessimistic numbers come from. The storm was relatively tame by the time it reached China.

Yeah it's a pretty bad situation in parts of the east and mostly in the south here...Northern Taiwan is pretty fine, but I and some people I know are still waiting to hear about some friends/family/acquaintances in the south.

Wasn't a hundred year storm...but a 50-year record for rainfall I think in any event, on a pretty ominous date at that!

Glad to hear things are on schedule.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

The 80 inches of rain figure was for Alishan in Taiwan, which is normally where the most pessimistic numbers come from. The storm was relatively tame by the time it reached China.

Yeah it's a pretty bad situation in parts of the east and mostly in the south here...Northern Taiwan is pretty fine, but I and some people I know are still waiting to hear about some friends/family/acquaintances in the south.

Wasn't a hundred year storm...but a 50-year record for rainfall I think in any event, on a pretty ominous date at that!

Glad to hear things are on schedule.

100 year or 50 year, who cares if it happens to you! I hope everything is alright with your family and friends!

[frozennorth]

Originally Posted by Musicman

I suspect they will read 16gb and more. My EZ-Reader reads an 8gb card, although they say the support is 2gb.

I think the high capacity card support is more geared for storing music files.

EZ-Reader as per website officially supports 4gb.

[griffonwing]

Originally Posted by frozennorth

EZ-Reader as per website officially supports 4gb.

Right. Official support is 4GB, but there have been people on here who say that an 8GB is totally accessible. Not sure about a 16, although I don't see why not.

I't my mind (and I may very well be off the mark on this) that supporting a larger card relies on factors such as how well it can access a full-stored card, and how quick it can go through them. But I'm not certain.

The faster process as well as the Epson controller may be one of the factors why they officially support larger cards. Not certain.

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

100 year or 50 year, who cares if it happens to you! I hope everything is alright with your family and friends!

Family I don't have to worry about, but there are quite a few here who are a bit worried. I know some folks who have been out of touch since the storm and I'm hoping to get some news, but I'm not grieving or suffering like some are (and not to sound too insensitive, but there are a few people who are hamming it up pretty hardcore for the press).

The highest rainfall estimates were I think from Chiayi and Kaohsiung areas, which were around 100+ inches. Pretty impressive for a couple days really.

Most of the problems were in poorly drained areas and in the mountains where folks never quite learn from the previous lessons and rebuild their homes on the same site thinking that next time it will just be their neighbors and not their own house that gets wiped. The bigger cities fared pretty well.

In Taipei where I am, for instance...sure it was rainy and windy, but that didn't stop me from going to the coffee shop or 7eleven to have a sandwich on my day off work. No waist-high flooding in the streets or dramatic mudflows. The hotel that everyone saw fall down on youtube or on the news was a pretty shoddy place in Taitung whose demise was pretty expected. I recall choosing not to stay there once for the same reason a few years ago, when the weather was nice.

Just like most disaster relief projects, there will be hiccups and bad patchwork repair and promises of flood prevention systems that will get improved only around Taipei. It's all very unfortunate, but perhaps some good will come of it.

Anyways, sorry if I'm derailing the thread!