First week with the STAReBOOK

[Bob Russell]

A short aside...

I'm sure Roland will make note of the input regarding the review style. But, personally, I think either style (informal-personal-fair or formal-facts-only) is fine. We are fortunate to be getting such great information from Roland. He is clearly being both fair and helpful in his approach, and is not trying to further any separate secret agendas. He's simply providing information in a personal style to the community for our benefit, and succeeding magnificently. If he was intending to publish the review at the WSJ, I'm sure his writing style would be different.

As it is, the advantage of his style is exactly what was indicated before - it's more personal and informative. It gives impressions as well as facts. For those of us that want to get a feel for the relative merits of a device we might never have the opportunity to hold in our hands, it works well. It does benefit the community greatly. And, of course, he is most welcome to compare to devices he is familiar with.

I believe he already made that very clear in the beginning,

First of all, I'd like to make a few things clear:

1) As with the Iliad deal, I don't get paid for what I do here. I'm trying to make an independent review here, for the community, not for the company.

2) Staretek has provided the review unit free of charge. I did not have to pay a single penny for either the device or the shipping to Germany. For this I'd like to thank those responsible at Staretek and especially Ivan who was always very helpful.

3) I will compare the device to the Iliad from time to time. I know that the devices are completely different, but there are still some things that can be compared, like reading ebooks on the devices. I think it makes sense to compare, even if this is far from a apples to apples comparison.

I know that not everyone will agree with my thoughts here. We have a very diverse group, and as I have said in the past, that's one of our great strengths at MobileRead. We'll have different opinions about writing styles. But I hope we won't all get too distracted with style issues and miss the whole point. We are getting a nice glimpse of an exciting new device, with good and bad, and with comparisons to another device that some of us might be familiar with.

So let's get back to the device itself, okay!?

[roncri]

Great first review. Thanks much.

[Tom Swift]

So, should I get one next week? I am heading into Shanghai for Chinese New Year and am severely tempted to get one of these. The only sticking point seems to be the software. Have you heard anything about future software upgrades that would allow better fonts or txt or rtf or other formats?

[CommanderROR]

@Tom Swift

All I have so far is a promise that text-layout and Fonts will be fixed. There seems to be some interest in developing a PDF viewer, but it does not seem to be top priority.
I'll tell you more if I hear more, but that's all for now.

ETA for the text-layout and fonts was 30-45 days from last week, so it should be 3-4 weeks, but software timelines are always dodgy...

[Tom Swift]

Thanks. I think I will wait until the software issue is sorted out. If it would just use plain .txt. or .rtf, it would be perfect.

I will just have to wait until you give me the go-ahead.

[NatCh]

You could also consider the Bookeen version the Baen crowd is aiming for -- same hardware, different software.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9400

[NatCh]

Say, CommanderROR, it occurs to me to wonder if you can see any indication on (or inside, if you're brave/crazy enough ) your STAReBook, as to who's actually manufacturing the hardware. Since the reader Bookeen is working on seems to be the same hardware, and I'm wondering who's buying what from whom, you see.

[CommanderROR]

I'm sorry NatCh, I am not going to open the device anytime soon, especially since it does not have any visible screws...^^

On the outside there are just mentions of eRead and "Made in Taiwan".

[CommanderROR]

Another matter:

I have been trying to establish contact between Scotty 1024 and Staretek for a week now, but somehow Scotty's mails just don't get there or can not be found.
I hope Scotty will provide me with his email address so that staretek can contact him, maybe it will work that way round.
It's real strange. Establishing contact is turning into a real puzzler here... :-)

I hope we'll manage and that something good will come of the relationship.

[CommanderROR]

UPDATE:

I am making the move to Windows VISTA at the moment and can confirm that the eREAD Software that staretek uses is working just fine with VISTA x64

[CommanderROR]

Another brief UPDATE:

There are still problems with establishing contact between staretek and Scotty1024. Somehow they just can't reach each other by email although both sides are trying...we have now tried several email addresses, my emails get through to both, but theirs don't...I hope we'll get this resolved.
I'll let you know how things progress.

[CommanderROR]

FINALLY!

We have contact...:-)

Now, let's see whether Scotty1024 and the guys from Staretek get along and can work together to make the STAReBOOK an even better choice for mobile reading...^^

[micro]

Well, I'm another one who's just taken the plunge and picked up a STAReBOOK in Taipei 2 days ago. I'll raise your vista install with the probable entertainment that will be running eRead on a mac using Parallels.

I'll keep you posted.

By the way, the girls in the STAReREAD store are really nice, and while their engrish isn't the best they are really nice and helpful.

micro

[phuata]

I'm looking at the Baen group ebook order, which says it will be using this same hardware, so I appreciate your review, letting us know something about this.

[CommanderROR]

Glad to be of service...:-)

I'm waiting for the new firmware and hoping to hear news about the Scotty1024/Staretek deal soon. The chinese had a week of celebration last week, so I have news yet.