How Does the Jetbook Lite Screen...

[Lady Fitzgerald]

compare to e-ink for resolution?

Also, how good is the zoom? Is it persistant from page to page?

[jblitereader]

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[Lady Fitzgerald]

Thanks. That flaw wouldn't be a problem for me I don't plan on reading in direct sunlight if it gets very warm out. Does the JBL read PDFs?

[DJHARKAVY]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

Thanks. That flaw wouldn't be a problem for me I don't plan on reading in direct sunlight if it gets very warm out. Does the JBL read PDFs?

Yes, but PDF is not a good form for e-reading unless it has been reflowed to match the size of the reader.

That said, you can zoom on part of the page and move it around to read if they are paper sized...

[jblitereader]

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[Lady Fitzgerald]

The PDFs I'm referring to are created from scans of paperbooks. Because of the sheer number of books I am having to scan, OCR and editing are not an option (too time intensive; I'm too close to dying of old age already). The vast majority of the PDFs I have would be readable on a screen in portrait orientation if I could zoom in enough to wipe out the margins. The larger images should be readable if I read them in landscape. The only scrolling would be down. I could live with that. I've already done that reading a PDF book on my 32" TV screen (patched into my computer) zoomed in dramatically so I could read from a distance. A wireless mouse served as a remote scroll. I found it to be quite comfortable to read, even more so than a paperback (I still had a considerable margin on either side of the screen so there is room for more zoom which could be useful as I age).

Which leads to my next question. Will the JBL switch to landscape?

[CraneTseng]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

Which leads to my next question. Will the JBL switch to landscape?

To put is simple: Yes. One button does it. Easily.

[DJHARKAVY]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

Which leads to my next question. Will the JBL switch to landscape?

It rotates from Portrait (only with the batteries on the left) to landscape (only with batteries on top) with one button (one of the four around the rocker)

[Ken Maltby]

The JBL also has a couple of selection grids you can call up when in a PDF, by pressing
the "OK" button (in the middle of the rocker). You can then navagate the grid with the
rocker. If I recall correctly one click of the "OK" button gives you a nine element grid and
two clicks gives you a four element grid.

Luck;
Ken

[GhostHawk]

Consider at least a program which can batch convert pdf's to text.
There are several out there, I use Zilla PDF converter free version.
Its what I do for all books I find in PDF format.

Jetbook and JBL handle "zoom" differently depending on format.
For PDF it is "zoom" for most other formats you can choose font size. There are I believe 6 options (which is one of the nicer points of Jetbook IMO)

Surely there must be someone down in AZ that could meet you to show you what a Jetbook or JBL looks like.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I took a peek at Zilla PDF and it probably wouldn't work. The PDFs I would be reading are created from scanned images as opposed to PDFs that are created from txt, word doc, etc. The only method that would work would be to run the book through OCR (takes too long; using OCR to create a searchable PDF from a 100 page magazine takes over an hour) then editing the inevitable errors would take even longer. With around 1200 books (and growing), the amount of time required is unacceptable. It wouldn't take much zoom to make my books readable on a small screen as long as the resolution is good and it easy to scroll. Thanks anyway.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

The JBL also has a couple of selection grids you can call up when in a PDF, by pressing
the "OK" button (in the middle of the rocker). You can then navagate the grid with the
rocker. If I recall correctly one click of the "OK" button gives you a nine element grid and
two clicks gives you a four element grid.

Luck;
Ken

Ken, could you go into more detail about the selection grids?

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

Ken, could you go into more detail about the selection grids?

OK, I have a number of the full page scan type PDFs that came off CDs
from "Backwoods Home Magazine". The current JBL firmware treats such
PDFs not as text files but like image files (no text selection, dictionary, or
search functions, no font selection just zoom). There are development
efforts underway at Ectaco to change the PDF and EPUB reading to a
different program (a version of ADE that also supports B&N), so this might
likely change with an update to the firmware at some point in the future.
(Of course you can run the firmware of your choice.)

The selection grid for PDF display is simply a numbered grid that lets you
select an area of the page to fill the screen with, by using the number keys
on the right side of the JBL. The first grid has nine elements.

Once you have selected a segment of the grid and are zoomed in to have
the segument fill the screen, you navigate to the adjacent segments with
the rocker/direction keys. This is quite a lot of zoom even for the nine
segment grid, so it is not always the best choice, but it is a quick way
around a large page.

I usually prefer to just use the 200% zoom in most cases.

Luck;
Ken

[jlg432]

The jetBook with FW .35a and up gives you the nbest of both worlds for viewing PDF's on a small screen.

It now supports "Text Flow on/off" as well as active TOC if it exists. The "Text Flow on" feature is great if the PDF is designed for it.

The only difference from Ken's description is the loss of the 4 box and 9 box screen splitting - this function was removed.

When "Text Flow" is "Off" you can either select the desired level from a list under the settings option/Zoom Rate or step through the various zoom rates (increments from 100 % to 400% in steps of 50% and then fit to width before starting all over again. Once you are zoomed in you can use the arrow keys to pan the image.

This is good for reading column style scanned pages as found in magazines as you can zoom to the largest size that fills the screen with a column and then use the arrow keys to follow the flow. It is a pain for reading PDF,s where the text goes across the whole page in paragraph form. In this situation if "Text Flow on" doesn't work then it is back and forth panning to read line per line of text. We are talking scanned 8x10 or larger pages.

With this FW level you also get ADE DRM ePub/PDF support (confirmed by myself) and the .35g give additional B&N's ePub DRM support (not confirmed by me).

John

[jblitereader]

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