New JBL owner, rambling thoughts

[Snarfblat]

Hi,

Thanks for all the valuable information on this forum. I'm a new user here and the Jetbook Lite is my first dedicated e-reader. I picked it up at Newegg.ca for $100, and it was the reasonable price that sealed the deal. I was looking for the Sony 650 since about Christmas, watching Ebay and looking for sales, but that reader seems to be in very short supply right now.

I had a chance to compare the LCD (Aluratek) and Pearl (Sony650) screens side-by-side at BestBuy, and I was surprised at how much I liked the LCD screen. The contrast was great, the fonts seemed sharp, the page turns were really fast and there was no "reset" between each page. I decided to get the 5" LCD screen and try it out, maybe buy the Sony as well when there were more units available.

I liked the idea of using rechargeable AA batteries since I have a lot of them and always have a set charged and ready to use, so that pushed me towards the Jetbook Lite. I probably would have considered the mini as well, if it could handle more formats. I'm not really interested in wifi or mp3 capabilities.

Out of the box the Jetbook is feather-light, but it feels a little heavy once the batteries are installed. It's also clearly off-balance if I try to hold it with my right hand, but perfectly balanced in the left. I also find the case to be very slippery (could be my dry hands) and I almost dropped it a couple of times. I might consider a silicone skin for it.

I've heard the page-turn slider on the left-side described as unusual and useless, but I find that I really like it and have been using it about 90% of the time for page turns. It's right there at my thumb when I'm holding the Jetbook, it's got the right sensitivity, and it doesn't make any noise. I hope that they keep this feature for future products.

I think that the chrome page-turn buttons on the bottom left are too shiny, and they catch the light once in a while like little mirrors. I think flat-black would probably be a better choice.

I've been reading at font size 18 or 20, less page turns at 18, but easier for me to read at 20. I think this is where a larger screen would be nice, to have less page turns AND a slightly larger font. More font style choices would be great too.

It took me a little time to adjust to reading on the device, probably a least an entire book to really get into the zone and forget about the device itself. I'm on my third book now and reading on the device feels pretty natural.

I've been going through a lot of batteries, 3 sets on the first day. I'm not sure if removing the sd card and/or transferring files sucks up a lot of juice but that seems to have settled down a bit and I'm on 4-bars after about 8 hours on this last set. I read about some units freezing up, so I've been replacing them at 2 bars to stay on the safe side. I like popping in a new set and just continue reading. I suppose with a lithium-ion you could plug in an AC adapter and continue reading and that would be OK with me as long as the cord is pretty long.

I was surprised at how slow some actions are on the device, like loading up the book list on the SD card for the first time. It's not so bad after the first time though. I also read an epub book that took longer and longer to turn the page, and after about 110 pages it was almost 5 seconds to turn. My current book is also epub and has about 300 pages so I jumped to the end to test out the page-turn speed and it's pretty much as fast as at the start. Maybe there is some kind of formatting issue I should watch out for.

I've been using Calibre to convert and transfer books and it seems to work very well although it is not very intuitive for me. Watching the how-to videos on YouTube helped a lot.

One feature that I would really like is a comprehensive (read: huge) English dictionary that works with every format. Even if I had to type in the word that would be OK as long as I could get back to reading quickly. That is probably one of the most appealing features of the Sony to me, double-click on a word and get the definition. That's just awesome.

Sorry for rambling. Overall I'm pleased with the Jetbook Lite so far, I think it was worth every penny.

[GA Russell]

Originally Posted by Snarfblat

Hi,
I had a chance to compare the LCD (Aluratek) and Pearl (Sony650) screens side-by-side at BestBuy, and I was surprised at how much I liked the LCD screen. The contrast was great, the fonts seemed sharp, the page turns were really fast and there was no "reset" between each page...

Overall I'm pleased with the Jetbook Lite so far, I think it was worth every penny.

Welcome Snarfblat! Glad you like your JBL.

Don't hesitate to tell the Kindle and Sony owners that you found the JBL's reflective TFT screen to be preferable to the eInk pearl screen. They'll find it hard to believe, but I feel it's a public service to put the word out.

[demingite]

I am a little concerned about some of the problems you have mentioned. You may want to make sure that you have the latest firmware (I think there is a sticky somewhere on this forum as to how to install the firmware.) I have been using a JBL for about 3 months now; your battery life seems very wrong. I have found that I can read at least 400 actual pages (not screen pages, which vary with the font size) before changing batteries. I have never experienced the slowdown you mentioned reading any books. I read a 400 page epub book and the page turns were instantaneous from beginning to end. It can be slow to load a book for the first time, or refreshing the book list after reloading the device, though. I also wish that the dictionary was better. The words I don't know aren't in the dictionary, either.

[Ken Maltby]

Three battery changes in one day? It would be more typical to go three days between
battery changes. There was a thread awhile back where I ran some tests of the
performance of rechargeable batteries and you should be getting between 25 and 30
hours, of reading time, from standard rechargeable NiMH batteries.

You can power the JBL using a USB cable. A common USB device power adapter would
work fine and if your PC remains powered/plugged in, when it is turned off, most are set
so the USB ports remain powered.

Calibre has an Output Profile for the "jetBook 5-inch", you might want to use that.

Luck;
Ken

[cromag]

The battery life seems very low to me, too. The set of alkalines that came with my JBL lasted more than a week of heavy use (it was still a new experience and all). I replace my NiMH batteries when they get to 2 bars as well since I have a lot of them. Are your NiMH batteries old? Or are you using NiCads?

Anyway, welcome! I've been a JBL owner for about 2 months now, so it's still a bit new for me -- and a lot of fun!

[Ken Maltby]

As to it being slippery, I haven't found it so, but you might look into

http://www.plastidip.com/home_solutions/Plasti_Dip

http://www.plastidip.com/docs/plasti...%202-25-09.pdf

Luck;
Ken

[Catlady]

I'm wondering about the battery life too. If you're using rechargeables, are you sure they're fully charged? If they've been sitting around a while, they could be losing a lot of their power.

You can attach a wrist or neck strap to the JBL if you're concerned about dropping it.

I too usually hold the JBL in my left hand and use the slider with my thumb. Seems like the simplest way to do it.

I haven't had any issues with the page turns slowing down, and I've got some 1000+ page books loaded.

[Snarfblat]

Hi all thanks for the kind words and advice.

I'm using NiMH batteries, Eneloops, "Duraloops", and some Panasonic 2300mAh ones. I don't have a fancy charger, just the ones that came with the batteries. Some of them are getting to be a few years old now, so it might be worth it to buy a conditioning charger. This last set has gone about 12 hours and the JBL is on 3 bars so that seems OK.

I've gone to the end of some other epub formatted books to test the page turn speed, and it looks like the delay I was having could be just a problem with that one book. I finished the book anyway so no worries. The JBL came loaded with firmware v0.16e (Patch v16).

I considered loading a txt dictionary as a book (or multiple books) and then flipping through pages to find a word, but that seems pretty cumbersome. Has anyone found a better way (besides having a paper dictionary on hand)? Thanks

[West Virginia]

Chrome buttons!? I don't got no chrome buttons on my JBL! They don't sound very good to have but...I want 'em now, gosh darn it!

[GhostHawk]

Snarf if you havn't tried it yet, put the JBL into landscape mode (there is a button for that below the menu button)

This orrients the words the long way (with the screen) and to me makes reading even faster and easier than the other way.

In this mode the left thumb naturally sits on the page turn button.

Give it a try, I suspect you might like it.

Anyway, welcome to MR, and enjoy that JBL!

[jlg432]

You can kill the performance of a rechargeable battery with one drop on a hard surface. Just that one battery in line with the others affects the whole group.

I am not saying it happens with every drop but it does happen.

As for the older batteries - they tend to lose their charge while waiting to be used. It may be time to replace them with the newer tech batteries that have an excellent shelf life between charges. Also you should never let a battery deplete to zero or very little charge. This can pre-maturely kill them.

John

[judahis]

I have hundreds of Word files that I want to put on an SD card to read on my Jetbook Lite. I know I have to convert them to .txt, but is there a way to do more than one at a time, I.e, batch conversion? This would save loads of time, please help.

[demingite]

Originally Posted by judahis

I have hundreds of Word files that I want to put on an SD card to read on my Jetbook Lite. I know I have to convert them to .txt, but is there a way to do more than one at a time, I.e, batch conversion? This would save loads of time, please help.

A quick Google search turned up several possibilities, but I don't think any of them are free.
Below is just one example, but I haven't tried any.

http://doc2txt.com/?hop=trev92

[GA Russell]

judahis, you can convert them one at a time to rtf with Word. From there, you can batch-convert them to whatever you like (Why txt?) with calibre.

[GhostHawk]

I'd leave them as RTF's, it is my format of choice when I have a choice.