News from Bookeen about firmware upgrade

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by tompe

You are trying to find explanations to something that I am convinced of is just that they did not have time (or money to hire more people) to do it.
Or they just do the minimal thing they can get away with and still earn the same amount of money.

Yes, you're right. As a scientist I do try to look for rational explanations for observed phenomena. Perhaps you're right and they just decided to leave it as it is. We can only speculate.

I'm going to stick my neck out, however, and predict that this behaviour will NOT be changed in the forthcoming firmware update.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by tompe

You are trying to find explanations to something that I am convinced of is just that they did not have time (or money to hire more people) to do it.
Or they just do the minimal thing they can get away with and still earn the same amount of money.

I'm presuming it's the time/money/people more than anything else. I may be wrong, but given that Sony, Amazon, Hanlin and iRex are also all struggling to iron out bugs, upgrade and add features and keep current customers happy - although not necessarily with page-numbering/page-determination issues, I think this is a reasonable presumption.

But, while I'm far more patient than some who own current-generation e-ink devices, I will probably start losing patience if features I need aren't added or fixed.

For me, page-numbering is not critical. Clearly, for others it is. And I would urge Bookeen to clear up the issue.

However, I would like to note that this tempest-in-a-teapot only really flared into a complaint here on MR in the past few days. Folks, whether it is an important issue or not, the lead time for fixing it is going to be longer than part of one week.

Further, we all, whether we like it or not, whether we believe it or not, are, at the very least 'early-adopters'. That means by choosing to buy our e-ink devices so early in the e-ink life-cycle, we have to accept that we will have to suffer through the bug-fix and 'upgrade' cycle until a more stable (yes, there's still a page-numbering and bookmarking bug), and more feature-laden firmware comes along.

Demanding 'instant' bug fixes is unreasonable. Demanding 'instant' bug-fixes for bugs that only impact a tiny portion of the customer base - and no one has convinced me that the page-numbering/page-determination bug is all that critical - is both unreasonable and delusional, IMO. Bookmarking is somewhat more important. A working, rational folder navigation system is far more important. Eliminating the file-corruption if one accidentally disconnects without using 'safely remove hardware' is CRITICAL. (Most users are not going to be that observant of this - just ask your favorite older aunt or grandparent if they remember to do so.)

Just my humble opinion. And if you disagree, that's okay by me.

Derek

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Yes, you're right. As a scientist I do try to look for rational explanations for observed phenomena. Perhaps you're right and they just decided to leave it as it is. We can only speculate.

I'm going to stick my neck out, however, and predict that this behaviour will NOT be changed in the forthcoming firmware update.

You know, as a scientist you should prefer the simplest explanation and I think mine is the more simple. That is an easy predicition to do since it cost them less money to do nothing.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

Demanding 'instant' bug fixes is unreasonable. Demanding 'instant' bug-fixes for bugs that only impact a tiny portion of the customer base - and no one has convinced me that the page-numbering/page-determination bug is all that critical - is both unreasonable and delusional, IMO. Bookmarking is somewhat more important. A working, rational folder navigation system is far more important. Eliminating the file-corruption if one accidentally disconnects without using 'safely remove hardware' is CRITICAL. (Most users are not going to be that observant of this - just ask your favorite older aunt or grandparent if they remember to do so.)

Well, they are not instant. And I would be happy with page number indicator because I can probably learn how it behaves and it will be useful and they have had 6 months to fix this.

I wonder if they can do something about the file corruption thing. One thing night be to move the bookmark information files to the internal disk. Also move the system files to the internal invisible disk. The problem is that file corruption can cause the unit not to boot or cause bookmarks not working.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by tompe

You know, as a scientist you should prefer the simplest explanation and I think mine is the more simple. That is an easy predicition to do since it cost them less money to do nothing.

Doing nothing when they're large and unwieldy, with millions of customers (kinda like Amazon) costs them nothing. Doing nothing while they're small and have just a few thousands of customers - that's called 'screwing your Goodwill'. And I do not think that Bookeen would do this. I grant that this does happen with small firms, but I am quite willing to presume this is not the case, yet.

Derek

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by tompe

Well, they are not instant. And I would be happy with page number indicator because I can probably learn how it behaves and it will be useful and they have had 6 months to fix this.

I wonder if they can do something about the file corruption thing. One thing night be to move the bookmark information files to the internal disk. Also move the system files to the internal invisible disk. The problem is that file corruption can cause the unit not to boot or cause bookmarks not working.

Yep. That's why I listed the file-corruption issue as critical.

Derek

[tompe]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

Doing nothing when they're large and unwieldy, with millions of customers (kinda like Amazon) costs them nothing. Doing nothing while they're small and have just a few thousands of customers - that's called 'screwing your Goodwill'. And I do not think that Bookeen would do this. I grant that this does happen with small firms, but I am quite willing to presume this is not the case, yet.

Well, they are already screwing their Goodwill by not answering emails, not updating the blog and not respecting the GPL. So why change?

[Ralob]

Originally Posted by tompe

Well, they are already screwing their Goodwill by not answering emails, not updating the blog and not respecting the GPL. So why change?

I can second that.

[slayda]

I've read ebooks on my Cybook that were shorter (and more interesting) than this thread, even without page numbers.

To myself I say, "Don't feed the trolls!"

[Halk]

Originally Posted by slayda

I've read ebooks on my Cybook that were shorter (and more interesting) than this thread, even without page numbers.

To myself I say, "Don't feed the trolls!"

Did you read them twice? :P

[bob_ninja]

Or go here

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22492

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by Halk

Did you read them twice? :P

Three times! But her file system corrupted and she forgot one of the readings!

Derek

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by tompe

Well, they are already screwing their Goodwill by not answering emails, not updating the blog and not respecting the GPL. So why change?

I agree with you about the blog updates. And the not answering emails on these subjects. However, we don't know the circumstances behind their contracts with either Mobipocket or their hardware supplier, so it isn't fair if the GPL vs. the contracts is in conflict to put all the blame on Bookeen.

Derek

[igorsk]

Wow, this thread got pretty intense.

Originally Posted by HarryT

No, what you're thinking of, I think, is that the Gen3's Mobi reader is not the portable Java version that Mobi wrote which, for example, the iLiad directly uses. The Gen3 doesn't have a JVM; its code is all written in C or C++, I think.

They used gcj to compile Java sources into native ARM code. And all Mobipocket class names are the same as in other implementation, so they did use classes provided by Mobi.

[jgray]

I thought I'd make a comment about the way Mobi does the funny paging. My understanding is that this is due to the fact that the format originalted on Palm devices and all the constraints imposed by that. It seems that to speed up the handling of long ebooks, the text is stored in the Mobi file in chunks that are decompressed on the fly when reading. Only a specific chunk of text is decompressed at a time, which is the cause of the paging problem when you jump a huge distance in the file. This is especially bad when you jump backwards, as others have noted.

So, if Bookeen implemented the Mobi way of doing things (which it seems they did), then the Cybook is going to have the same problem as any other Mobi reader software, on any platform. As to whether they are allowed to implement this differently, only they know for sure.

This just points out one more reason to move away from archaic ebook formats like Mobi (and others), which were designed long ago, under different constraints than we have today. Why carry the old baggage forever?

The other thing that is missing from this discussion is the fact that the Cybook handles other ebook formats, not just Mobi. How is the paging issue handled in these other formats by the Cybook software?