Onyx Boox M92 sample has arrived. First imression - I love it!

[PF4Mobile]

Originally Posted by johnnyb

They only released the sources after they were threatened with legal action because of GNU violation.
but this is not what concerns me. They were told for three or four years that annotations and hightlights should either be exportable or better, written in the file. What they have been doing for all this years is keep on using the Adobe engine, ignoring the first option and blaming the lack of the second option on the engine. They are just cheap.
And yeah, they managed to brick the update engine with an update once and only offered a solution after a user wrote one for them. Pathetic...

this is one thing that I can not understand, why would somebody bother with writing software for these devices when Android is already out there. I am not familiar with the costs for distributing your devices with Android but I assume that if Barnes & Nobles could do it for less than 150$ (nook touch) it should not be killing for Onyx either. In this case all they would have to do is to care for the hardware drivers and make money on selling the hardware... I bet that it costs them more to develop and maintain the software than paying for Android. I do realize that what I am saying above might be just an uneducated opinion. The things can be more complicated
Coming back to your point ...I believe that they had many other problems to fix (hardware problems for instance) and I do not think that is easy ... What you were asking was to add new features or to improve existing while they had problems with fixing what they had sold...

[repods]

I would like to know if is it possible to disable the wacom pen on the m92

[Beryll Snyder]

Originally Posted by PF4Mobile

this is one thing that I can not understand, why would somebody bother with writing software for these devices when Android is already out there. I am not familiar with the costs for distributing your devices with Android but I assume that if Barnes & Nobles could do it for less than 150$ (nook touch) it should not be killing for Onyx either. In this case all they would have to do is to care for the hardware drivers and make money on selling the hardware... I bet that it costs them more to develop and maintain the software than paying for Android. I do realize that what I am saying above might be just an uneducated opinion. The things can be more complicated
Coming back to your point ...I believe that they had many other problems to fix (hardware problems for instance) and I do not think that is easy ... What you were asking was to add new features or to improve existing while they had problems with fixing what they had sold...

More ore less my opinion.
I also use an Android tablet. There you have everything you need - but no E-Ink.
By the way, the Ectaco seems to be based on a Windows Mobile Platform.

[initx]

Originally Posted by PF4Mobile

this is one thing that I can not understand, why would somebody bother with writing software for these devices when Android is already out there.

I am not an android programmer, but it has several reasons. First, Android is optimized for touch-screen devices, while e-readers are mostly button-oriented, and modifying the system might lead to a lot of problem, too. Second, Android can run only java programs above the Dalvik virtual machine, that is, you have to write all softwares from scratch in java, which is painful.

On the other hand, linux is "already out there", so I guess that Onyx guys just use standard open source softwares, libraries and software components. For a proprietary closed system, modifying a standard linux distro is much less painful than creating an own Android version (w/o market etc.) and then writing all the softwares in java from scratch.

[PF4Mobile]

Originally Posted by initx

I am not an android programmer, but it has several reasons. First, Android is optimized for touch-screen devices, while e-readers are mostly button-oriented, and modifying the system might lead to a lot of problem, too. Second, Android can run only java programs above the Dalvik virtual machine, that is, you have to write all softwares from scratch in java, which is painful.

On the other hand, linux is "already out there", so I guess that Onyx guys just use standard open source softwares, libraries and software components. For a proprietary closed system, modifying a standard linux distro is much less painful than creating an own Android version (w/o market etc.) and then writing all the softwares in java from scratch.

Nook Touch is eink and android based and it is sold for under 150$ at this price I assume the Android license is not a lot
At this moment I believe that lots of apps are already out there for android too. For exapample the PDF reader program called ezPDF reader costs around 5$ or so. Licensing that for Onyx shouldn't add a lot to the initial cost. as I mentioned above Onyx should care only for developing the drivers for their hardware. I installed many other programs on my nook touch and I do not see major problems with them. Not using multitouch is not going to completely disable the functionality of a program. Again, it is already proved by Nook Touch, what I am saying is not speculation, we have the device used as ereader as we speak, it is eink and it is Android based and the cost is under 150$ What doesn't match?

[initx]

Originally Posted by PF4Mobile

Nook Touch is eink and android based and it is sold for under 150$ at this price I assume the Android license is not a lot
At this moment I believe that lots of apps are already out there for android too. For exapample the PDF reader program called ezPDF reader costs around 5$ or so. Licensing that for Onyx shouldn't add a lot to the initial cost.

Two completely different stories. Barnes and Noble is a book (content) publishing company which has an established ecosystem, where the device is just a channel. Their money is not in the Nook but in the sold content. Additionally, they are supposedly much more liquid than a small Chinese company, so they can spare a lot of money developing a specific android clone and maintaining it.

If contrary, Onyx is a hardware developer, so their only chance is being OTHER than the mass, that is, developing a superb device with a superb software. If they used Android, they would just kick their own ass by commoditizing the hardware and thus killing their margin. If I were Onyx, I would rather close the whole business instead.

[duskwalker]

I wondering all the time , why there is no word about M92 on the official webside of ONYX? Anybody an idea ? There is only information about M90, nothing more of the M series

[psv]

Originally Posted by Booxtor

On Monday I will place here the Link to the previous version of Firmware, so you can restore the old version..

perhaps I missed the link; did anybody get the original (1.6) firmware back?

[Booxtor]

Originally Posted by psv

perhaps I missed the link; did anybody get the original (1.6) firmware back?

I am sorry...
I did promise a couple of days ago the version 1.6 for roll back from 1.7, but Onyx eventually decided not to do that They told me they had already improved the 1.7 (all the discovered bugs) and will pass it to me very soon (in two-three days)

[johnnyb]

Originally Posted by Booxtor

I am sorry...
I did promise a couple of days ago the version 1.6 for roll back from 1.7, but Onyx eventually decided not to do that They told me they had already improved the 1.7 (all the discovered bugs) and will pass it to me very soon (in two-three days)

And that's exactly what I mean....
If Amazon only released one firmware as buggy as Onyx (and they have already invested years) they'd be out of business...
And Onyx is still doing their cheapo thing...
Don't get me wrong, I would really like to have a 10" reader but at the moment, even my Kindle Keyboard provides a better experience than any of their devices. I can read, highlight, annotate and most importantly, get the stuff off the device with a freeware tool called klippings... Or I could just use their cloud service to sync my docs and store my annotations... And that is a device for a hundred bucks, around for more than a year...
I'm really not trying to praise Amazon here, I just want to point out that Onyx (and Pocketbook) generally give a damn about their customers' needs, what they are really trying to do is beyond me. I'd gladly (really) spend 350 on a 10" reader that could annotate my PDFs properly, something that a 3 dollar Android app will do, but Onyx are just so terribly ignorant when it comes to making something usable, it's a shame. When you have to reformat your device, you'll lose your work, and believe me, you will have to reformat it sooner or later. When a database file gets corrupted (and this will sooner or later happen too), you use your work. These ereaders are the longest living beta products ever made and I would not entrust the markup of my students' essays to them...

[Beryll Snyder]

Originally Posted by initx

If contrary, Onyx is a hardware developer, so their only chance is being OTHER than the mass, that is, developing a superb device with a superb software. If they used Android, they would just kick their own ass by commoditizing the hardware and thus killing their margin. If I were Onyx, I would rather close the whole business instead.

Ok, but it is almost impossible as a niche company with very limited ressources to go it alone.
And you cannot develop hardware apart from software.
Linux on these devices is a dead end - at least if you have probably only one half-time programmer working. Look at PB for comparison. After one year they managed FW 2.1 which does some of the things people expected a long time ago.
Closing the business? Maybe because color E-ink is around the corner.

[sammy]

You are right in a way, I too tried a lot of readers to read scientific papers...they all have their pros and cons... a eink reader with the abilities of an android tablet... I would spend a lot of money for this!!!
But this ability in Onyx M92 to annotate (better would be to underline then to make it grey) and scribble in the pdf is a great thing, I am really surprised, the M92 is quick it is good to read and the buttons are ergonomic, but you are really right, I would be very happy if I could save my annotations and if I could scribble in Epub too...

[Booxtor]

Originally Posted by johnnyb

And that's exactly what I mean....
If Amazon only released one firmware as buggy as Onyx (and they have already invested years) they'd be out of business...
And Onyx is still doing their cheapo thing...
Don't get me wrong, I would really like to have a 10" reader but at the moment, even my Kindle Keyboard provides a better experience than any of their devices. I can read, highlight, annotate and most importantly, get the stuff off the device with a freeware tool called klippings... Or I could just use their cloud service to sync my docs and store my annotations... And that is a device for a hundred bucks, around for more than a year...
I'm really not trying to praise Amazon here, I just want to point out that Onyx (and Pocketbook) generally give a damn about their customers' needs, what they are really trying to do is beyond me. I'd gladly (really) spend 350 on a 10" reader that could annotate my PDFs properly, something that a 3 dollar Android app will do, but Onyx are just so terribly ignorant when it comes to making something usable, it's a shame. When you have to reformat your device, you'll lose your work, and believe me, you will have to reformat it sooner or later. When a database file gets corrupted (and this will sooner or later happen too), you use your work. These ereaders are the longest living beta products ever made and I would not entrust the markup of my students' essays to them...

Hi,
I just wonder how can you write and judge about Onyx (or Pocketbook) devices when you does not own one of them?
I am using my M92 long enough to say I have the best experience with this device even if I know there are still some really minor issues. I just want to give a chance to guys of this small company and I don't want to support huge corporations with their greed of gain and may be in some points better developed but closed and restricted software.

[PF4Mobile]

@johnnyb What version of Kindle do you use ? What screen size? you made me curious about annotating and reading PDFs on Kindle. I thought I ruled that out.

"sooner or later"a anything can can happen with any sort of device... this is why you have backup software, procedures and so on.

[onesome]

Just a quick question: are the M90/91 and M92 displays identical? I'm asking because some saying there isn't much difference between 903/912 and M92 displays while many M90/91 owner claimed their display is superior to 903/912. Technically there should be visible difference between 8:1 and 12:1 contrast.