eReader Survey - Page 2

Solicitous · 03-31-2010, 07:34 AM

Overall I think the current line of ereaders are brilliant for general novel reading. Where I think the market could expand is in the academic area. This would be suitable for both academics and students.

1. Appearance Not too concerned. I do steer clear of white electronic goods, tend to show dirt.

2. Functions I feel the ability to read PDFs and be able to crop the margins of the entire document you are reading and not just 'zoom' on the current page.

Ability to load multiple documents at once and switch between with ease.

Ability to load .HTML files and follow hyperlinks to other .HTML files stored on the reader.

3. Specifications Love to see a 9.7" reader, or a size suitable for reading A4 documents on. I personally find printing documents 2 pages per side sufficient (A5 size I think each page gets scaled to). PDF is a must as most academic journals are PDF.

4. Colors As said before, I steer clear of white.

MikeOnyx, for a device that fits those criteria I have I would be prepared to spend approx $500AUS (roughly $450US). Sad thing is what I am asking could be done with a software update for the KindleDX.

John F · 03-31-2010, 07:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MikeOnyx

These are great suggestions. However another question would be, realistically, how much are you willing to pay for such a device or like to see the retail price of the device to be?

That would depend on the device. What I would like should be priced $150-$250.

Hamlet53 · 03-31-2010, 08:11 AM

As others have stated I want an e-book reader. I don't need it to sub for a smart phone, web browser, camera, or MP3 player. Especially since these extra capabilities can only increase the bulk, weight, and cost.

For screen size I've been spoiled by my Daily Edition to want at 8-inch; wouldn't want smaller and larger would make the device to clumsy I think. I also now want the touch screen capability with ability to highlight text and add notes. I do miss the clarity of the Sony 505 e-link screen though. I'd actually be willing to pay for a dual screen device, two-color screen of Sony 505 quality, and a full color touch screen for books that have graphics that must be appreciated this way. The rub is I don't think I'd buy such a device until the price dropped to $400 or below.

Oh yeah, a biggie the ability to read about every format out there, but for sure PDF, HTML, RTF, EPUB, and MOBI.

garbanzo · 03-31-2010, 08:20 AM

i have a PRS-300. looks and works fine. my only complaint is the firmware.

instead of fancy features, focus on organization. people with large collections really need a good way to keep their books sorted on the device. folders and tags would be best, with lots of option about how the collection can be displayed (author, genre, title, tag, folder, pub date, date added, etc)

TGS · 03-31-2010, 08:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by garbanzo

instead of fancy features, focus on organization. people with large collections really need a good way to keep their books sorted on the device. folders and tags would be best, with lots of option about how the collection can be displayed (author, genre, title, tag, folder, pub date, date added, etc)

Agree with this - if the IREX DR800 did this, supported annotations (which it will), and was pretty (which it never will be), it would be perfect..... for a while at least, until someone thought of a new feature that one just had to have.

ChrisC333 · 03-31-2010, 08:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MikeOnyx

Please list these features like below:
1. appearance
2. Functions
3. Specifications
4. Colors
5. other

My ideal would be something very close to an iPad in size and looks. I currently read on both an e-ink reader and a netbook and like them both. However, the netbook wins out for me because I like the backlit screen and the ability to display PDFs accurately and with colour. I also like the fact that I can install a wide range of my own choice of software on it.

I'm not fussed one way or another about wi-fi and I don't want 3G. An iPad style device with USB connectivity and a more open software access would be perfect.

I probably wouldn't be tempted by another e-ink reader unless it really stood out for some reason, as the ones already available seem to offer a reasonable choice. However, the local support and distribution for most of them is poor here in Australia, so a good performance there might be attractive.

I'd be unlikely to want to pay any more than $350 or so for a decent e-ink device. However, I'd pay up to $1000 for a tablet style device that I could use for more than just basic text reading. Although, if the features and specs were attractive enough, I'd be prepared to go a lot higher than that for a really good tablet style computer.

sergiodongala · 03-31-2010, 09:40 AM

Here is mine:
1. appearance
cruchpad like
2. Functions
annotation, dictionary, pdf and epub
3. Specifications
9" or more
e-ink or PixelQ screen

LDBoblo · 03-31-2010, 01:04 PM

As far as cost, it depends on functionality. If it's a slow typical ebook reader, I wouldn't want to pay more than $100usd for it, regardless of touch screen or wifi or other features.

If it's a fast epaper reader with a good screen and decent software/firmware, maybe $250-400. I can't think of anything on the market that manages both "fast" and "e-paper" yet. A good, small capacitive touch Mirasol reader with the Sony Touch Edition chassis design would be in this range (lower half) probably. For E-Ink, it'd have to be the fastest/brightest b&w they've demonstrated (not the typical current-gen Vizplex stuff), and the software would need to be pretty polished, and the reader software would need good H&J and font support.

I'd drop $600 for a Pixel Qi iPad-like device (and might do so if NotionInk actually comes up with their product)

CyGuy · 03-31-2010, 01:13 PM

1. Appearance
Device should be sleek, slim, slender. Black color of course.

2. Functions
Must have folder view.

3. Specifications
Must have a built-in SDHC card reader, no sale if it is missing this. Should have mini-USB for charging and copy/paste. A backlight would be very very nice (LED). Screen size around 9". Battery life of at least 10 hours.

4. Colors
Black

5. Other
Should support any/all formats, and no DRM support needed for me personally.

Desertway · 03-31-2010, 01:42 PM

Well there are a lot of opinions out there. Like some others, my earlier post was focused on 5"-6" device, multi-format support, ease of navigation, look-up functions, and library organization. No wireless, no touchscreen, no color. No frills. I would pay $200USD for that.

Xenophon · 03-31-2010, 02:37 PM

My absolute top-of-the-list showstopper-level requirement is that the screen must be NO WORSE than the current Vizplex screens. That is, touch layers above the eInk are a no-no. If you can provide a device with better contrast and/or higher resolution (in terms of pixels per inch) that would be great too. I realize, however, that contrast and resolution are driven more by screen technology than device design, so improvements on this front will typically be industry-wide.

A very close second is massively improved ergonomics. The REB1100 (now sold as the eBookWise 1100) has yet to be equaled for it's physical ergonomics. If you haven't used one, don't just look at pictures! Spend some company $$ and buy one (they're cheap!) and use it for a few hours. Then force your industrial design team to use it. A few of the important points:

It fits well in your hand; that odd-looking battery-lump is actually functional.
The user can choose which page-turn button is forward vs. backward.
The device can be rotated so that any of its four sides is the top.
Its large page-turn buttons mean that no matter how you hold it, there's always a button that's super-convenient to press. Even so, their placement means they don't get pushed by accident either.

These features combine to guarantee that the next-page button is ALWAYS well-placed, no matter how the user chooses to hold the device! (It's an old-tech device, of course, so by today's standards it's too heavy, too slow, and has a sucky screen. None of which detracts from the points above.) This ergonomics issue is a HUGE BIG DEAL! I'm absolutely boggled that nobody's done better than the REB1100 in all these years. Hit these first two items, and I'll buy one for sure.

Third come a bunch of firmware features you can implement outside the document reading software (e.g. no changes needed in the Adobe ePub reading software):

Support a user-provided document that can refer to another doc (like an html link to a local document), where clicking on the link causes the other document to open in the appropriate eBook display software. A good choice of format for this document would be an opds file (it's an open standard!) This single feature would allow user-defined navigation of the eBooks on the reader. And the Calibre folks (or the Calibre2opds folks) would be THRILLED to provide their users with configurable support for producing custom index files -- especially if the file format you choose is an open standard. If you do this, you could skip the next two...
Robust organization support for users with LARGE libraries. Sony's collections are nice, and their lists with side-bar alphabet are OK, but they come up short when there are more than a few hundred books on the device.
Honor the "display-as" (or file-as, or author-sort, or whatever) attribute in eBook meta-data. All of the major ebook formats have metadata fields that distinguish between the visible representation of the author's name and the version to be used for sorting. That is, I want to see the author's name displayed as "John Doe," but have it sorted as "Doe, John" -- exactly as it would be on a library shelf!!!

Fourth come features that require changes to the software for displaying eBooks (such as Adobe's ADE mobile):

User-selectable fonts. A reasonable selection built-in is a good start. Support for user-downloaded fonts would be even better!
Good hyphenation support. This makes full-justification look OK, instead of lousy.
If automatic hyphenation is NOT available, allow the user to TURN OFF full-justification and go with ragged-right instead.
Let the user turn off the *&^%*&^%C teeny right-margin page numbers in ADE mobile! New versions of ADE already support this, IIRC.

I'll probably think of more right after hitting send.

Xenophon

JSWolf · 03-31-2010, 02:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

I have absolutely no problem with the current hyphenation support...

You don't have hyphenation support right now.

Vienna01 · 04-01-2010, 02:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MikeOnyx

These are great suggestions. However another question would be, realistically, how much are you willing to pay for such a device or like to see the retail price of the device to be?

You're right to ask how much forum members might pay for their ideal device. The features and quality of a reader need to be matched with price to be meaningful.

I see some large numbers posted by folks with Euros. I would not pay over $300 for a reader.

A low price market entrant
Delstar just came out with a color reader called Openbook that sold [sells] at Walgreens for $99 on sale. Its' HW looks great. Its' SW wasn't nearly ready. They didn't support DRM. They didn't have a tie-in with an major ebook seller yet. However, they will likely get accurate display for several formats before 2011 and get their act together sometime in 2011.

Without knowing how well the Openbook reader performed several mobileread members purchased the reader sight unseen.That might tell something about the pull an inexpensive reader might have, even on sophisticated users. The reader was offered with a 30 day return privilege -the buyers weren't gamblers.

You should be able to exceed the Openbook price point and even get double digit share in NA, Pacific Basin or Europe. To do that your device needs to look "cool" [whatever that is], be eye-friendly[little eye strain], render most popular formats accurately, display PDF reasonably, provide a convenient way for buyers to purchase books and to borrow ebooks from libraries [public or rental maybe]. This indicates you need to support DRM such as Adobe Digital and/or ePUB's DRM flavor. As a later player, a new vendor [except Apple and Amazon] cannot dictate a new format.

I'm not clear about the need to provide GEN 3 Telecom data access to books in a base-priced reader. You might have a second flavor with a higher price for that. If your users can browse and buy books using their smart phones but for delivery to their purpose-built ereader, that would be a big plus even if they were not to read on their phones. Folks seem to like using WiFi to put data on their devices such as phones and readers. The need to connect a device to a PC or MAC using a cable seems to turn buyers off. I don't know how much extra might be paid to have this feature.

How much would I really pay?
For my second ereader,this week I paid $300 for a quality B&W [eINK] reader. That reader receives raves from sophisticated buyers.I doubt this vendor will ever have double digit market share most places [maybe in Cyrillic countries]. It is however the kind of reader members of Mobileread.com might [do] buy.

But I don't know about marketing, I'm just an engineer!

Sweetpea · 04-01-2010, 02:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You don't have hyphenation support right now.

actually, I do... at least on my Mini I do. I'm using PDF on it. And I'm absolutely not missing it on my other two readers.

Sweetpea · 04-01-2010, 02:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vienna01

I see some large numbers posted by folks with Euros. I would not pay over $300 for a reader.

$300 = €300. More or less...

03-31-2010, 07:34 AM	#16
Solicitous Wizard Posts: 1,434 Karma: 1525776 Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: TAS, Australia Device: Astak Pocket Pro (Black), 2 x Kindle WiFi (Graphite), iPod Touch 4G	Overall I think the current line of ereaders are brilliant for general novel reading. Where I think the market could expand is in the academic area. This would be suitable for both academics and students. 1. Appearance Not too concerned. I do steer clear of white electronic goods, tend to show dirt. 2. Functions I feel the ability to read PDFs and be able to crop the margins of the entire document you are reading and not just 'zoom' on the current page. Ability to load multiple documents at once and switch between with ease. Ability to load .HTML files and follow hyperlinks to other .HTML files stored on the reader. 3. Specifications Love to see a 9.7" reader, or a size suitable for reading A4 documents on. I personally find printing documents 2 pages per side sufficient (A5 size I think each page gets scaled to). PDF is a must as most academic journals are PDF. 4. Colors As said before, I steer clear of white. MikeOnyx, for a device that fits those criteria I have I would be prepared to spend approx $500AUS (roughly $450US). Sad thing is what I am asking could be done with a software update for the KindleDX. Last edited by Solicitous; 03-31-2010 at 08:08 AM. Reason: Reply to MikeOnyx

03-31-2010, 02:37 PM	#26
Xenophon curmudgeon Posts: 1,487 Karma: 5748190 Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Redwood City, CA USA Device: Kobo Aura HD, (ex)nook, (ex)PRS-700, (ex)PRS-500	My absolute top-of-the-list showstopper-level requirement is that the screen must be NO WORSE than the current Vizplex screens. That is, touch layers above the eInk are a no-no. If you can provide a device with better contrast and/or higher resolution (in terms of pixels per inch) that would be great too. I realize, however, that contrast and resolution are driven more by screen technology than device design, so improvements on this front will typically be industry-wide. A very close second is massively improved ergonomics. The REB1100 (now sold as the eBookWise 1100) has yet to be equaled for it's physical ergonomics. If you haven't used one, don't just look at pictures! Spend some company $$ and buy one (they're cheap!) and use it for a few hours. Then force your industrial design team to use it. A few of the important points: It fits well in your hand; that odd-looking battery-lump is actually functional. The user can choose which page-turn button is forward vs. backward. The device can be rotated so that any of its four sides is the top. Its large page-turn buttons mean that no matter how you hold it, there's always a button that's super-convenient to press. Even so, their placement means they don't get pushed by accident either. These features combine to guarantee that the next-page button is ALWAYS well-placed, no matter how the user chooses to hold the device! (It's an old-tech device, of course, so by today's standards it's too heavy, too slow, and has a sucky screen. None of which detracts from the points above.) This ergonomics issue is a HUGE BIG DEAL! I'm absolutely boggled that nobody's done better than the REB1100 in all these years. Hit these first two items, and I'll buy one for sure. Third come a bunch of firmware features you can implement outside the document reading software (e.g. no changes needed in the Adobe ePub reading software): Support a user-provided document that can refer to another doc (like an html link to a local document), where clicking on the link causes the other document to open in the appropriate eBook display software. A good choice of format for this document would be an opds file (it's an open standard!) This single feature would allow user-defined navigation of the eBooks on the reader. And the Calibre folks (or the Calibre2opds folks) would be THRILLED to provide their users with configurable support for producing custom index files -- especially if the file format you choose is an open standard. If you do this, you could skip the next two... Robust organization support for users with LARGE libraries. Sony's collections are nice, and their lists with side-bar alphabet are OK, but they come up short when there are more than a few hundred books on the device. Honor the "display-as" (or file-as, or author-sort, or whatever) attribute in eBook meta-data. All of the major ebook formats have metadata fields that distinguish between the visible representation of the author's name and the version to be used for sorting. That is, I want to see the author's name displayed as "John Doe," but have it sorted as "Doe, John" -- exactly as it would be on a library shelf!!! Fourth come features that require changes to the software for displaying eBooks (such as Adobe's ADE mobile): User-selectable fonts. A reasonable selection built-in is a good start. Support for user-downloaded fonts would be even better! Good hyphenation support. This makes full-justification look OK, instead of lousy. If automatic hyphenation is NOT available, allow the user to TURN OFF full-justification and go with ragged-right instead. Let the user turn off the &^%&^%C teeny right-margin page numbers in ADE mobile! New versions of ADE already support this, IIRC. I'll probably think of more right after hitting send. Xenophon

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03-31-2010, 08:11 AM	#18
Hamlet53 Nameless Being	As others have stated I want an e-book reader. I don't need it to sub for a smart phone, web browser, camera, or MP3 player. Especially since these extra capabilities can only increase the bulk, weight, and cost. For screen size I've been spoiled by my Daily Edition to want at 8-inch; wouldn't want smaller and larger would make the device to clumsy I think. I also now want the touch screen capability with ability to highlight text and add notes. I do miss the clarity of the Sony 505 e-link screen though. I'd actually be willing to pay for a dual screen device, two-color screen of Sony 505 quality, and a full color touch screen for books that have graphics that must be appreciated this way. The rub is I don't think I'd buy such a device until the price dropped to $400 or below. Oh yeah, a biggie the ability to read about every format out there, but for sure PDF, HTML, RTF, EPUB, and MOBI.

03-31-2010, 08:20 AM	#19
garbanzo bean Posts: 82 Karma: 338 Join Date: Feb 2010 Device: Boox Nova 2	i have a PRS-300. looks and works fine. my only complaint is the firmware. instead of fancy features, focus on organization. people with large collections really need a good way to keep their books sorted on the device. folders and tags would be best, with lots of option about how the collection can be displayed (author, genre, title, tag, folder, pub date, date added, etc)

03-31-2010, 09:40 AM	#22
sergiodongala Connoisseur Posts: 68 Karma: 160 Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Angola Device: PRS-505	Here is mine: 1. appearance cruchpad like 2. Functions annotation, dictionary, pdf and epub 3. Specifications 9" or more e-ink or PixelQ screen

03-31-2010, 01:04 PM	#23
LDBoblo Wizard Posts: 1,385 Karma: 16056 Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Asia Device: Kindle 3 WiFi, Sony PRS-505	As far as cost, it depends on functionality. If it's a slow typical ebook reader, I wouldn't want to pay more than $100usd for it, regardless of touch screen or wifi or other features. If it's a fast epaper reader with a good screen and decent software/firmware, maybe $250-400. I can't think of anything on the market that manages both "fast" and "e-paper" yet. A good, small capacitive touch Mirasol reader with the Sony Touch Edition chassis design would be in this range (lower half) probably. For E-Ink, it'd have to be the fastest/brightest b&w they've demonstrated (not the typical current-gen Vizplex stuff), and the software would need to be pretty polished, and the reader software would need good H&J and font support. I'd drop $600 for a Pixel Qi iPad-like device (and might do so if NotionInk actually comes up with their product)

03-31-2010, 01:13 PM	#24
CyGuy Avid Reader Posts: 769 Karma: 7777778 Join Date: Aug 2009 Device: PocketBook 902, Galaxy Tab 2 7.0, ASUS TF700, and Cybook Gen III	1. Appearance Device should be sleek, slim, slender. Black color of course. 2. Functions Must have folder view. 3. Specifications Must have a built-in SDHC card reader, no sale if it is missing this. Should have mini-USB for charging and copy/paste. A backlight would be very very nice (LED). Screen size around 9". Battery life of at least 10 hours. 4. Colors Black 5. Other Should support any/all formats, and no DRM support needed for me personally.

03-31-2010, 01:42 PM	#25
Desertway Addict Posts: 336 Karma: 1701842 Join Date: Mar 2010 Device: Kindle Oasis 3	Well there are a lot of opinions out there. Like some others, my earlier post was focused on 5"-6" device, multi-format support, ease of navigation, look-up functions, and library organization. No wireless, no touchscreen, no color. No frills. I would pay $200USD for that.