902 Pocketbook 902: first impressions and questions

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by athan00

Yes you are right. I was talking about 902 model.

About the Internet I m talking about WiFi and not 3G.

3) we prefer not too talk about asus. please find a review and then you'll see for yourself.

[TeflonBilly]

Hello Mobileread forum. I'm interested in buying a PB902 as this reader is pretty much what I'm looking for. I'm wonder how is the web browser on the device? I plan on using google ebook store for the bulk of my purchases and know that some of the books you don't get a copy of but allow to read on any device that can handle the page. I was wonder if anybody has any first hand account of trying it on their PB902.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by athan00

3. For the price of 902 I can get the new Asus. But it has the Sipix screen. So is there such a difference so to give an extra Euros so to get the 903? (since I need a touch screen to browse the internet - unless I can connect a mouse wireless/bluetooth/usb).

Let me clear a little bit the answer above where PocketBook representative refuses to discuss Asus.

They do not refuse to discuss Asus specifically, they prefer not to talk about competitor products in general, because whatever they say, they would be accused of not being impartial.

I am not affiliated with PocketBook (in other way than being satisfied customer), so I am free to talk ;-)
The first commercially released product featuring SiPix screen was Oyo in Germany.
https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/OYO
The first reviews were ... not what I would call favorable, especially regarding SiPix screen
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...&highlight=oyo

EDIT:
I found post about Asus DR900 Sipix device itself
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...86#post1275986

[parkher]

Originally Posted by athan00

1. As far as I could find the 903 model is available in black and white. Does it makes any difference on the eye? I mean on the reading and eye strain.

I would say, with 5-6" device - there is no choice, only white. The plastic borders around the screen must serve as an extension of page margins to reduce the eye strain when reading words/letters close to the edges of the screen, because the margins on the screen are too narrow.

With 9.7" - in theory, there is enough room for wide enough margins on the screen itself, and therefore, the device may be dark.
Consider this: a regular paperback has only 8" page, so here we could have 1.7" of additional margins.
In practice, so far the margins are not as wide as I would like them to be, but this, hopefully, will be fixed in future firmwares.
That is, when opening books with FBReader.
With pdf the current situation is much worse, after re-flowing and zooming, there are no margins left at all, letters are cut in the middle.
So the issues with margins will have to be fixed, and therefore, the dark device is ok.

With a large 9.7" screen, if the device is white, I am looking if the white plastic borders are actually whiter than the screen or not.
If the device is whiter than the screen, then the screen looks even less white, and it is a constant unpleasant reminder.
Because 902 is whiter than the screen, I chose the dark one.
On it, the screen looks even whiter than it really is, which is great.

Of course, I expected to be able to set wider margins, but, again, I hope this issue will be eventually fixed, the current firmware is really made for 602, not for 902, they will have to add 9.7" screen specific margin sizes.

So the same should be true for 903 as well.

[sbo]

Hello,

I have just received my PRO 902, and I think it is definitely... dead !!!

I have horizontal lines everywhere on the screen, and the screen quality is terrible .

Small characters are almost unreadable behind those lines; contrast is very poor sometimes, and recover apparently randomly !!!

What is going on ??? This unit is just out of the box ???

I think about returning the unit for major default !

Thank you for supporting.

Stéphane.

[Dulin's Books]

i dont suppose you could share a picture of it?

[sbo]

Originally Posted by Dulin's Books

i dont suppose you could share a picture of it?

I have no way to make a decent picture right now.
But as I said, I have bright horizontal lines everywhere on the screen, whatever the page I choose to print.

It sometimes even affect the whole screen : some pages gradually becomes so clear that I can hardly see what is on screen after a few minutes.

(The battery if supposed to be full of charge.)

[Dulin's Books]

You should probably return it as defective but of course I cant be sure without a picture.

[SkyDream]

Yes, return it.

[marty63]

Originally Posted by sbo

I have no way to make a decent picture right now.

The device have possibility to capture screenshot.
You must map any key to this function.

[Roos]

Originally Posted by marty63

The device have possibility to capture screenshot.
You must map any key to this function.

Don't wanne rain on your parade, but if it is, as it sounds to me, a harware error, the screenshot of the machine will show just a 'normal' screen, since it does not make an image of the output on the viziplex (no external camera ), but of the img in memory.

[sbo]

OK.
Thank you for your replies.

I will return the device.

Kind regards,

Stéphane.

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by sbo

OK.
Thank you for your replies.

I will return the device.

Kind regards,

Stéphane.

It's probably a broken screen. We're a little bit pissed by that because it shows that the courier mishandled the charge.

[pietrokc]

Hi again everyone,

we've heard many different opinions on how the Pocketbook 902 handles PDF. I'd like to ask if anyone has tried DJVU files. (These account for more than half of the books I'd like to read, not to mention that they tend to be quite a bit smaller than PDFs.) Do DJVUs "reflow" as well, can we change font size, margins and so on?

I bought a Kindle DX yesterday just to see what it's like, and I have no intention of keeping it. (No DJVU or memory card capabilities.) It looks pretty good, but the fonts are slightly too small to read comfortably. I feel that if I could get rid of all four margins it would be ideal.

[LoneTech]

DjVu is actually an image format; it would take quite some creativity to come up with a reflow option for that. Internally, some DjVu files may be structured in rows of symbols, and they may even have an invisible text layer (used for search and copy), but it's even worse when it comes to reformatting than PDF. For instance, even if they do use the row-like encodings, there's nothing calling for them to go in meaningful directions. In other words, there's no concept of a font, margin and so on in the format.

All that said, however, the 90[23] certainly can display DjVu files nicely. Except for reflow, the zoom options appear the same as in pdfviewer, including multipage and column display. Unfortunately that includes the lack of vertical fine-tuning, so it's not ideal for trimming margins.

There's also no provision for page layouts different from the screen, as I found up when opening a file with comic scripts (Sabrina Online, as it happens). It grew particularly ridiculous when I tried the option to show two pages in landscape mode; despite the menu showing this as one over the other, they were squished in horribly deformed side by side. Normal zoom settings at least aren't deformed.