Just ordered the Astak Pocket Pro EZ

[rling]

Originally Posted by Robertb

barbie!!

Glad to see that the Paul Hogan ad is still remembered. At least that part of my tax-payer's money was well spent.

[Solicitous]

Originally Posted by rling

Glad to see that the Paul Hogan ad is still remembered. At least that part of my tax-payer's money was well spent.

Yeh, your and my tax-payer's money....certainly not Paul Hogan's (or was he found not guilty of tax evasion?)

Originally Posted by Robertb

Dear Solicitous:

Poor Griffonwing is personna-non-grata in most places. If he came to Aussieland: instead of putting another shrimp on the barbie for him you would want to put Griffonwing on the barbie!!

As long as he brought his own beer and followed the unwritten rule of "what you don't drink you don't take home afterwards, it is left for the host", we'll take him.

Originally Posted by griffonwing

Who is Barbie? is she cute?

Depends...if the light is on or not :P

Don't feel bad if you become the butt of peoples jokes, at least you don't live in Australia, you know the country at the a** end of the world? (Don't believe me grab a globe of the world and check out where we are). They even stopped nuclear testing here because no-one could identify the difference between the natural landscape and where the devastation from the testing too place.

[griffonwing]

Originally Posted by Solicitous

Depends...if the light is on or not :P

Don't feel bad if you become the butt of peoples jokes, at least you don't live in Australia, you know the country at the a** end of the world? (Don't believe me grab a globe of the world and check out where we are). They even stopped nuclear testing here because no-one could identify the difference between the natural landscape and where the devastation from the testing too place.

Haha.. I live in Northwest Arkansas (pronounced AR-kin-saw, not ar-KAN-zus), in the middle of the Ozark mountains. You've read the comic strip Lil' Abner? Their town, Dogpatch, actually is a real town, about 10 miles south of Harrison. Redneck jokes, Hillbilly jokes. I've heard them all.

[luvshihtzu]

My new black Astak EZ Pocket Pro arrived this afternoon and I am waiting for the charging to be complete. Compared it in size to my husbands Kindle2 and the Astak screen isn't a whole lot smaller. Included in the box was a 1GB SD memory card with 300 ebooks on it. How nice is that? This Astak should be a great sidekick to my Kindle DX for all the formats the Kindle won't handle. Looks nice.

[Javed]

Congratulations on receiving your new Pocket Pro!

[luvshihtzu]

Thanks for the congrats.
Am finding that this Astak reader isn't intuitive at all. It took me forever to get the firmware downloaded, after the instructions said to hold down the volume buttons on the right side of the reader before pushing the ON button. It sure would have helped if they had said the LEFT side buttons instead of the right. I spent three hours trying to update the firmware and after finally getting my Digital Editions/Overdrive book loaded on the Astak, I could only open the book once. Now it doesn't work at all. Will charge it up overnight and try again tomorrow morning.
I must admit that so far my Kindles were so much easier to start up and use.

[UchihaNaru]

Originally Posted by luvshihtzu

Thanks for the congrats.
Am finding that this Astak reader isn't intuitive at all. It took me forever to get the firmware downloaded, after the instructions said to hold down the volume buttons on the right side of the reader before pushing the ON button. It sure would have helped if they had said the LEFT side buttons instead of the right. I spent three hours trying to update the firmware and after finally getting my Digital Editions/Overdrive book loaded on the Astak, I could only open the book once. Now it doesn't work at all. Will charge it up overnight and try again tomorrow morning.
I must admit that so far my Kindles were so much easier to start up and use.

Hrmm.. maybe you weren't doing it right. I was able to use my PP almost right away. Well I guess it's coz I tried to see if it is working (aka can read books) before I start the charge. And after that, the firmware update was a breeze. Hope you won't have any problems tomorrow ^^

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by luvshihtzu

Thanks for the congrats.
Am finding that this Astak reader isn't intuitive at all. It took me forever to get the firmware downloaded, after the instructions said to hold down the volume buttons on the right side of the reader before pushing the ON button. It sure would have helped if they had said the LEFT side buttons instead of the right. I spent three hours trying to update the firmware and after finally getting my Digital Editions/Overdrive book loaded on the Astak, I could only open the book once. Now it doesn't work at all. Will charge it up overnight and try again tomorrow morning.
I must admit that so far my Kindles were so much easier to start up and use.

Congrats. And yes the UI leaves much to be desired I think. I received my Kindle2 yesterday and love it, no issues at all with usability.

[luvshihtzu]

I spent another couple of hours trying to re-open the ebook from Adobe Digital Editions/Overdrive after the pages of the book disappeared. I tried many resets and also reinstalls of the book. Finally, I reinstalled the firmware again and now the Pocket Pro is showing the ebook and it opens correctly.

Any thought I had about buying one of Astak readers for my daughter's family has gone out the window. This has too high a learning curve for average computer user out there. If I buy them a reader, it will be a Kindle.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by luvshihtzu

I spent another couple of hours trying to re-open the ebook from Adobe Digital Editions/Overdrive after the pages of the book disappeared. I tried many resets and also reinstalls of the book. Finally, I reinstalled the firmware again and now the Pocket Pro is showing the ebook and it opens correctly.

Any thought I had about buying one of Astak readers for my daughter's family has gone out the window. This has too high a learning curve for average computer user out there. If I buy them a reader, it will be a Kindle.

The Sony UI is very straightforward as well. The PRS-300 is priced right and very intuitive to use.

[Musicman]

Originally Posted by luvshihtzu

I spent another couple of hours trying to re-open the ebook from Adobe Digital Editions/Overdrive after the pages of the book disappeared. I tried many resets and also reinstalls of the book. Finally, I reinstalled the firmware again and now the Pocket Pro is showing the ebook and it opens correctly.

Any thought I had about buying one of Astak readers for my daughter's family has gone out the window. This has too high a learning curve for average computer user out there. If I buy them a reader, it will be a Kindle.

It sounds like the problem was more user error than device problems, since your reinstall worked. I had no problems updating the firmware on my EZ-Reader and Pocket Pro. I also have not had any problems reading ADE/Overdrive books from the library.

I do find that the font size on the ADE/Overdrive books too small at all the zoom levels except the largest. This I think is due to the publisher creating the fonts too small to begin with. When I create Epub books with Calibre I up the font size to where I want it.

[luvshihtzu]

From everything I have read, the Sony has a high learning curve also. I had checked into the Sony 300 and it wasn't any better than the Astak. They showed the Astak and Sony side-by-side and page turns were slower on the Sony. Too few formats on the Sony. Maybe you have just become used to the Sony's little glitches. I'll give the Astak a few more days and if I can't use it easily, it will go back. My husband plans to try the reader today after I got the Astak running the James Patterson/Step on a Crack ebook. The Astak Text To Speech is really bad. Kindle TTS is certainly not perfect, but better.

[luvshihtzu]

Musicman,
I will try to change the format of some of my non DRM ebook files to Epub with Calibre. I wasn't very happy with the straight pdf files I used earlier today. Fonts were way too small.
Luckily, I had already read about the Chinese manual causing errors with Calibre and deleted them.

[Musicman]

Originally Posted by luvshihtzu

Musicman,
I will try to change the format of some of my non DRM ebook files to Epub with Calibre. I wasn't very happy with the straight pdf files I used earlier today. Fonts were way too small.
Luckily, I had already read about the Chinese manual causing errors with Calibre and deleted them.

I find Epub to work the best and I set the base font size to 20 or 25.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by luvshihtzu

From everything I have read, the Sony has a high learning curve also. I had checked into the Sony 300 and it wasn't any better than the Astak. They showed the Astak and Sony side-by-side and page turns were slower on the Sony. Too few formats on the Sony. Maybe you have just become used to the Sony's little glitches. I'll give the Astak a few more days and if I can't use it easily, it will go back. My husband plans to try the reader today after I got the Astak running the James Patterson/Step on a Crack ebook. The Astak Text To Speech is really bad. Kindle TTS is certainly not perfect, but better.

No. Certainly the Astak supports more formats, but the UI is 1000% better and very similar to the Kindle so I'm not sure why you say that. My grandmother (were she still alive) could pick up either the Kindle or the Sony and be able to read books - not necessarily true of the Astak. There are WAY more glitches and issues with the Astak --I returned my first one because of that stuff -- the menu fonts are way too small, the buttons sometimes don't work and you have to press twice. It always comes up on the SD card when you power it up instead of where you were. If you can run the MP3 player without the manual then your a better man than me. (I know, I know you're a woman). The one thing that is better on the Astak is the Recent files selection ... but again it is for the SD (or the internal) and does not apply across the board. I thought the TTS was/is equivalent to the Kindle but I've not compared them extensively. I do like that the Kindle has built in speakers. Folders is a good feature on the Astak which is not on either of the Sony or the Kindle. If you use a dictionary or annotations then that throws out the 300 and the astak ...

of course as always YMMV.