Cybook sometimes unresponsive to turning pages - is that normal?

[philodox]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That is an absolutely BRILLIANT idea! What a stroke of genius!

Thanks, I had to do the same thing on an old MP3 player I used to own that didn't sort by the ID3 tags.

EDIT: Strange, I'm using the Liberation fonts as well, but haven't run into any problems. I did need to deleted the cache before the font would recognize though.

[Alan]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You can't claim that something that you think should be there, but isn't, is a "bug"

Right, technically it might not be a bug. Practically it is, because they just "forgot" to ad an important feature.

Of what conceivable use are page numbers on a device where on has a limitless variety of fonts and sizes? My page 100 in a given book won't be the same as your page 100.

When I buy a paperback book it has more or less pages than the hardcover version. So we don't need page numbers there either? I do not need page numbers to compare one book with another (though that might be helpful too) but to navigate in the book I am reading right now.

I use bookmarks ALL THE TIME to mark pages with errors while I'm proofreading my books. I am aware that some people have had problems with bookmarks, but it seems to be a damned elusive bug! Have you encountered it yourself?

Yes, I have. Apparently frequent reboots solved that problem for me (for the time being). It's like Windows only worse.

Yes, there is. You can sort by title, file size, file date, or something else I forget off-hand. It would be nice to be able to sort by author or genre, I agree, but you can't claim that there's "no way to sort books".

OK, again a badly integrated feature then.

Unreliable in what way?

It is unreliable under 40 %. 40 % or less rather means "empty". Battery indicators are always more or less a problem. But there is indeed a difference between 40 % and 10 %. With the current firmware 40 % means "charge battery immediately!". Good to know. I can live with it, as long as I know how to interpret those numbers. But there should not be any interpretation if the indicator would work more accurately.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the v1 firmware is perfect - it obviously isn't. But I think that FOR a v1 it's pretty damned good, and I'm sure that Bookeen will improve it with future firmware releases; their history of doing that with the old CyBook (which I also have) is very good indeed.

I do not doubt that in any way. They will certainly improve the firmware over time. But this was not my point. My point is: Please to not outsource an important part of the development process to the customer. Testing is part of the development process. You will never find all bugs, that's for sure. But you can at least eradicate the big and crunchy ones before you begin to ship your product.

Alan

[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by Alan

My point is: Please to not outsource an important part of the development process to the customer. Testing is part of the development process. You will never find all bugs, that's for sure. But you can at least eradicate the big and crunchy ones before you begin to ship your product.

I agree they might have added more features, but we don't know what situation they were in - they might as well have said: If it sells, we'll work on it, we have to eat too, we can't spend another half a year developing the product we don't know if anyone will then buy at all.

I believe none of the bugs ever happened to anyone in Bookeen before they shipped. My work is a bit similar - I port games from Windows to MacOS. Recently we released a new game, rather known, after testing it for 6 months on variety of Mac models. Shortly afterwards, Apple released a new line of Macs - and the game doesn't run at all on any of them. I agree the situation isn't quite parallel, but it's similar in that I have no new models to test on (too expensive to buy), and Bookeen has no units exhibiting the problems (users have them), and has to locate them in their storage somehow before they can start finding out what's wrong. Maybe the test units were more carefully produces... It's not like every company out there has infinite amount of resources to polish the product.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

With respect, Jon, your memory is being a little selective. The original firmware on the 500 was pretty flaky, especially when it came to RTF files. I particularly remember this because RTF was my preferred reading format at the time (this was before I discovered BD). There were all sorts of RTF files that the Reader wouldn't handle - it just gave an error when you tried to load them.

Another issue was that it would randomly lose all your bookmarks. That one was particularly infuriating if you'd spent days marking all the errors in a book.

Both of those issues were fixed in the first firmware update.

When I got my 500, I didn't get to use it with the new firmware. I gott o update it before I got to use it. So I have no idea what was going on with the original firmware.

How long did it take Sony to go from the original firmware to the first update?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How long did it take Sony to go from the original firmware to the first update?

The Reader was released late October 2006; first firmware update around mid Feb 2007, so that's a little under 4 months.

[ralfm1]

Might this be a precursor of the problem I am Having? Just got a new Cybook Gen 3.
After reading about 10 - 15 pages the device just locks up. Nothing will work and I have to turn it off and back on to be able to read again, just to have the problem reappear in another 10 or so pages. I have reloaded the books, taken the battery out of the Cybook and reconnected it, I have tried the reset button, but nothing seems to work. There is no SD card in it and the battery is totally charged. I really would appreciate any helpful advice. Thanks all.

[Alan]

What kind of ebook are you reading? PDF or PRC? Did you buy it in an online store or did you create it? How did you create it? Where did you buy it?

Alan

[ralfm1]

The one I am currently trying to read is a PRC and I bought it from mobipocket's German language site. However I do not think that that is the problem, since even the books that came with the Cybook from Bookeen are giving me the same problem.

[Alan]

Originally Posted by ralfm1

The one I am currently trying to read is a PRC and I bought it from mobipocket's German language site. However I do not think that that is the problem, since even the books that came with the Cybook from Bookeen are giving me the same problem.

OK, I would have recommended to try to read a book bought at mobipocket. But you are already doing that. Since this problem is not limited to only one book in your library, it is certainly not related to a single ebook file.

You could try something else: Hook your Cybook up to your computer. Delete everything in the ebook folder (but before please copy it to your hard disk). Then transfer a single ebook file to the ebook folder, either by using the Mobipocket reader or just by drag and drop. Try again.

Alan

[Snuffi]

I've had some time to play around with my Cybook since Christmas and I must say that I'm pretty pleased so far. I have followed the threads in this forum for a while even before I bought it but I must admit that I didn't really have most of the problems reported by some people here.

So far the only problem was one freeze which I didn't notice immediately because if the book hangs you still see the text and think that the button is not accepted. I've just read a few responses up that someone connected the freeze with the Liberation fonts, I also use Liberation Serif (thanks, btw, found this font by a suggestion through this forum) and have been using it for nearly two weeks now. With only one freeze I cannot say for sure that it's connected to the font but if it is it doesn't seem too frequent.

Other than that I had two "crashes" (system reboot, just like if you switched off and on the device) when trying to open two PDFs. One PDF was 80MB, though, and the other 40MB and I received them from a friend so not sure which Version number (of Acrobat) these conform to (or whether they were made with some other software). As those two documents are really very big, I wouldn't really say that's a bug, although strictly technical it probably is.
But as Harry T. already pointed out in this forum: It is currently not very viable to read PDFs formatted as a full page (Din A4, e.g) on a device like that and there's not a lot they can do about it (at least as long as PDFs are displayed as graphics, so a reflow is not possible).

As for the other "bugs": While I certainly agree that they should add most or all of the features discussed in this thread, I'd go with Harry T. in that I wouldn't see those as bugs. A missing feature (even if it is an absolutely indispensable one) IMHO is only a bug if the features is mentioned in the official feature list (or handbook). Otherwise nobody said it would be there...

I've had a couple of electronic gadgets recently and while I absolutely hate it that nowadays everything seems to come as an unfinished product, the Cybook IMHO is one of the best v1 I've had in a while. A few small things I am willing to accept and I give them that it was very important for them to start selling it in time to ship it before Christmas as that surely a major economic factor.

One thing bothers me a little bit, though: The last entry in the official blog dates back to November and the entire blog doesn't really give you much information (I don't really count those entries which just tell you that there's a new review available -> those things should go in the "Press" section), I would have expected more info on what is worked on...

Does anyone know if they read these forums? If not maybe one should try to make them aware if it, there are some excellent suggestions in the wishlist for the next firmware release and it would be counterproductive if everyone mailed them the same thing over and over again. Also they might give the forum back some information which would help a great deal...

[delphidb96]

Snuffi,

I tend to agree with you... Their blog must be updated as this is a company blog and their customers deserve recent information. Still, I like the Cybook and I'll be happy when I get my repaired/replaced one back!

Derek

[sweetcream]

I didn't know this was a common problem. In any case, I am refunding mine as it's too bothersome. The buttons are hard to press as it is, then every few pages I find myself having to stop and press it again. All I want is a reader when I can turn the page when I have finished reading. It shouldn't have to be like this.

[tribble]

I have heard, that Bookeen is looking into this problem, and they hope to have this solved with the next firmware update.

I also suggested, that they implement an option, so you can use the main button as pageforward button when reading a book. I dont know, if they have taken up the idea though.

[Ortep]

The buttons are getting less hard to press with use. When I got the unit I my reaction was the same as yours. But after I read a few books whe button was not so hard to press anymore. I think the spring, or whatever they use, is getting more flexible. That is a better approach than make it easy at the start and to easy after a while so that pages start turning when you sneeze.

[derekjanet]

To make it easy to turn over a page on my cybook gen3 I cut out a square piece of cardboard, (a piece from a leather belt of similar thickness would be better), of similar colour to my cybook leather case, fitting the square hole in the leather case, leaving a small square hole in the centre so that I was able to press the centre button. I use electrical tape to keep it in place. It is much easer on the thumb. It would be helpful if the the designer of the leather case could alter it, leaving just a hole in the middle, with printed arrows around the hole. I must say the square must fit pretty perfectly, similar thickness to the leather case, so that it looks part of the case.
From derekjanet