Report on new firmware?

[brudigia]

Originally Posted by chlorine

OK, I'll try to give an overview.

The update that was available yesterday was for mobipocket. There will be from no on two separate releases: one for mobi and one for epub.

Sigh. this is sad. Hoped they could have kept at least non DRM mobi, hoping that the exclusivity worked only for DRM. Other manufacturers do it, so the possibility should be there.
Maybe in the future this shall be available, as there are .prc readers available (see Calibre).

[ErwinOtten]

A pity. 9 months waiting and nothing useful to show for...

A working delete-button... So what ??? I delete the books I've read when I put new ones on my cybook.
And folder support..... Cosmetic but not necessary for me. I've about 35 books on my reader. I can manage perfectly without folder support.

Better menu-structures so you don't have to push 5 buttons before you get to dictionary-lookup that's useful. Why on earth would I want to increase and decrease font-size with the + and - button. That's an action you do at most once a day (if ever). Use your buttons for thing you do often......

It's clear Bookeen really doesn't has a clue how their own machine is used by readers .....

No, I don't need this firmware if it only does what Chlorine says it does..

[EowynCarter]

And folder support..... Cosmetic but not necessary for me.

Well, not for me. And quitte a few peaple.

Better menu-structures so you don't have to push 5 buttons before you get to dictionary-lookup that's useful.

Don't know, i never use dictionary

Why on earth would I want to increase and decrease font-size with the + and - button. That's an action you do at most once a day (if ever). Use your buttons for thing you do often......

I have to agree there, you don't change font size often. Then, what should be put there instead?

Sigh. this is sad. Hoped they could have kept at least non DRM mobi, hoping that the exclusivity worked only for DRM. Other manufacturers do it, so the possibility should be there.

Yeah, amazon made a mess of that one.
I think the reason behind this is that it would have required development a of non drm version in addition to the drm one, that bookeen had no time to do. Who knows, maybe later.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by ErwinOtten

Why on earth would I want to increase and decrease font-size with the + and - button. That's an action you do at most once a day (if ever). Use your buttons for thing you do often......

Well, I often read in varying light conditions and change the font size. If it is easier to change I will change it more often.

[brudigia]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

I think the reason behind this is that it would have required development a of non drm version in addition to the drm one, that bookeen had no time to do. Who knows, maybe later.

I do not understand what you mean. Why should they develop a non-DRM. Oh, maybe you mean as an alternative, not using the official one ?

[gerraldo]

Originally Posted by brudigia

Sigh. this is sad. Hoped they could have kept at least non DRM mobi, hoping that the exclusivity worked only for DRM. Other manufacturers do it, so the possibility should be there.
Maybe in the future this shall be available, as there are .prc readers available (see Calibre).

THX everybody for the info so far! Maybe one can answer these questions as well...?!

Does the Mobi-FW update come with non-DRM ePub support? (I was hoping for this...)

And more important, what about PDF-reflow in the Mobi version? (Something in the back of my head keeps shouting "only with the ePub version"... And I dearly hope that this is not true!)

Please tell me there is PDF-reflow in the Mobi version!!!

[emellaich]

What a mess ...

... that Bookeen finds itself in. The firmware update is useless if it doesn't have folder support and enable the delete button. No, it must support epub and mobi in the same version. Better menu structures? Font size changes?

All of these make sense, although even for them the definition of good design is open to interpretation. Better menu structure according to who?

The problem is that Bookeen pushed out an unfinished firmware (e.g., unassigned buttons) and thus left the expectations of follow up releases. Then they dangled the promise of updates over a long time. Our over-active imaginations supplied the rest. Each of us imbued the hoped for release with the factors we each desired. The new release was something different in my eyes versus yours. When each of us expressed a desire for the upcoming release we each envisioned something different, but we thought we were talking about the same thing. Whatever Bookeen delivered was bound to disappoint everyone.

They would probably have been better off with no updates, and to ask us to be satisfied with the features we originally purchased. Or, there were two alternatives. They could have embarked on a rapid release cycle - releasing new features every months. Any given release may not have contained specific features needed for every individual, but the promise of new features would always been a month away. The other alternative would have been to set the expectation purposefully low (realistic?). A long term release plan with firm dates once a year, and specific features announced for each release. In this case, the release plan may not be to the taste of everyone, but there would not be the disappointment when the releases arrived.

[bypass]

I am sad to say that for me this is too little, way too late.

The worst of it for me is the glacial pace of delivery on this update plus the complete lack of comunnication. Even now, when we finally see something concrete, it is from users and not bookeen themselves even though the blog post lead me to believe there would be a firmware release on the 4th. Now we are waiting again with absollutely no information from as official source.

I suppose thaf if they had kept up regular updates on what was coming and the reason for any delays, and delivered something (anything!) in the last 9 months (9 months!) other than just keeping me waiting then I would feel differently, but this is too much.

I have been a Cybook Gen 3 user for over a year now and while I used recommend it to any and all that showed an interest, and many that didn't, I will now be recommending they try anything else first. I doubt I will ever get another device from bookeen.

[Michael]

Hello,

I am Michael and working at Bookeen.

I will try to answer to some of your questions. In the "Mobi version" of the firmware:
1) Better Menu structures: the menu structure has not changed but the "Key Repeat" feature has been added. It means that you no longer have to click 5 times to reach the 6th entry of your menu, just hold down the key. As we have also accelerated the video driver, the operation is fast. Among all the readers, Cybook Gen3 should have the fastest interface. By the way, the "Key Repeat" feature is also available for hyperlinks.
2) PDF support has not changed. Hyperlinks are not supported. Reflow is not supported.
3) No "NON DRM" ePUB support on Mobi version.
4) HTML, TXT support has not changed
5) Font size increasing and decreasing on + and -: this feature has been asked by many customers (some of them are Mobilereaders) so we added it.
6) There will be MOBI and ePUB firmwares available for all versions of the machines.
7) We have been recently been certified by Adobe. We are the first to receive this certification.
8) Reading while charging is not available. I am not sure we said it would be. But I am ready to stand the critics on this point.

"Mobipocket" version should be released first, few days before "ePUB" version.

We will add a post to describe the "ePUB" version features.

Best regards,

Michael for Bookeen

[Ortep]

Originally Posted by ErwinOtten

It's clear Bookeen really doesn't has a clue how their own machine is used by readers .....

No, I don't need this firmware if it only does what Chlorine says it does..

Everybody uses his machine in a different way. I remember I was one of the first people asking for font increase/decrease with the +/- buttons. I find it very useful.

You only have 35 books, other people have 10-20 times as much. They will be happy with folder support.

Some people are not interested in a special button for the library. You and I are definately interested.

A lot of people are excited about ePub. For me it just another eBook format. It does not help, it makes things more complicated. And, in my opinion, adds nothing I need. Why do we need another one, for me mobi is all I need.

The bottom line is: Whatever they do it wil be 'wrong' for somebody

[EowynCarter]

A lot of people are excited about ePub. For me it just another eBook format. It does not help, it makes things more complicated. And, in my opinion, adds nothing I need. Why do we need another one, for me mobi is all I need.

Beacause amazon and their "don't support any other drm than ours" made mobi a dead end ? Publishers are going epub.
And Epub is open

Speaking of "open" , why not open source the firmware ? If Bookeen don't have enough time, maybe we can help ?

PDF support has not changed. Hyperlinks are not supported. Reflow is not supported.

Hopefully you can get reflow to work. Pdf with the 6" gen 3 is hard, with the 5" opus, what a mess !
Better pdf support is definitively my main wish right now.

[Snuffi]

Originally Posted by Michael

Hello,

I am Michael and working at Bookeen.

I will try to answer to some of your questions. In the "Mobi version" of the firmware:
1) Better Menu structures: the menu structure has not changed but the "Key Repeat" feature has been added. It means that you no longer have to click 5 times to reach the 6th entry of your menu, just hold down the key. As we have also accelerated the video driver, the operation is fast. Among all the readers, Cybook Gen3 should have the fastest interface. By the way, the "Key Repeat" feature is also available for hyperlinks.
2) PDF support has not changed. Hyperlinks are not supported. Reflow is not supported.
3) No "NON DRM" ePUB support on Mobi version.
4) HTML, TXT support has not changed
5) Font size increasing and decreasing on + and -: this feature has been asked by many customers (some of them are Mobilereaders) so we added it.
6) There will be MOBI and ePUB firmwares available for all versions of the machines.
7) We have been recently been certified by Adobe. We are the first to receive this certification.
8) Reading while charging is not available. I am not sure we said it would be. But I am ready to stand the critics on this point.

"Mobipocket" version should be released first, few days before "ePUB" version.

We will add a post to describe the "ePUB" version features.

Best regards,

Michael for Bookeen

Folder support is definitely a great thing and I really, really appreciate it. If there is no DRM-free ePub support, though, I wonder why that firmware had to wait so many months until ePub support was finished it it's not in the product now. (Sorry, but for me switching between differents FW versions to read different books is not really a viable solution).

Size increase is a nice idea and I think I will use it every now and then but it's clearly not a killer feature. For the time it took to finally get the firmware done it's a little weak (and that's even without chlorine mentioning that it seems to work a little erratically)...

The "key repeat" is a feature I have to test out before I can say anything. In other applications and devices it has proven to be a mixed blessing greatly depending on how the buffer is handled. On other devices I had it was basically unable to use because it buffered key presses and would continue to flip through stuff long after you stopped pressing the button. By then having to flip backwards you wasted more time than it would have taken you to reach the desired menu/page/etc. in the single key press mode.

But let's wait and see. Judging from the past it'll be some months till we can really test this out because Bookeen will still have to make the firmware available for download and that seems to be quite a task. They haven't even gotten around to writing a blog entry with the new features and upping a file for download is a lot more work

Sorry, Michael, if we make fun of your company here but how it is possible to work on a firmware and not get around announcing the feature on one's own blog for weeks and taking days just to make it available for download when it is apparently finished is beyond me...

[Abelturd]

Originally Posted by Michael

Hello,
I am Michael and working at Bookeen.
I will try to answer to some of your questions.

Hello,
I very much appreciate your diving into conversation in this thread. It must have required a lot of courage after all the negative comments that have been said here.
By your doing so, you have definitely improved Bookeen's image in my eyes. Many others here will surely agree that communication is the key.

May I ask one thing concerning the dedicated lookup button? What's the problem with that?
Didn't enough people request it, or is there some programming problem? Because from my POV adding one keybinding (for the delete button, which is not mapped when in a book) would solve the problem and make the interface for dictionary lookup a lot faster and more straightforward.

Thank you.

[Ortep]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Beacause amazon and their "don't support any other drm than ours" made mobi a dead end ? Publishers are going epub.
And Epub is open

The problem here is not ePub or Mobi, the problem is DRM

You can use Mobi for the next 500 years if you want. The software is availabe and you can use it as you want. It is good enough for reading books. You only need very little formatting for the average book. Mobi can handle that. Epub can handle that also. Were is the advantage for the reader?

A big minus for ePub is dictionary support. As long as that does not work I wouldn't touch it with a stick. And even if it works it means that I will have to buy new dictionaries. So why do I want ePub?

It looks a lot like what is happening between Linux vs. Windows.

Linux is open, Linux is Free, Linux is supposed to be more secure, Linux is supposed to be as easy tot use as Windows. But what does 90% of the people use? Windows. Just because they are used to it, just because it does the job and they don't want to buy or install all kind of new software because the old Windows base software doesn't work on Linux.

People simply do not care about 'open' People care about functionality. They don't care how a washing machine works or if it is designed as an open system so that everybody can make parts for it. The want clean laundry

[EowynCarter]

oh, i forgot, Michael, welcome to the mobileread Crazyness

7) We have been recently been certified by Adobe. We are the first to receive this certification.

When Epub is open, having to deal with certification and alol that crap because of drm is well, yurck !

Does the mobi version uses at at all of ?
Oh, wait , that means no drm pdf with mobi either !