My review of the CyBook Gen3 e-reader

[tribble]

Originally Posted by msundman

...and my friend is rich. He owns less than $15.

I should have seperated those sentences. I did not mean, that 22 seconds ist a fast bootuptime, though it is fast compared to the iLiad (45 seconds), but rather fast in its general operation. And that is with e-ink in mind.

And for your friend beeing rich ... Some people with less than 15$ are richer than others with millions.

If you have the auto-shutdown feature turned on, does that mean you have to wait for over 20 seconds when you want to read? I'd find that completely unacceptable.

Well, just leave your CyBook running, and it will last you about 5 days. Instant access. I keep autoshutdown off and just turn off the CyBook, when i know its going to be a while (e.g. over night)

How fast? I would place the upper limit of "fast page-turning" at about 200 ms. (For a normal brain to make a interactivity cause-effect association the delay should be no more than 100 ms, though.)

Well eink doesn't allow for those kinds of speeds yet. At least not production ready eink. Pagefliptimes are between 600ms and 2 seconds. 2 seconds i get sometimes, probably due to power management being in effect.

And i have to say, even 2 seconds do not disturb reading continuity for me.

So, how much faster is the Gen3 than the PRS-505 (which, I've heard, spends about 2000 ms between pressing the next-button and the next page being ready for reading)?

I cannot compare, since i do not have a 505.

[msundman]

Originally Posted by tompe

I did not like to wait 20 seconds so I do not use auto shut off. Instant access is nice and much better than the Kindles 4 second wait. The battery lasts 5 days when it is on all the time.

I find 22 seconds utterly unacceptable. I often read only one or two pages (e.g. in the bathroom, in an elevator, etc.) so my whole reading session might be only half a minute. If I have to spend 22s of that just waiting for the device to wake up I wouldn't use it and under no circumstances would I call it fast.

Originally Posted by tompe

How do you get to an upper limit of 200ms?

Umm.. that's what I think is the longest delay that I would dream of calling "fast".

Originally Posted by tompe

I tried to press the page turning button as fast as possible 10 times and the page turning speed is around 1.5 seconds.

It's really easy to measure the speed by making a video:

Originally Posted by tompe

But this page turning speed does not disturb the reading experience at all.

I find the 133 ms delay of QReader on my E61 to be almost, but not quite, disturbing my reading experience.

Originally Posted by HarryT

When you read a paper book, can you really turn the page in 1/5th sec?

No, it takes about 800ms for me to turn a page on a book. However, when I turn a real page I'm the one doing the page-turning, which means I'm never waiting for anything else. The same goes for other things, too. E.g., when I'm climbing a ladder I'm not bored, but if I'm in an elevator that's as slow as me climbing a ladder I find it extremely slow.

Originally Posted by HarryT

The page turn on the Gen3 is fact enough to be totally unnoticeable.

Uh.. The 133 ms page turn of my QReader is very noticeable.

[tribble]

Originally Posted by msundman

I find 22 seconds utterly unacceptable. I often read only one or two pages (e.g. in the bathroom, in an elevator, etc.) so my whole reading session might be only half a minute. If I have to spend 22s of that just waiting for the device to wake up I wouldn't use it and under no circumstances would I call it fast.

You have not read properly. If you dont want to wait, just keep the CyBook running all the time. The batteries will then last about 5 days when you have it on all the time.

No, it takes about 800ms for me to turn a page on a book. However, when I turn a real page I'm the one doing the page-turning, which means I'm never waiting for anything else....
Uh.. The 133 ms page turn of my QReader is very noticeable.

You will soon fall into the habbit of pressing the next page button just in time to finish reading the page and instantly have the next page ready to read. So its basically like turning a page. But if 133ms page turns are already disturbing your reading experience, you might think differently about this.

[msundman]

Originally Posted by tribble

just leave your CyBook running, and it will last you about 5 days. Instant access.

But then I have to bring along a charger when I'm on the road. Not having to bring a charger e.g. when you go on vacation is supposed to be a speciality of eink. That's no showstopper, though.

Originally Posted by tribble

Well eink doesn't allow for those kinds of speeds yet. At least not production ready eink. Pagefliptimes are between 600ms and 2 seconds. 2 seconds i get sometimes, probably due to power management being in effect.

Ah, so when you wrote "fast", you didn't actually mean "fast" but "decent speed compared to other eink devices". Fair enough.
Well, I guess I'll be waiting for Gen4 (or Gen5).

[Barcey]

Originally Posted by msundman

I find 22 seconds utterly unacceptable. I often read only one or two pages (e.g. in the bathroom, in an elevator, etc.) so my whole reading session might be only half a minute. If I have to spend 22s of that just waiting for the device to wake up I wouldn't use it and under no circumstances would I call it fast.

I think you misread what was said. You can change the settings so it never turns off and the battery will last 5 days. If you do this the boot time is 0 seconds. You open the cover and you're reading.

I personally have changed by settings so it doesn't auto power off until 1 hour of inactivity. If I know that I'm not going to read within the next hour I power it off to save the batteries. I don't mind waiting the 22s the next time I read though. I've been reading this way for the last 12 days without a recharge and the battery is still showing 40%. It's a personal choice. You can have 0 boot time and 5 days of battery life or live with the 22s boot time and get greater then 2 weeks of battery life.

[msundman]

Originally Posted by tribble

You have not read properly. If you dont want to wait, just keep the CyBook running all the time. The batteries will then last about 5 days when you have it on all the time.

Originally Posted by Barcey

I think you misread what was said. You can change the settings so it never turns off and the battery will last 5 days.

I'm sorry that I wasn't more clear. I meant: "I find 22 seconds totally unacceptable, so I would definitely have to have it switched on all the time."

Originally Posted by tribble

You will soon fall into the habbit of pressing the next page button just in time to finish reading the page and instantly have the next page ready to read.

Should I interpret that as: "it takes almost 2 seconds for it to do something before it starts to redraw the page, and the page-redrawing takes way less than 200 ms"?

If it takes so much processing before the page is turned then I wonder why it doesn't do all this processing immediately after turning the previous page. Then it would be ready to just redraw the page when the user presses the next-button.

Also, if nothing happens for 500 ms after pressing the button then you really don't know if it registered the press or not. I've seen this many times in the various Reader and Iliad videos on the net. The user presses the next-button, then waits for a few seconds before realizing it isn't doing anything and then presses the button again. Or presses the button, waiting for half a second, then probably thinking that it didn't register the press and pressing again just when it starts to do the eink page-flip-dance. An obvious solution to this is to make the button make a sound immediately when the press is registered, but then that would be somewhat annoying (especially to other people in the room).

[tompe]

Originally Posted by msundman

But then I have to bring along a charger when I'm on the road. Not having to bring a charger e.g. when you go on vacation is supposed to be a speciality of eink. That's no showstopper, though.

Or you could bring a USB-battery to charge from. I can charge my phone and my Palm T5 from USB so I need an USB-charger anyway when travelling. Nowadays I always carry a USB-battery in my bag.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by msundman

Also, if nothing happens for 500 ms after pressing the button then you really don't know if it registered the press or not. I've seen this many times in the various Reader and Iliad videos on the net.

This is actually a real problem with the Gen3. It happens sometimes that you just do not press the button hard enough.

Maybe the time before the flashing is not processor time but setup time in the display. Otherwise your suggestion for optimization should work.

[msundman]

Originally Posted by tompe

Maybe the time before the flashing is not processor time but setup time in the display. Otherwise your suggestion for optimization should work.

But then why doesn't PVI make it possible to do this setup stuff ahead of time? I'm quite sure "my"* suggestion would work, but what's unsure is who is responsible for not making it; bookeen or PVI.

*actually, such an obvious thing could hardly be called mine as such

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by tribble

But if 133ms page turns are already disturbing your reading experience, you might think differently about this.

They do say that kids today have a short attention span .

[msundman]

Originally Posted by tribble

The center button brings up the menu. [...] Pressing the menu button twice [...] brings you to the beginning of the book.

If you can't very easily get back to the exact location you were reading at then that's a HUGE UI blooper. Destructive actions (yes, forgetting the place you were at is a destructive action, even though it's not as desctructive as, say, a text editor forgetting all the text of your 90% finished doctoral thesis) should be very hard to do by accident.

One of the things I hate really much about p-books is that it's very easy to lose track of where you are. (This is probably the main reason why I don't buy p-books anymore, I just hate spending so much time trying to figure out where I was (e.g. before I fell asleep). Oh, and the fact that it's so cumbersome to flip the page of (or even to just read from) a p-book with one hand.)

Originally Posted by tribble

I would like to see page numbers on Mobipocket files, since once you lost your place in a book, you have no way of knowing where you where before.

Actually page numbers are quite bad. I've come to love the percentage display of QReader. (E.g., I'm currently "59,2%" through The Player of Games.) Not only does it give a better picture of how far along a book I am, but it also doesn't change when I switch font size, margins or page orientation. It does have one limitation, though: if there are more than 1000 pages you either have to use 2 decimals or live with the percentage sometimes not changing when you flip the page (e.g., in a book with 2000 pages a percentage with one decimal would only change at every second page change).

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by msundman

If you can't very easily get back to the exact location you were reading at then that's a HUGE UI blooper.

You can do - you just press the "Back" button and it "undoes" any navigation command.

[tribble]

Originally Posted by msundman

If you can't very easily get back to the exact location you were reading at then that's a HUGE UI blooper.

Actually you can go back to where you were by using the "Back" menu option. But it is still inconvenient.
... damn Harry, you are sooo fast.

Actually page numbers are quite bad. I've come to love the percentage display of QReader. (E.g., I'm currently "59,2%" through The Player of Games.) Not only does it give a better picture of how far along a book I am, but it also doesn't change when I switch font size, margins or page orientation. It does have one limitation, though: if there are more than 1000 pages you either have to use 2 decimals or live with the percentage sometimes not changing when you flip the page (e.g., in a book with 2000 pages a percentage with one decimal would only change at every second page change).

I would like to see both. The percentage bar and pagenumbers. Knowing pagenumbers makes it easier to jump to specific point in a book. Although reflowable formats would need some sort of smarter pagenumbering, which is consistent for anyfont and screensize. I guess a decimal with high precision would suffice, but its not intuitive to a user. Pagenumbers should also give you some indication of the size of the book.

[msundman]

Originally Posted by tribble

I guess a decimal with high precision would suffice, but its not intuitive to a user.

A 1-decimal percentage is good for over 99% of all books.
Also, I find percentage much more intuitive than page numbers for e-books, webpages, and in general everything that doesn't have a fixed page size.
If there is a "jump to"-command in an e-book reader, I want it to use percentage.

Originally Posted by tribble

Pagenumbers should also give you some indication of the size of the book.

For that I'd much rather have a word count. Not at the bottom of the reading page (I really don't need it, or even want it, when I'm reading the book), but by the title (e.g. at the beginning of the book and also beside the book titles in the "library").

A letter count might be even better, once you get used to it. A word count is somewhat dependent on the language (e.g., a book in finnish have far fewer words than the same book in swedish or english). Although a letter count is also somewhat dependent on the language, it'd still give a more precise picture of how long the book is.

Or you could combine them, e.g. "101k / 564k" to indicate that Ender's Game has ~101,000 words and ~564,000 characters.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by msundman

But then why doesn't PVI make it possible to do this setup stuff ahead of time? I'm quite sure "my"* suggestion would work, but what's unsure is who is responsible for not making it; bookeen or PVI.

I do not know how it works but it is perfectly possible that the setup has to be done just before the change. So it might not be possible to do it.