How satisfied are you with Story?

[greenapple]

Curious how you feel about your IRiver's Story.

[greenapple]

It seems most Story owners are very happy with their readers. Good for you!

Do you guys stick to reading epub/PDF? I wish iRiver would fix .DOC and .TXT formats.

[OlleF]

I use my beloved Story only for .epub.
I have a wonderful Irex 1000 for .pdf´s.
When I want to read any doc or docx or txt on my Story - I convert it to .epub via Calibre!

[ischeriad]

I stick to epub and pdf, I don't bother about the other formats. It's an ebook reader after all.

The story has its difficulties but I am quite happy with the status quo. (I own no other eink devices to compare to).

[OlleF]

Iscerad, you are so right. Story is an e-book reader. Full stop.
If you try to make it into something different and start to whine, as too many people do, you are barking up the wrong tree....
It is like having a Maserati to deliver milk....

[greenapple]

I hope you're not referring to my 'whining' posts. Maybe you are.

I do complain rather a lot about the non functional TXT and DOC formats on Story. But hey, these are ebook formats too!

Besides, iRiver has claimed that these 2 formats are supported. Two ebook formats down out of four would still be acceptable to you, even for a pure 'ebook reader'?

Remember, there might be people who buy a Story only because these formats are supported. Wouldn't they feel cheated?

Anyway, peace.

[ischeriad]

I don't think you are 'whining', greenapple, but I do not consider txt and doc ebook formats. Features not working as advertised is annoying, but in my case these are features I don't care much about, as is the built in mp3 player.

If I was buying the story for very specific files, I would have taken a SD card with these files to the store to try if they work.
I did so with some pdf files and it was sufficient for my needs. This was even with an ancient firmware version, v1.04 I think, pre pdf reflow. And for me, the story has only gotten better.

[denodan]

Love my iriver Story. New Zealand has just got it's first offical ebook reader, the Kobo, and can tell you the iriver Story beats it hands down.

Have for far about 80 ebooks on my Story, most free, some bought. Had a lockup once, but a press of the reset fixed this, not leaving my iriver Story on. I get over 2 weeks reading easily. In around 10 days only down to the second bar, so maybe more like 3-4 weeks on a charge, never timed it.

The iriver Story is up there with the best of them, but why compare it to a Kindle as many reviews do, it's not, who needs an ebook reader connected to the internet. It not nessesary, when your ebook reader is in your computer, you can find ebooks and download them to your Story anyway.

Here is an interesting link, who says the iriver Story is slow? Faster then Sony, here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCN5oFA_Al4

[sapphiresilver]

I've had my iriver Story for a couple of days, and I'm really happy with it. I only read EPUB books on it, so I don't know how it handles PDF or TXT. I've found that it's much easier on my eyes to read e-ink for hours rather than reading on a backlit screen. The page-turn is fairly fast and it's also fast when it boots up and loads a book.

[MacEachaidh]

I'm another one who's been a little vocal in my disappointment with some aspects of the Story. For me, a product that doesn't deliver on features it claims to support is a bad start; it's even worse when you find the manual doesn't even mention some features, let alone give instructions on them, and the company's own tech support staff answers enquiries with replies like "I haven't got any information on that" and expect that to be the end of the matter. (The tech support staff both at the distributor's officer here in Australia and at the iRiver office in the US have told me they have no procedure whereby they can ask Korea a question on the product and get information back, and neither office has any incident tracking system to record any questions, problems or feedback comments.) It makes me doubt it's either a market-ready product or a customer-aware company manufacturing it.

Despite all that (and it's not a small thing), I'd have to say that overall I am very happy with the Story. I really like the look and feel of it, the size, the display and the weight. (It's in the Goldilocks zone: not too big, and not too little; not too heavy, and not so light it's flimsy.) If I could get some confidence that iRiver was trying to address its shortcomings (three of the four document formats - TXT, DOC and PDF - I would consider broken to any reasonable level of functionality; and even though ePub works fairly nicely, the Story doesn't support some of the nicer capabilities in the full specification, like embedded fonts ... without them, artistic titles, colophons and even common extended European characters are out of the game; and even though it says you can install your own fonts, you can't actually use them for, say, displaying the books, so what's the point?) ... if I felt there was any kind of roadmap for improvements, then my vote here would have been an A rather than a B.

As it is, there's a lot about it I like, but I'm not able to say "Jeez, this is a great little gadget!" ... disappointingly, it's more like, "Oh well, never mind, you can't have everything".

[greenapple]

From what I gathered (from a couple audio forums), iRiver ain't what it used to be, even in the mp3 players department.

[MacEachaidh]

I do think the Story is overpriced, something I'm a little grumpy about because I've effectively only just bought mine and iRiver is about to release a new, updated model with - allegedly - greater capabilities.

I should have been more wary, really. Not long before I bought the Story I'd bought an iRiver MP3 player ( the B30 model) - and while it has both an FM and a digital DAB+ radio built in and the quality of the audio output far exceeds an iPod's output (plus it supports far more formats and isn't tied into using iTunes), it too has somewhat eccentric operating software that is badly in need of an update.

At the time, both the B30 and Story seemed better options than what Sony and Apple were offering. They still could be, if iRiver could manage to be a bit proactive.

[denodan]

Originally Posted by MacEachaidh

I do think the Story is overpriced, something I'm a little grumpy about because I've effectively only just bought mine and iRiver is about to release a new, updated model with - allegedly - greater capabilities.

I should have been more wary, really. Not long before I bought the Story I'd bought an iRiver MP3 player ( the B30 model) - and while it has both an FM and a digital DAB+ radio built in and the quality of the audio output far exceeds an iPod's output (plus it supports far more formats and isn't tied into using iTunes), it too has somewhat eccentric operating software that is badly in need of an update.

At the time, both the B30 and Story seemed better options than what Sony and Apple were offering. They still could be, if iRiver could manage to be a bit proactive.

Well said. I have an ipod touch and the iriver Story MP3 sound quailty is better then the ipod touch, the iriver Story has far better bass response even with the ipod earphones.

[denodan]

All the picking out faults with the iriver Story, I am supprised, with all ebook readers being so new techology, they all have faults.

Been reading up about other ebook readers, seems all have problems. Don't miss a touch screen, accually not having one is a blessing, because all touch screens get scratched and marked and worn marks on the screen, which in time looks horrible.

I am amazed at the bitching and moaning about the iriver Story, when if you read about other ebook readers, they also have bad faults, not just the irver Story.

I say enjoy it, it's a good ebook reader. Looked at the Kobo one they sell here in New Zealand, it's not a patch on the iriver Story.

Some of the Sony ebooks run a lot slower than the iriver Story, here is the iriver Story compared to the Sony PS 505.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCN5oFA_Al4

So be thanful you have the iriver Story after seeing the video above.

I just wished people would not compare it to the kindle just because it has the almost same look. It's no Kindle, so why compare it.

The good thing about the iriver Story, is it has heaps of memory compared to many and is expandable to 32GB with memory card.

[MacEachaidh]

Well, denodan, seems you're doing a bit of bitching and moaning yourself.