Onyx Boox M92 - To buy or not to buy?

[Beryll Snyder]

Originally Posted by parkher

tuxor,


Beryll Snyder,


With such margins you get the size of the text itself exactly like in a regular printed on paper book.
Furthermore, if margins are narrow, then on 9.7" screen the line of text is too long for comfortable reading: you have to follow the line along with the eyes and then to search for the beginning of the next line.
Long lines are not good. In the printed book business they know what line length is the best and they try to stick close to it.

So we have different rquirements. I don't need an exact reproduction of a page. I need the page numbers and proper moving from the part I read to the next part.
As far as lines lenght/fonts go, every printed book is set differently - so the exact reproduction produces actually quite different page views on the reader anyway ...

[PF4Mobile]

I have two admit that parkher got me worried while MatthiasR gave me back my hopes.
Having to read around 10000 PDF pages at least in the next coming months made me want to buy a 9.7" (10") eInk device. Considering the task and the amount of reading and also considering the eye strain that my two monitors are giving me such a device MUST do the work otherwise I will have to kill a forest printing and I will be done in 2 years with reading these which is not good at all.

I am thinking about starting a conversation here on one of the forums just to hear what others have done and what solutions they found for problems like mine.
In order to get rid of the eye strain I have tried the following:
two monitors, different sizes -16:9 factor does not help reading at all. They are excellent for work comparing diagrams working in terminals and looking at diagrams and documentation for short reading but they are not good for long term sustained reading. The form factor ast parker suggested is a problem, you line becomes too long (for fluid web pages especially)
For reading I am using PDF Xchange reader which is an excellent program, the only major drawback it seem to have is the PDF rendering, more exactly the font rendering is not very precise compared with Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader where the fonts are sharper.
Xchange Reader has the optimum feature set that I need, it is fast and light so the functionality is there and I am very happy with it. So font rendering is a problem (they said they are working on it).
When reading on monitors another problem is the amount of light coming from your screens and the contrast between font and background. I have tried to adjust all these factors but none of them made the reading comfortable. The distance between the monitors and your eyes and also the position of the monitors matters too. I had to read a little about these and I realized that at work most of the people around me had the monitors positioned wrong (myself included) . That is fixed now but did not change much, the eye strain is still there. I also considered getting arms for my monitors so I can vary the distance between my eyes and the screens. I am already alternating the reading from one monitor to the other (they are positioned on an L shape table one in the corner and the other on the short leg of the L letter). None of these solved the problem.

Disappointed I change my focus to tablets. The first thing to be identified was the software that would give me the functionality and I also had to find out if the screen is any better than the monitors (for reading). Had to use all sort of tricks to be able to try ezPDF reader on various tablets without buying them. I have come to the conclusion that 6-7" inch is not enough and tablets can be worse than monitors for reading.
The only satisfactory experience that I have had was with reading on Pocket Edge. ezPDF reader has a night mode where your font is white on black background. Not the best combination on any other reader just because of the glaring that is accentuated on the new very shiny screens. Being an older reader Entourage Pocket has a glossy screen and that worked. The only problem was the 6" size of the screen (I am talking here about the android side with the color screen, Pocket Edge has two screens, eInk and TFT or whatever the technology is called).
So right now I am looking for a Entourage Edge (10") but that will be just for color PDFs where I do need to see the color information. I might switch my attention to JetBookColor if down the road, in the next 6 months the quality of the software running on that device changes. I might also buy an Asus eee 121, that is 12" but I am worried about glaring and the fact tha having to keep it too close to my eyes might make the problems worse. The device sells for 600$ factory refurbished or 1000$ brand new. At this point I am not convinced that it is worth the money although no doubts the screen size and the functionality have no match. Unfortunately the problem that I can not live with will still be there: eyes strain.

Having these said my only hope is a 10" eInk device. I already ordered an M92, I should receiv it by the end of this week. Reading what parkher and MatthiasR wrote makes me wonder if my problems will ever end :-) .

Now coming back to the issues mentioned by parkher and MatthiasR I have to underline that both of them seem to pay the price for leaving in Europe :-)). Most of my PDFs are Letter not A4 and I just used a ruler to measure the text block on a couple of printed pages.... the diagonal of such a text block is, for many of them, 10" minimum and 12" maximum with an average of 11". That would result in an average rescaling of 0.9 when displayed on the ereder which seem to be acceptable, but again that is for Letter pages. So your not so good experience might have something to do with that. Please try documents that where created for printing on Letter and see if the experience is better..

PS: I might have ignored the resolution difference between printing and displaying the PDF on eink. That is a factor as well

[parkher]

Booxtor,

Thanks!
There is nothing better than a picture!

Yes, 3 cm is perhaps a bit too much, but 2.5 gives you the width of the text itself about 9cm. Measure your books - most of the printed books I have have the text width 8.5 - 9.0 cm. Some of them just 8.2 cm or even less.
So this is the optimal range for the text width. To make the page look even more similar to a real book, I also use about 3 cm top/bottom margins - as you did too!

Congratulations! Welcome to the whole new comfort of reading!

[Beryll Snyder]

Originally Posted by PF4Mobile

Having to read around 10000 PDF pages at least in the next coming months made me want to buy a 9.7" (10") eInk device.

I can't wait to read your open/honest judgment as to the prospect to reading thousands of pages on a device like this.
I read huge amounts of any kind of documents, even "normal" books. Even they
produce eye strain.
If you just consider eye strain you probably will be happy, but as other factors
play a role as well - they simply cannot be ignored.
Many people, I for one, are betting the house now on the Jetbook Color(rather on software improvements). And Ectaco seems to be rather dynamic it would amount to a small miracle if expectations could be met in time.
So it is mostly the PC for me - mostly for workflow reasons.
What kind of documents do you have to read? Is it scientific stuff or something else?
I use diagonal reading a lot(going through documents faster), hoping not to miss too much.
After having used some readers now I think we are still in an experimental phase. People mostly seem to be happy to be able to read PDFs at all and a little bigger than a 6" reader.
This is still a niche market segment with very unsual habits.
Just the fact that the company can only reached by a mediator(shop) is odd.

[parkher]

The sizes of screens used in e-readers is strange.

6" - a little bit too small for books
9.7" - too large for books, too small for pdf documents.

So the sizes should be:

8" - 8.25" for books
14.3" for A4 documents

I realize that 14.3", if made of glass, might break easily. It should be plastic or metal foil

[PF4Mobile]

Originally Posted by Beryll Snyder

I can't wait to read your open/honest judgment as to the prospect to reading thousands of pages on a device like this.
I read huge amounts of any kind of documents, even "normal" books. Even they
produce eye strain.
If you just consider eye strain you probably will be happy, but as other factors
play a role as well - they simply cannot be ignored.
Many people, I for one, are betting the house now on the Jetbook Color(rather on software improvements). And Ectaco seems to be rather dynamic it would amount to a small miracle if expectations could be met in time.
So it is mostly the PC for me - mostly for workflow reasons.
What kind of documents do you have to read? Is it scientific stuff or something else?
I use diagonal reading a lot(going through documents faster), hoping not to miss too much.
After having used some readers now I think we are still in an experimental phase. People mostly seem to be happy to be able to read PDFs at all and a little bigger than a 6" reader.
This is still a niche market segment with very unsual habits.
Just the fact that the company can only reached by a mediator(shop) is odd.

This is what my nightmare looks like


Diagonal reading is out of question.
If it was diagonal reading that would have made the things easier.
From what it was just said in this thread I am starting to belive that I might be dissapointed by the eInk experience in the end . It might be simply because the physical dimension of the screen makes the task impossible.

I guess an entourage edge in landscape mode will do the job in the end. I will use the ezPDf reader and the zooming and panning.

The other alternative would be deconstructing the PDFs and taking the time to reflow the document when possible. I would do that by saving the document in Word 2003 format (Adobe Acrobat X does that pretty well, I also used Abby PDF transformer for that in the past) . I will try to rearrange the document to fit properly on the page and go back to PDF ... PDF is essential for my work flow.

I noticed that there is a major difference between the PDFs written as technical documentation and PDF written for learning and books. At least the ones that I have to read. The first category uses the page to the maximum extent, not sure why. Those will be hard to read on a 10"

[kamizase]

Originally Posted by parkher

Measure your books - most of the printed books I have have the text width 8.5 - 9.0 cm. Some of them just 8.2 cm or even less.
So this is the optimal range for the text width. To make the page look even more similar to a real book, I also use about 3 cm top/bottom margins - as you did too!

6 inchers are 3.6 inch wide. This is 9.144 cm. So without margins on the text a 6" offers exactly what you want.

Booxtor reports you can set two columns in landscape mode. So that is 2 times (almost) 4" wide, with some space to seperate the pages it also gives you what you want, this time in 9.7" format.

[PF4Mobile]

Originally Posted by kamizase

6 inchers are 3.6 inch wide. This is 9.144 cm. So without margins on the text a 6" offers exactly what you want.

Booxtor reports you can set two columns in landscape mode. So that is 2 times (almost) 4" wide, with some space to seperate the pages it also gives you what you want, this time in 9.7" format.

Not all the books have the text on two columns. Scientific materials especially Maths , Physics and so on use one column.
Medical books seem to prefer two columns.

[kamizase]

I was refering to epubs etc. where you can set your own reflow and text size, not pdfs.

[PF4Mobile]

Originally Posted by kamizase

I was refering to epubs etc. where you can set your own reflow and text size, not pdfs.

Unless you want to change the font size as you read you can basically reflow your epub and nail it down into a PDF to whatever factor size is convenient for you. That includes convenient margins ...

Never heard about column mode in epubs since that format is mostly HTML like and two columns will defeat the idea behind re flowing

I thought you were speaking about PDFs.

[kamizase]

No, in the suggestion thread I posted that idea, to have two columns in landscape mode for epubs etc., to simulate an open paper book - you see two pages at once there too, after all. That was my idea to fix the "wide text" problem on a 9.7" screen, something parkher was refering to extensively earlier in this thread, since that would be somewhat like having two 6" screens very close together. Never thought of adding margins, seemed counterintuitive to buy a big screen only to reduce used area.

But Booxtor reports that now both approaches are possible, whatever fits one's needs - which is awesome!

[Beryll Snyder]

Originally Posted by kamizase

No, in the suggestion thread I posted that idea, to have two columns in landscape mode for epubs etc., to simulate an open paper book - you see two pages at once there too, after all. That was my idea to fix the "wide text" problem on a 9.7" screen, something parkher was refering to extensively earlier in this thread, since that would be somewhat like having two 6" screens very close together. Never thought of adding margins, seemed counterintuitive to buy a big screen only to reduce used area.

But Booxtor reports that now both approaches are possible, whatever fits one's needs - which is awesome!

"to simulate an open paper book" - why in heaven would anyone want that?
Is there any practical purpose for that?

[Beryll Snyder]

Originally Posted by parkher

The sizes of screens used in e-readers is strange.

6" - a little bit too small for books
9.7" - too large for books, too small for pdf documents.

So the sizes should be:

8" - 8.25" for books
14.3" for A4 documents

That is exactly what I have been thinking - but this will take probably a while to be introduced into the market.

[Beryll Snyder]

Originally Posted by PF4Mobile

This is what my nightmare looks like




I noticed that there is a major difference between the PDFs written as technical documentation and PDF written for learning and books. At least the ones that I have to read. The first category uses the page to the maximum extent, not sure why. Those will be hard to read on a 10"

On top of all the software problems I also get the impression that "size matters", meaning that the diplays are too small for many purposes - on the other hand: some people even want to reduce size by adding margins. Crazy and confusing ereader world.

[PF4Mobile]

PRS 950 was close to that 7.1"

They seem to have a problems with the 10" size.
What makes you hope that you will ever have 14" ??