Iriver Story - Page 10

MacEachaidh · 05-16-2010, 09:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by greenapple

Stick to older versions, if they're available. v1.70 and later are infested with the nastiest of bugs that even iRiver couldn't, wouldn't fix.

greenapple, that's a slight overstatement, don't you think?

We don't know that iRiver either "couldn't" or wouldn't fix the shortcomings in the firmware. Version 1.71 hasn't been out very long, we don't know their development cycle, and they haven't made any comment on it one way or the other.

They really should have made a statement, at least, to their customers, and I think the fact that they haven't is in itself a failure on their part. Several features of the firmware *do not* work as they claim them to, and I think the onus is on the company to either fix them or explain why. But that's not the same as them being unable or unwilling to fix them.

greenapple · 05-16-2010, 11:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MacEachaidh

greenapple, that's a slight overstatement, don't you think?

We don't know that iRiver either "couldn't" or wouldn't fix the shortcomings in the firmware. Version 1.71 hasn't been out very long, we don't know their development cycle, and they haven't made any comment on it one way or the other.

They really should have made a statement, at least, to their customers, and I think the fact that they haven't is in itself a failure on their part. Several features of the firmware *do not* work as they claim them to, and I think the onus is on the company to either fix them or explain why. But that's not the same as them being unable or unwilling to fix them.

I have this hunch that they've given up developing the firmware the day I read that they've offered the code to the open source community. Open sourcing a code is usually good news, but we may not have a large enough community who's interested in developing the firmware. I'd like to be proven wrong here.

Additionally I've yet to come across a text reader of any kind that couldn't handle a simple TXT file. It's de rigueur. If they can't fix it now, they really do have a major, technical know-how problem.

Only 2 out of 4 formats work... that is really bad.

MacEachaidh · 05-17-2010, 12:35 AM

Well, I certainly agree with you that it looks like they have a technical expertise problem.

I *hope* you're wrong about them setting the OS adrift in their opening it up to open source, but you're probably right. I'll be very disappointed if I've bought ... what did you call it? "Abandonware" ? (I don't have the money to stick it in a drawer and go out and buy something different.)

I've had a reply back from the questions I posed to tech support in the US, and frankly I'm disgusted with it. There's not an ounce of acknowledgement in the wording of it that there are any problems with iRiver's device, let alone any realisation that maybe there are any issues there that should be escalated to the company, either as a question that requires an answer or even simply as feedback. The company must know that its OS is deficient, surely?

MacEachaidh · 05-17-2010, 12:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by greenapple

Only 2 out of 4 formats work... that is really bad.

I'd go further even than that, mate. As far as I can see, TXT, DOC, PDF, CBZ and DJVU are all effectively unusable, and the Story doesn't support some of the generally-implemented capabilities of ePUB either (such as embedded fonts). That's pretty much 6 out of 6 that either don't work at all, or don't work to an industry standard. (And it's not even a very advanced industry!)

Add to that these other (fairly basic) issues: that zoom is only rudimentary in its capabilities, with no customisable settings, and doesn't work at all in landscape; that the display of titles on the Library menu is inadequate and user-UNfriendly in the extreme; that the facility for custom fonts is broken and doesn't work in any of the apps or screens where you might really want it to apply ... and you've got a device that falls short, and has in fact been significantly hobbled by inadequate support from its own manufacturer. Bugger!!

I haven't tried XLS or PPT files ... do they work?

Iriver_Neuling · 07-26-2010, 06:49 AM

Greetings to all from Austria. I have the same problem. Does anyone know a solution for that problem? My Iriver is also hanging 5 mm to the end of the line at starting. Connection to the computer is not possible, to go back to an older firmware.

Pls help - My Iriver is 1 day old!

thank you

MacEachaidh · 07-26-2010, 08:53 AM

G'day Neuling, and welcome to the forums.

First thing: which "same problem" were you referring to? I've found solutions to some of the things I've posted about here in the forums, so maybe we can sort yours out as well.

As for the freezing: does your iRiver hang when it's just starting up, or on trying to open specific files? I read somewhere about being able to boot it from a copy of the firmware on an SD chip -- I'll see if I can find that article again.

What version of the firmware is installed at the moment? Is it just as it was fresh out of the box, or have you already done a firmware update on it?

8andout · 07-26-2010, 01:41 PM

I think a lot of the problems we have with the various formats not working is due to the developers not having the experience, expertise or opportunity to test and fix the problems with the english (and presumably all other Western) languages. The company's Western partners, promoters or whatever seem to be capable of little more than advertising the product and the tech support seems to be just third parties who get little more info from iriver than the customers.
This doesn't help us of course but I think it explains why we have all these apparently useless formats. I bet if we were reading Korean text it would work perfectly. Hopefully iriver will eventually choose to iron out the bugs for we international customers.

MacEachaidh · 07-26-2010, 02:14 PM

I'm sure you're right, 8andout. Look at the way the Story reads TXT documents: it treats it all - words, punctuation and spaces - as undifferentiated characters, and simply breaks the stream and wraps to the next line after a certain number of characters, even if that's in the middle of a word. That's the way Korean writing works, too. I have another iRiver product - the B30 mp3 player/DAB+ radio - and the menus on that handle text exactly the same way.

So I don't think it's just because the product is new, or non-English. It's the way the software's been designed and coded. I would have thought it was a matter of iRiver (hopefully) realising that if it's going to sell into markets involving Western languages, then it has to handle text better (in the OS as well as in TXT files). But you know what? I read a *lot* of reviews before buying both the Story and the B30, and I never encountered this flagged as an issue in any other reviews I read. Maybe people don't see it as a problem, so why should iRiver.

But I doubt the poor display handling of some file formats is language-related. A Word document is a Word document, regardless of what language it contains.

Ultimately, I don't blame the support people at the distributors directly for not having knowledge about the products, and especially about any shortcomings and how to fix them. As you point out, they get no more info from iRiver than we do. But they do have an access to the company and a marketing leverage that we don't have, and I really wish they would put their collective feet down with iRiver and say "if you want us to sell these devices, you have to give us some info". The support people at the distributors in my country told me to send any issues, questions or requests to them in an e.mail, but then acknowledged they have no procedures even to store that e.mail and get a reply to me if/when they got an answer back from iRiver - they told me to ring them "in a few weeks" and see if anyone had heard anything - let alone anything like an incident tracking system or the ability to follow-up questions they didn't get replies to. If iRiver products were seriously el-cheapo, I'd probably figure that was to be expected, thinking you get what you pay for; but they're not - the Story is one of the more expensive e.Readers around.

dimov000 · 07-30-2010, 02:46 AM

Dear IRiver users. Since 15th op april 2010 I have a weblog RCS in www.samson-dimov.nl where you find all about e-readers, tests, reviews and every day 4 epubs free to download. Unique as 7000 visitors are already visiting us a day. Just login and register and download newspapers and ebooks in epub without DRM.Or follow all at Twitter.com/dimov000. Greetings Richard Samson-Dimov

webhopping · 07-31-2010, 03:29 PM

Hi All,
Just received my story with wifi. So far quite happy with it. The comics look good with the new 16 scale screen. Wifi works although so far it seems unhappy to log onto whsmith site. I presume you guys would want to know it came with a new firmware. From the numbering it looks like a continuation of the older versions and therefore hopefully will be available for the older version.

Regards
Mark

MacEachaidh · 07-31-2010, 07:10 PM

Thanks for your heads-up, Mark. Oh, and ... grrrr!!!!

Not at you, mate - I just... I would have liked my machine to be a little older before it got superseded. I don't care about the wireless bit so much, but I would have liked to have a 16-grey scale screen.

I've just done a quick scan of all the iRiver websites I'm aware of, and I can't find a downloadable firmware update yet. But the last update - 1.71 - had wireless functionality built into the code, even for the existing model that had no wireless capability, so hopefully iRiver is going to keep the firmware able to operate right across the product line. But I'm surprised there hasn't been an announcement of the new model and/or firmware version.

Do you mind my asking how expensive it was, Mark?

(Update: it seems the Wireless version is - so far, at least - only available in the UK, and the wireless access is a direct link with WH Smiths. No browsing Wikipedia on this device.)

webhopping · 08-01-2010, 09:14 AM

£199. No I wasn't too fussed by wifi either but thought the price premium worth it for the new screen. There's mention of a touch version so I think in a short time I will be thinking grrrr

Yep straight to the whsmith site that I can't log into at the moment...
I am hoping that a vanilla firmware is released which allows a bit more flexibility. I believe there was a Korean version of the wifi edition. The page which has the download for this seems to suggest there is a firmware file within a zip folder but every time I attempted the download it stops part way through despite download managers etc.

MacEachaidh · 08-01-2010, 09:30 AM

OK, thanks for that info, mate. (£199? Hmmm, that's about what I paid for the first model with the 8-scale screen. Bugger.)

Looking for the firmware update, I only tried English-language iRiver websites, assuming the Korean one would hold a firmware that was in Korean. I could be wrong, though.

I found the iRiver EU site, which appears to be based in Germany, but surprisingly it doesn't even mention the Story, and almost all the internal links on the website are broken anyway.

Guess I'll wait and see if a firmware update shows up. Sadly, the people at the company that distributes the Story in my country seem really bad at sourcing or disseminating info. When I registered my purchase they had me sign onto an e.mail distribution list for news and updates on the products (I own both a Story and a B30 mp3 player), but I've never had a single e.mail from them, so I'm not sure what the purpose of the sign-up was.

melmike · 08-05-2010, 03:20 AM

I'm glad you are so pro-active and vocal here MacEachaidh as you help me keep informed! And we are in the same country, so that really helps me! Thanks to everyone. Since I have had my Story for only about 2 months, I'm certainly not in the market for an upgrade, but more gray scale WOULD be great.
FYI, I just took it away to a beach resort and it worked kind of/sort of ok in the sun. Sometimes the page/words faded in absolute direct sunlight, but I just closed the cover for a sec and moved it around and it was ok.

melmike · 08-05-2010, 03:21 AM

Oh - I read 3 books in 8 days - what a blessing it was not to have to lug them in suitcases etc!

07-26-2010, 02:14 PM	#143
MacEachaidh Browser Posts: 745 Karma: 578294 Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kobo Touch, Kobo Aura HD	I'm sure you're right, 8andout. Look at the way the Story reads TXT documents: it treats it all - words, punctuation and spaces - as undifferentiated characters, and simply breaks the stream and wraps to the next line after a certain number of characters, even if that's in the middle of a word. That's the way Korean writing works, too. I have another iRiver product - the B30 mp3 player/DAB+ radio - and the menus on that handle text exactly the same way. So I don't think it's just because the product is new, or non-English. It's the way the software's been designed and coded. I would have thought it was a matter of iRiver (hopefully) realising that if it's going to sell into markets involving Western languages, then it has to handle text better (in the OS as well as in TXT files). But you know what? I read a lot of reviews before buying both the Story and the B30, and I never encountered this flagged as an issue in any other reviews I read. Maybe people don't see it as a problem, so why should iRiver. But I doubt the poor display handling of some file formats is language-related. A Word document is a Word document, regardless of what language it contains. Ultimately, I don't blame the support people at the distributors directly for not having knowledge about the products, and especially about any shortcomings and how to fix them. As you point out, they get no more info from iRiver than we do. But they do have an access to the company and a marketing leverage that we don't have, and I really wish they would put their collective feet down with iRiver and say "if you want us to sell these devices, you have to give us some info". The support people at the distributors in my country told me to send any issues, questions or requests to them in an e.mail, but then acknowledged they have no procedures even to store that e.mail and get a reply to me if/when they got an answer back from iRiver - they told me to ring them "in a few weeks" and see if anyone had heard anything - let alone anything like an incident tracking system or the ability to follow-up questions they didn't get replies to. If iRiver products were seriously el-cheapo, I'd probably figure that was to be expected, thinking you get what you pay for; but they're not - the Story is one of the more expensive e.Readers around. Last edited by MacEachaidh; 07-26-2010 at 02:19 PM.

07-31-2010, 03:29 PM	#145
webhopping Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: iriver story	Firmware 1.84 Hi All, Just received my story with wifi. So far quite happy with it. The comics look good with the new 16 scale screen. Wifi works although so far it seems unhappy to log onto whsmith site. I presume you guys would want to know it came with a new firmware. From the numbering it looks like a continuation of the older versions and therefore hopefully will be available for the older version. Regards Mark

07-31-2010, 07:10 PM	#146
MacEachaidh Browser Posts: 745 Karma: 578294 Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kobo Touch, Kobo Aura HD	Thanks for your heads-up, Mark. Oh, and ... grrrr!!!! Not at you, mate - I just... I would have liked my machine to be a little older before it got superseded. I don't care about the wireless bit so much, but I would have liked to have a 16-grey scale screen. I've just done a quick scan of all the iRiver websites I'm aware of, and I can't find a downloadable firmware update yet. But the last update - 1.71 - had wireless functionality built into the code, even for the existing model that had no wireless capability, so hopefully iRiver is going to keep the firmware able to operate right across the product line. But I'm surprised there hasn't been an announcement of the new model and/or firmware version. Do you mind my asking how expensive it was, Mark? (Update: it seems the Wireless version is - so far, at least - only available in the UK, and the wireless access is a direct link with WH Smiths. No browsing Wikipedia on this device.) Last edited by MacEachaidh; 07-31-2010 at 07:40 PM.

08-01-2010, 09:30 AM	#148
MacEachaidh Browser Posts: 745 Karma: 578294 Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kobo Touch, Kobo Aura HD	OK, thanks for that info, mate. (£199? Hmmm, that's about what I paid for the first model with the 8-scale screen. Bugger.) Looking for the firmware update, I only tried English-language iRiver websites, assuming the Korean one would hold a firmware that was in Korean. I could be wrong, though. I found the iRiver EU site, which appears to be based in Germany, but surprisingly it doesn't even mention the Story, and almost all the internal links on the website are broken anyway. Guess I'll wait and see if a firmware update shows up. Sadly, the people at the company that distributes the Story in my country seem really bad at sourcing or disseminating info. When I registered my purchase they had me sign onto an e.mail distribution list for news and updates on the products (I own both a Story and a B30 mp3 player), but I've never had a single e.mail from them, so I'm not sure what the purpose of the sign-up was. Last edited by MacEachaidh; 08-01-2010 at 09:32 AM.

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05-17-2010, 12:35 AM	#138
MacEachaidh Browser Posts: 745 Karma: 578294 Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kobo Touch, Kobo Aura HD	Well, I certainly agree with you that it looks like they have a technical expertise problem. I hope you're wrong about them setting the OS adrift in their opening it up to open source, but you're probably right. I'll be very disappointed if I've bought ... what did you call it? "Abandonware" ? (I don't have the money to stick it in a drawer and go out and buy something different.) I've had a reply back from the questions I posed to tech support in the US, and frankly I'm disgusted with it. There's not an ounce of acknowledgement in the wording of it that there are any problems with iRiver's device, let alone any realisation that maybe there are any issues there that should be escalated to the company, either as a question that requires an answer or even simply as feedback. The company must know that its OS is deficient, surely?

07-26-2010, 06:49 AM	#140
Iriver_Neuling Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: Iriver Story	Greetings to all from Austria. I have the same problem. Does anyone know a solution for that problem? My Iriver is also hanging 5 mm to the end of the line at starting. Connection to the computer is not possible, to go back to an older firmware. Pls help - My Iriver is 1 day old! thank you

07-26-2010, 08:53 AM	#141
MacEachaidh Browser Posts: 745 Karma: 578294 Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kobo Touch, Kobo Aura HD	G'day Neuling, and welcome to the forums. First thing: which "same problem" were you referring to? I've found solutions to some of the things I've posted about here in the forums, so maybe we can sort yours out as well. As for the freezing: does your iRiver hang when it's just starting up, or on trying to open specific files? I read somewhere about being able to boot it from a copy of the firmware on an SD chip -- I'll see if I can find that article again. What version of the firmware is installed at the moment? Is it just as it was fresh out of the box, or have you already done a firmware update on it?

07-26-2010, 01:41 PM	#142
8andout Member Posts: 16 Karma: 112 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: iriver story HD; Boyue T62+	I think a lot of the problems we have with the various formats not working is due to the developers not having the experience, expertise or opportunity to test and fix the problems with the english (and presumably all other Western) languages. The company's Western partners, promoters or whatever seem to be capable of little more than advertising the product and the tech support seems to be just third parties who get little more info from iriver than the customers. This doesn't help us of course but I think it explains why we have all these apparently useless formats. I bet if we were reading Korean text it would work perfectly. Hopefully iriver will eventually choose to iron out the bugs for we international customers.

07-30-2010, 02:46 AM	#144
dimov000 Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: The Hague Device: IRiver Story	Dear IRiver users. Since 15th op april 2010 I have a weblog RCS in www.samson-dimov.nl where you find all about e-readers, tests, reviews and every day 4 epubs free to download. Unique as 7000 visitors are already visiting us a day. Just login and register and download newspapers and ebooks in epub without DRM.Or follow all at Twitter.com/dimov000. Greetings Richard Samson-Dimov

08-01-2010, 09:14 AM	#147
webhopping Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: iriver story	£199. No I wasn't too fussed by wifi either but thought the price premium worth it for the new screen. There's mention of a touch version so I think in a short time I will be thinking grrrr Yep straight to the whsmith site that I can't log into at the moment... I am hoping that a vanilla firmware is released which allows a bit more flexibility. I believe there was a Korean version of the wifi edition. The page which has the download for this seems to suggest there is a firmware file within a zip folder but every time I attempted the download it stops part way through despite download managers etc.

08-05-2010, 03:20 AM	#149
melmike Member Posts: 16 Karma: 22 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: I River Story	I'm glad you are so pro-active and vocal here MacEachaidh as you help me keep informed! And we are in the same country, so that really helps me! Thanks to everyone. Since I have had my Story for only about 2 months, I'm certainly not in the market for an upgrade, but more gray scale WOULD be great. FYI, I just took it away to a beach resort and it worked kind of/sort of ok in the sun. Sometimes the page/words faded in absolute direct sunlight, but I just closed the cover for a sec and moved it around and it was ok.

08-05-2010, 03:21 AM	#150
melmike Member Posts: 16 Karma: 22 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: I River Story	Oh - I read 3 books in 8 days - what a blessing it was not to have to lug them in suitcases etc!

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