STAReBOOK Review Part II

[Robert Marquard]

Originally Posted by CommanderROR

The STAReBOOK has a USB2.0 connection and seems to be using a standard mini-usb connector for both data-transfer and charging. there is an additional charger in the box (mine is the US model unfortunately so I can't really try it out, only charge from USB connection) that will be of some use to those who are away from the computer for longer periods and like to recharge their gadgets from a normal wall-socket.

This sounds as if they implemented correct charge from USB which is not as easy as most engineers believe.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by CommanderROR

@kacir
I don't have any Linux machines in the vicinity so I can't promise to test Linux support, sorry.

Well, you can download a "live CD" linux distribution, preferably Knoppix. Boot your own machine from the live CD, and you have access to a Linux machine. After you finish playing, simply reboot machine, take out CD, ...
If the Knoppix download is too big for your internet connection you can try Slax, or Daman Small Linux (50MB download), or anything that you local Linux geek^H^H^H^H nerd^H^H^H^H expert has in his/her hands at the moment. (**)
Thera ere a few links to "live linux CDs" at http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=cd

But there are questions that have much higher priority than this, Linux, one, so do this please only when you run out of things you can try on your new toy ;-)

Originally Posted by CommanderROR

@kacir
I'll time the booting later today if I have time. I'll also try to reactivate my girlfriend's old digicam that has video capability so that you can see the loading and page-turning with your own eyes.

I am looking forward to it.

Originally Posted by CommanderROR

@kacir
I'll put a .stk file at the end of this post so you can play with it, you can also visit the staretek online library for lots of (badly formatted) ,stk ebooks and comics...

Can you please take some short text (downloaded from The project Guttenberg, for example), create an STK file and post BOTH files. When trying to decode file it helps to have encoded file AND the original file.
Not that I think that it will be easy to decode the file, but one of readers of this forum night be able to notice something that might help us. Even Sony Librie heavyweight encrypted file format got cracked eventualy.

By the way
Has StarEbook indicated what OS the machine uses?
Has StarEbook indicated what hardware platform (procesor) the machine uses?

Thank you
Kacir

(**) ^H is an old UNIX joke. ^H is Control+H key, and represents backspace.
It works on surprising number of systems, even in Command Line Window on Windows computers. ^M is Enter, ^[ is Escape and so on ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%5EH

[Ivan]

Would it possible to convert pdf or HTML file into STK format easily? I guess this is kind of important for most reader reading scientific documents.
Best, Ivan

[kacir]

Originally Posted by CommanderROR

I have just sent a file to staretek to demonstrate what we don't like about the .stk format.
Enjoy!

Well, it looks as if word wrapping of the text is broken somehow. It doesn't break the text properly when when dot, coma, ' character and other "non-alphanumerics characters" are on the position after the last letter on the line. Also spaces are not wrapped properly.

This is fortunately very, very easy to correct when you are creating your own .stk files.

Simply format the text, so the lines are wrapped at the 44th character and then create .stk file.
Of course you will have create a text pre-formated width for each font size. Because the font is monospaced this can work very well.

For wrapping the text to fixed length you can use many UNIX tools, and also numerous Windows utilities, from fancy text editors to simple programs.

One of the best tools for formating the text is program par
http://jmcpherson.org/par.html
Example of use of the par program.
par.exe -w44 < alice30.txt > formatted.txt
Please read the documentation at
http://www.nicemice.net/par/par-doc.var
and download the windows version at
http://www.nicemice.net/par/par152ex.zip

[CommanderROR]

@Ivan

You can convert anything to .stk as long as it's only text content. What you do is simply pull out the plain text (easy in HTML, in PDf you would have to use an app like PDFtoTXT) and past it in the .stk maker. At the moment the results aren#t too pretty, but I just got a reply from Staretek telling me that they are working on improving these issues.

@kacir

I'll try the Linux boot-CD stunt as soon as I have time, same goes for the gutenberg text. I hope I'll manage that this afternoon.

The details of the STAReBOOK hard and software are actually available on the website...they use Linux as OS and have a 200Mhz Processor...

Check out the details on http://ebook.stareread.com/en/
most of the info you want is in the FAQ section.

UPDATE:

I did a little trial with the program you suggested and the results look slightly better.

Here are the files:

alice30.txt is the original from gutenberg
alice.txt is the one modified with par

alice30.stk is the eRead transformation of the original
alice.stk is the eRead transformation of the modified file.

All other parameters are unchanged.
I probably won't have much time today, but I'll see whether I can try the same trick with the book I am reading at the moment and scan the results.

[CommanderROR]

I just tried the par program and it solved one problem by introducing another...:-)

The weird line-breaks are gone, but now everything else is also gone. I've got one completely solid text now which is also rather hard to read, almost worse than the badly formatted text I had before.
I'll try to post pictures later.

Now I'm finally off for lunch!

[kacir]

Originally Posted by CommanderROR

I just tried the par program and it solved one problem by introducing another...:-)

The weird line-breaks are gone, but now everything else is also gone.
Now I'm finally off for lunch!

Well, par program was only an example, so you do not have to experiment with various tools. Most of advanced text editors can convert the text by wrapping it at the width of 44.

What makes par special, is that par ties to recognize bulet lists, numbered lists , text in frames, paragraphs in Guttenberg texts, it can balance lengths of lines to make the text more eye pleasing, ...
If you read the documentation for par you will find out that par can do MUCH more than just wrap the text at the 44 position.

I have looked at the StarEbook site. I have even downloades some software so I can experiment a little.

When I saw a link pointing me to a site with 100 000 books I was very excited. Until I went there. The site is in chinese. :-((

Also "Electronic shop" is in chinese. The only thing I can read is the price (Hey! they seem to have some discount). Unfortunately I do not know what currency the 3500 is in ;-)
So much for buying it online.

[Ivan]

Thanks CommanderROR!!!

THat is quit a lot works by cutting and pasting txt from pdf and convert into .stk (not even mention the document with picture) for every single document I intend to read. I wish they will support pdf format soon......

How about the power management? (better than Irex's reader?)
Best, Ivan

[CommanderROR]

Well, there is little I can say about power-saving at the moment apart from the fact that it is better than the Iliad...:-)

I have had the device on nonstop now for about 24 hours. I read perhaps a hundred pages, played around wiht settings, removed and reinserted the SD card, opened files, set bookmarks, deleted files, updated the firmware and played around with the text-enlarging function.
The device is still running and has only lost the first battery bar. (there are 4 alktogether) so I would say that if you just use the device for reading there is no way you'll run out of power quickly...^^

I'll continue to use the device for reading and will avoid connecting it to the computer so that it can't recharge.
I'll keep you all posted on the further battery-life results.

As for getting PDf on the device, I would not bet on it. If someone hacks the firmware and creates more viewers for it, perhaps, but I guess Staretek is focusing on the -stk format for now.

@kacir
I don't know about buying online, but the ebookstore also contains english books.
I also think that it should be possible to get a STAReBOOK outside of china since the box I received is very clearly not chinese and they even have a manager of international sales...:-)
Just a question of where to get it then...I'll try to find out. The price is 420$

[yunhaid]

the pdftojpg program is developed for starebook ,because starebook can't read pdf, but my most document is pdf,so i decided to develop the pdftojpg program before i actually own the starebook.luckly pdftojpg has been used to view pdf on starebook,hanlin v8, jcnip m218a, ebk books.
photos see the pdftojpg thread, CommanderROR can use pdftojpg to see pdf in your starebook.

last week i have already order the starebook, but still now ,i have to wait for it's arrive, maybe in this weekend, i can own my starebook.

[CommanderROR]

@yunhaid

I would love to try your program, but it seems not to work on my system.

Whenever I run it it complains that it can't find the jpgtran module. I downloaded that as well (another .exe) but that did not help.

Can you give me a complete package of all files I need? I have the pdftojpg.exe version 1.21

[Anchoku]

So... I don't suppose there are any e-books with Acrobat Reader support... It seems like that would be a really nice thing to have.

[NatCh]

Well, technically, iLiad and the Sony Reader both support PDFs (iLiad significantly better than Sony), and I think there are non-e-ink devices that support PDFs, though I could easily be mistaken there. But of course, we're all excited about e-ink for a number of very good reasons, none of which would apply to non-e-ink devices.

[CommanderROR]

UPDATE:

I just used my girlfriend's old digicam to take a short movie of the Iliad and the STAReBOOK next to each other, booting, loading last-read book and flipping pages.

The file is 29Mb, so i'm still looking for ways to compress it and it's also rather bad quality. You can however see quite clearly what you wnat to know I guess and that's the speed comparison between the two devices.

I'll upload as soon as I've got the compression and everything worked out. Maybe later tonight, maybe tomorrow afternoon.

UPDATE:

The video is up, I found a freeware app that easily compressed it down to 1.xMB.
Please refer the the new thread https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...?threadid=9493 for all speed-related questions. I did not include stopwatch measurings, but I guess you can check that yourself now.

[yunhaid]

oh ,
you should download the english versin, because 1.2.1 version is just a patch , user must download the V1.0 and patch the 1.2.1 version. and language is chinese, don't perfect for you.

in the iliad thread, i upload the english fully version, you can down it and use it.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9211
good lucky.