Opus just got the opus

[Saud]

got the opus today!
its currently charging..

Im attaching some photos of it (using mobile cam)

cant wait to start reading

[zelda_pinwheel]

congratulations !! very exciting. good luck now being patient, the hardest part is waiting till it's charged. thank you for the photos, i look forward to hearing what you think once you start reading on it.

[EowynCarter]

Gen3 and Opus side by side.

Is that an Iphone or Itouch ?

[yvanleterrible]

Can't wait till it gets at Archambault...

[Saud]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Is that an Iphone or Itouch ?

iphone 2g

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by Saud

got the opus today!
its currently charging..

Im attaching some photos of it (using mobile cam)

cant wait to start reading

Got mine on Friday.
Still can't access the Micro SD card in Adobe Digital Editions. Doesn't matter which card I use. So I manually have to copy my books to the card.
Can you access your Micro SD card in ADE?
With Sony 505 and 700, it's no problem. You just connect and see 3 drives: Internal memory, Memory stick and SD card.
With Cybook Opus, I only see the internal memory, although I can access the card in Windows explorer and read the books, manually copied to the card.

[Saud]

I have been reading on palms, pocket pcs, mobiles and most recently the iphone

Been following the Eink scene and lately was contemplating on buying a Gen3 or a Sony, but the Opus is what caught my eye, since size was important to me, and the opus was perfect for my needs

As far as first impressions and usage:

I have not used it alot since it completely charged late at night, but I had abit of time to play with it before sleeping and dreaming of it lol

Hardware: good, sturdy, feels perfect on the hand, device fits on the palm and the light weight makes it easy to hold the device from the side for some great reading

Nice to have a battery compartment, though changing the battery does not look as easy as your TV remote control. noticed the reset button which is located beside the battery slot.

Startup:
Nice Opus splash screen, (ok come on.. turn on...counting the seconds) Will have to get used to the slow UI since I am used to speedy flashy PDAs and mobiles.
No loading clock/meter: not having an indication of what the opus is doing made me initially think twice.. is it loading or got stuck and needed a reset.

After sometime I did grap the time lag between menus and screens, so its ok now.

I have loaded a 2gb microSD on to the opus

connecting to PC:
got the opus connected to the computer, Opus drive came up, fairly fast, easy to browse and load folders of ebooks

But hey where is the microSD drive, did not appear at all, not even on the opus folder view.
Later today I am going to try load the microSD with ebooks directly, I will also try using different microSD cards as well.

Loading PDFs:
This is what I initially tried, since it was a main concern and wanted to know how the opus performed.
I loaded 2 pdfs of different sizes 1.8mb and 29mb. I am happy to report that the opus handled both very well, and loaded them with no issues and no lag.
zooming : good feature but could not go above 100%
but the highlight of the opus should be the accelerometer when I heard about it being implemented I didnt think this would matter alot but what a huge difference it makes to the reading experience of PDFs, with zooming better enhanced for the landscape view.

As others noted, lack of bookmarks is an issue but I hope this gets rectified with a firmware update. for now opening the ebook on the same page I left it will do.

last word
I have always liked devices that does it all (reading browsing music emails apps etc) but having the opus for just reading made me rediscover the pleasure of having a dedicated device, it is a very pleasing experince since I would focus on reading not expecting an SMS pop up or thinking of the latest apps or browsing the web. The mindset changes where I hold the device knowing I would get what I want which is total focus on reading.

and sure I would miss the fast UI, highlighting, copy/paste and dictionary support (for now, finger crossed for a firmware update) but I would say to the backlit reading "good riddence" nothing beats the pleasing easy on the eyes reading experince of eink on a good sturdy light weight small device such as the opus.

[Saud]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Got mine on Friday.
Still can't access the Micro SD card in Adobe Digital Editions. Doesn't matter which card I use. So I manually have to copy my books to the card.
Can you access your Micro SD card in ADE?
With Sony 505 and 700, it's no problem. You just connect and see 3 drives: Internal memory, Memory stick and SD card.
With Cybook Opus, I only see the internal memory, although I can access the card in Windows explorer and read the books, manually copied to the card.

Seems like we are facing the same problem, wonder if this is a current firmware issue or are we doing something wrong

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by Saud

Seems like we are facing the same problem, wonder if this is a current firmware issue or are we doing something wrong

The user guide states: No SDHC.
Okay, not perfect, would have hoped differently from a brand new device. But I could live with 2GB or even 1GB. (You always could carry more than 1 card with you.)
But I've tried 3 different cards, 2 x 2GB, 1 x 1GB. All of them the same: Not visible and accessible in ADE.
The user guide states "same folder structure on the card" as in the internal memory. So I copied the internal memory to the card. Didn't work. When manually copying the books to the "ebooks" folder instead of "Digital editions" one, it was working.
At least it's working, but of course not a perfect workaround.
And: SD seems unstable. Quite a few times my UMPC hung himself for a few minutes, only when SD in place. And not always was the card visible in Windows explorer.
But even when visible in explorer, still not visible in ADE.
My guess: Firmware.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by Saud

I have been reading on palms, pocket pcs, mobiles and most recently the iphone

Been following the Eink scene and lately was contemplating on buying a Gen3 or a Sony, but the Opus is what caught my eye, since size was important to me, and the opus was perfect for my needs

As far as first impressions and usage:

I have not used it alot since it completely charged late at night, but I had abit of time to play with it before sleeping and dreaming of it lol

Hardware: good, sturdy, feels perfect on the hand, device fits on the palm and the light weight makes it easy to hold the device from the side for some great reading

Nice to have a battery compartment, though changing the battery does not look as easy as your TV remote control. noticed the reset button which is located beside the battery slot.

Startup:
Nice Opus splash screen, (ok come on.. turn on...counting the seconds) Will have to get used to the slow UI since I am used to speedy flashy PDAs and mobiles.
No loading clock/meter: not having an indication of what the opus is doing made me initially think twice.. is it loading or got stuck and needed a reset.

After sometime I did grap the time lag between menus and screens, so its ok now.

I have loaded a 2gb microSD on to the opus

connecting to PC:
got the opus connected to the computer, Opus drive came up, fairly fast, easy to browse and load folders of ebooks

But hey where is the microSD drive, did not appear at all, not even on the opus folder view.
Later today I am going to try load the microSD with ebooks directly, I will also try using different microSD cards as well.

Loading PDFs:
This is what I initially tried, since it was a main concern and wanted to know how the opus performed.
I loaded 2 pdfs of different sizes 1.8mb and 29mb. I am happy to report that the opus handled both very well, and loaded them with no issues and no lag.
zooming : good feature but could not go above 100%
but the highlight of the opus should be the accelerometer when I heard about it being implemented I didnt think this would matter alot but what a huge difference it makes to the reading experience of PDFs, with zooming better enhanced for the landscape view.

As others noted, lack of bookmarks is an issue but I hope this gets rectified with a firmware update. for now opening the ebook on the same page I left it will do.

last word
I have always liked devices that does it all (reading browsing music emails apps etc) but having the opus for just reading made me rediscover the pleasure of having a dedicated device, it is a very pleasing experince since I would focus on reading not expecting an SMS pop up or thinking of the latest apps or browsing the web. The mindset changes where I hold the device knowing I would get what I want which is total focus on reading.

and sure I would miss the fast UI, highlighting, copy/paste and dictionary support (for now, finger crossed for a firmware update) but I would say to the backlit reading "good riddence" nothing beats the pleasing easy on the eyes reading experince of eink on a good sturdy light weight small device such as the opus.

Do you really like the PDF support? I've tried legally purchased ones, so quality of my sources shouldn't be an issue.
But: ePUB is reflowed, PDF is zoomed. When using small zoomlevels, PDFs "fade out". The letters simply are "too thin" and loose their outline.
ePUB works way better.
I guess, the display simply is too small to handle letters below a certain dimension. Would have expected differently, dpi ratio being bigger than with the 6" units.
Meaning: Either I have too few lines in PDFs or the letters "fade out". I'll keep trying other PDFs. But so far, for all the same. If I can't find any kind of optimisation, Opus will become my sole ePUB unit and I'll do without PDF.

Concerning the speed, I agree. Haven't taken the time yet. But gut feeling says, faster turning pages than all the others.

I don't like the buttons too much. Feel a bit "flimsy" and not too stable.
But over all, today I already enjoy it more than yesterday.
A bit disappointed from Bookeen's support. Sent them an email on Friday 6pm about the "missing" SD cards in ADE. Not even any confirmation mail after 39 hours.

[Saud]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Do you really like the PDF support? I've tried legally purchased ones, so quality of my sources shouldn't be an issue.
But: ePUB is reflowed, PDF is zoomed. When using small zoomlevels, PDFs "fade out". The letters simply are "too thin" and loose their outline.
ePUB works way better.
I guess, the display simply is too small to handle letters below a certain dimension. Would have expected differently, dpi ratio being bigger than with the 6" units.
Meaning: Either I have too few lines in PDFs or the letters "fade out". I'll keep trying other PDFs. But so far, for all the same. If I can't find any kind of optimisation, Opus will become my sole ePUB unit and I'll do without PDF.

PDFs I used were complex, some had 2 or more columns with graphics, and I had good results with the opus. Generally I would not load PDFs that are straight forward 1 column text documents, I would convert them to a better format that the opus can handle.

It would be nice if we get ability to reflow, but even with that you wont get the same reflow result on all PDFs.

In reality I was not expecting much of use for PDFs on a 5 inch screen, but I was happy to see what the opus can do for its size, this is why I reported on the speedy loading time and the nice landscape zoom rather than the actual reading experience this is because the problem is not with the reader as much as it is inherent with PDFs.

This is from mobileread wiki:

Most dedicated eBook Readers claim support for PDF but most do a poor job of delivering on the promise due to the basic problem of attempting to read a 14" diagonal page on a 6" diagonal device. Of course the larger devices (8" and above) have an easier time of it but there are some notable attempts on smaller devices.

The main approach is to display the whole page on the screen which is fine to get an idea about what the page looks like but impossible to read. Even removing the margins and just showing the text does little to improve the situation. Switching to landscape mode and splitting the page in two helps but is not enough to make a readable document on a device of less that 8".

The Sony PRS505 uses reflow to solve the problem for documents that lend themselves to this solution (dominantly text documents). The Bookeen Cybook Gen3 attacks the problem by permitting the user to zoom in and then pan around on the page in fixed increments. This permits viewing a large document page but becomes too cumbersome if you were to try and read a full book that way.

Note that these problems go away if you are able to reformat the entire document to a size that fits the screen.

So larger screens will always give you better results with PDFs but Im happy with the landscape view of PDFs on the opus even if it might be abit cumbersome when zooming and panning around.