Last night Pocketbook uploaded a new firmware update for the Pocketbook IQ. I got the IQ on Tuesday, and it had been sitting on my desk. I had played with it a couple times, but I was busy with other devices and I was going to get to it eventually. I thought the firmware update was excellent opportunity to try the IQ and tell you what I think.

There are a couple short videos mixed in.

First, a little background on the hardware. The IQ is basically the same hardware as the Cruz Reader and the white Pandigital Novel. It’s based on a 7″ LCD screen and it has a resistive touchscreen, 2GB Flash, Wifi, a SD card slot, accelerometer, and a custom Home screen designed by Pocketbook.

The Home screen on the Pocketbook IQ has the ugliest color scheme I have ever seen on a device. The general layout is okay, but I have seen better color palettes in the abstract artwork of college students. Pocketbook apparently thought it was a good idea to have a yellow to blue fade running left to right as the wallpaper. What’s worse is that the 8 default icons are grayscale. *shudder*

My guess is that their genius user interface designer is color blind, and no one noticed when he was hired to work on Pocketbook’s previous ereaders (they all had  grayscale  screens). But when the IQ came down the pipeline, no one thought to double check his work. Actually, I have an alternate theory. Perhaps Pocketbook’s UI designer suffered a blow to the head and they let him keep the job out of sympathy. That would explain this monstrosity.

I thought this was supposed to be the new and improved version of Foxconn’s 7″ tablet. It can’t be all that much improved, becuase it takes a really long time to load anything, and I often can’t tell if it’s loading or if I didn’t click quite right.

Apps

I can’t install apps. The IQ ships with Slideme, but whenever I try to download something Slideme gets stuck in a loop.

I tried to reboot in the hopes that it would kick Slideme out of whatever rut it’s in, and that’s when I discovered that every time I boot the IQ, I have to go through the setup process again. That’s not fun. Oh, and the home screen sometimes crashes on boot, and it looks something like this:

And now I can’t load the anything at all. I’ll go reboot it again (I think this makes the 6th time since I started writing this post).

Reading

I was really hoping that I could install Aldiko. Every time I exit a book the IQ forgets my place, and this is starting to piss me off. But on the upside Pocketbook had the good sense to let me use the volume buttons to turn the page. (They got the pairing wrong, but you can’t have everything.)

Page turns are rather slow; my K3 is actually faster. Don’t beleive me? Check out the video:

Files

Speaking of loading ebooks, there’s something wrong with the file associations. The file manager doesn’t know to open Epub with the reading app.

Also, the file manager they’re using wasn’t a good choice. A well designed file manager would make it easy for you to find the user accessible storage first (SD card and Flash) and make it slightly difficult to see the rest.   A person shouldn’t have to know the Linux file system in order to use this tablet.

Opinion

I’m really not impressed with the IQ. It seems to me like Pocketbook released an Android tablet simply becuase everyone else was doing it.  That’s not good enough, IMO.

This post is rather long and it tends to ramble. I’m writing not just as a review, but also as a epitaph for an ereader that I expect to disappear from the market in the next month or so.

But first let me give you my opinion of the VEB 620: Buy something else. This ereader was Viewsonic’s first real attempt to enter the ereader market, and while it would have been fine in 2008 or acceptable in 2009, by the standards of November 2010 this is a poor ereader.

Viewsonic has been dabbling in the ereader industry for a couple years now. Their first ereader showed up in late 2008 and like most first ereaders, it was a Netronix clone. I didn’t cover it at the time because it wasn’t all that interesting, and there was really nothing new about it besides the label. Curiously enough, you can still get that ereader on Amazon. (But if you buy it I’ll laugh at you.)

The VEB 620 was first announced in the UK in April 2010, and it was never officially launched in the US.  I was able to get it only because J&R, a NYC based electronics store, are determined to have the best ereader selection anywhere. J&R started carrying it in August, and I bought it for $99 last week on Amazon.

Mike Cane tipped me to this ereader showing up on the J&R website back in August. He also took the time to visit a J&R store and fondle the VEB-620. You can read what he says in order to get a second opinion. I don’t always agree with him, but this time he was right.

Hardware

This ereader is based on a 6″ E-ink screen, but there’s no touchscreen or Wifi. It has the power switch on the upper edge and the SD card slot, headphone jack, and USB port on the lower edge. There are2 page turn buttons, a d-pad, and a row of 5 buttons (back, menu, home, bookmark, font size) on the face of the device. There’s also a speaker on the back.

It ships with a black book style case. 2 pins on the leftmost corners hold the ereader in the case. The pins feel like cheap plastic, and I’m afraid they’ll break and leave me with no way to use the case. BTW, Sony are using a similar design with their cases, only Sony’s design feels much sturdier.

The overall design of the ereader is minimalist (which I usually like), but not this time. The labels on the buttons are subtle and thus difficult to discern by touch, and they are also not that easy to see because they’re the same shade of white. I’m also not pleased with the build quality.  The 5 buttons do not line up either horizontally or vertically (they don’t stick out the same amount).

I don’t see why the VEB 620 doesn’t have 2 pairs of page turn buttons on each edge; there’s certainly room for it around the screen.  And lastly, the back panel is a single piece that snaps into place so you won’t be able to replace the battery without prying it off (and probably scratching it in the process).

Software

There’s no really interesting software features that I can find. Well, it has a MP3 player, but so do everyone else. Other than that this is basic ereader running Adobe software. It does support DRMed Epub and you can reflow PDFs, but at this point so can everyone else. The only annotation option is bookmarks.

You can also do a text search and page jump inside an ebook, but to do that you’re forced to use the onscreen keyboard. It’s not worth it. Check out the video to see why.

Reading Experience

This ereader is slow. It’s the kind of slowness that would be tolerated in 2008, but I won’t in 2010 because I have other options. The screen is not the cause; IMO the software needs work. You have to press and hold a button and wait for it to respond. If you’re in a menu, you can’t press the down arrow several times; it will only respond to the first press.

The VEB 620 is okay to hold one handed, but with the slow page turns I abandoned it pretty quickly.

Opinion

This ereader cost me $99, and it’s not as good as other you can find at that price. Augen The Book is better, and the Ectaco Jetbook and Aluratek Libre are just as good.

But if you did get one as a gift, it should work okay. It’s only real problem is that it’s slow.

Video

So B&N just sent out an email announcing that the Nook SDK is now available. Now any Android developer can port their app to the NookColor. There’s one detail I want you to notice.  This is actually the NookColor SDK and it will not help you port Android apps to the Nook. Isn’t that interesting? B&N want people to develop for their platform, but only for their tablet and not the more numerous Nook ereader. I wonder why? Yes, I know they announced that it would be for the NookColor back when the NC was launched, but I half expected the SDK to support both platforms.

BTW, I’m not sure this is worth the bother. The NC has been hacked, and apparently it’s a bog standard Android tablet.  Here's a long list of apps that have been tried and work just fine. Look it over, and then ask yourself if you really want to have to work through B&N.

NookDeveloper

I’ve just gotten this juicy piece of gossip from an former txtr employee. The 6″ txtr reader, which was supposed to have launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair this year, has been quietly abandoned by the company.

Note that I’m calling it gossip because I don’t have confirmation yet, but it does fit with mutterings I’ve heard elsewhere. And the txtr reader did drop from sight in mid September, so this rumor is plausible.

Txtr (the company) are actually not doing all that well; they’re also losing a lot of customers to Bluefire. I’ve heard from my contact with Bluefire, Micah, that Bluefire have so many ebookstores who want to hire Bluefire to make an app that he can’t even respond to all the emails.

And if you’re wondering how a 50+ person company is being beaten by a 6 person team then I suggest you download both apps on to your iPhone. Try them and ask yourself which one is better.

Here’s a video of what the txtr reader looked like before it died:

The World Wildlife Fund hve announced a new "save a tree" initiative. They’ve developed printer drivers for a new document format called WWF (it’s based on PDF), and they want you to use it instead of PDFs. Why? Because unlike PDFs,  it can’t be printed.

Okay, WWF actually is PDF, and it’s slightly silly for them to call it a new format. The only difference is that the WWF format has the "do not print" flag checked.

I like the idea. I rarely print PDFs, and I would like to try to discourage others from doing so. Unfortunately, the drivers only work on OSX at the moment, so I’ll have to wait.

Save as WWF

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about how to change the firmware on the black Novel. Since I now had a new firmware to try, I decided to write a second review of the black Novel. The review was delayed, because I spent a few weeks trying to find a way to overcome this tablet’s shortcomings.

Update: Much of this post is outdated. Rather than read this review, why don’t you go install the latest firmware update for this tablet (here)?

So what do I think of it? To put it simply, there are better options out there.

The video is at the end of the post.

First let me give you some background. The black Novel is based on a 7″ LCD  screen with a capacitive resistive touchscreen, Wifi, accelerometer, 2 GB Flash, SD card slot, and a stylus. And in case you were wondering, the black Novel is an entirely different set of hardware from the 7″ white Novel.  They do not run the same firmware.

There are a couple official firmwares for this tablet (also several hacked firmwares). There’s the US firmware, which is tied into the B&N ebookstore, and there’s a CA firmware, which uses the Kobo ebookstore. The US firmware is a locked down ereader design with a custom home screen. You’re blocked from adding any new apps or doing anything other than the limited activities that it ships with (read, browse the web, music, video etc). On the other hand, the CA firmware is an open Android tablet with a normal home screen, apps menu, etc.

Apps

Both the US and CA firmwares run on Android v1.5, and that’s a problem. It’s very difficult to find apps that will run on v1.5. None of my ebookstore apps (like the Kindle app) will install, and while Aldiko did install it doesn’t work right. The black Novel does ship with some apps like Facebook, email, browser, and file manager, but it lacks  important ones like Twitter, a RSS feed reader, and Youtube.

It does have a video player (same as on the US firmware), but it’s not very good. I don’t know if it’s a hardware, software, or drivers  issue, but the Novel can’t even play the sample video at 640×480 at 30fps. It’s no good as a video player.

Ebookstore

Someone seriously screwed up the ebookstore. It’s tied to the Kobo ebookstore (their mobile website), which is fine by me because I have a library of a few dozen free ebooks with Kobo. Unfortunately,  I can’t access the free ebooks from the Novel. This is a pass fail for me, and I’m dumbfounded that no one caught this.

And yes, I think I know the problem (hi folks from Kobo/Pandigital). The free ebooks I got from Kobo can be found under the "I’m reading" tab. I cannot see that tab in the Novel’s ebookstore, so I can’t download the ebooks.

Reading experience

This Novel may be tied to the Kobo ebookstore, but it uses the same reading app as on the US firmware. That’s not good becuase the integration between ebookstore and reading app sucks. There’s a jarring difference between the design of the ebookstore and that of the reading app. There’s also no way to open the reading app without first entering the ebookstore, selecting the "My library" tab, and then selecting a book you want to read. That’s a waste of time and I hate it.

The reading app itself is slightly different from the other firmware. Instead of swiped page turns, it has a couple small zones marked on the screen where you can tap and turn the page. I wish the zones were bigger, but I’m glad they’re there at all.

The Epub and PDF experience is much the same as on the other firmware.  As always, I wish there were more annotation options, but the options available are adequate.

Conclusion

The Novel with the CA firmware is an underpowered tablet with little app support and a poorly conceived UI design. It’s not a terrible tablet, but there are better options out there. Heck, Pandigital offer 2 better tablets.

Video

A new game from Mobigloo has just shown up in the Kindle Store. It’s that classic matching game, Mahjong Solitaire.

In Mahjong Solitaire, you match pairs of identical tiles in order to remove them from the board. Only free tiles can be matched. Tiles are considered free if they do not have other tiles to either the left or right of them, or on top of them. The objective of the game is to clear all the tiles from the board. The game ends when all tiles have been removed or when there are no more free tiles left to match.

This is another game that really won’t work without a mouse or touchscreen. A joystick just won’t cut it.

NookDevs have just posted instructions on how to root the NookColor. This is a big step; when they’re ready to share the instructions it means they think it’s safe enough for the average user Of course, it’s not their fault if this breaks your NookColor, and as always, attempting this process will void your warranty.

On second thought, maybe it’s not ready. I’m looking over the steps involved, and I’m not really sure that you should try it yet.   It seems to me like it requires a fairly high skill level.

NookDevs

I bought this tablet from QVC.com as soon as it showed up last week, and it arrived last night. I have to say that I’m really pleased with it.

The video is at the end.

Hardware

First let me pin down some technical details. The product page says it has a 9″ (800×480) screen, and just based on my eyeball estimation I’d say that’s probably correct. According to the settings menu, this tablet is running Eclair (Android v2.0). (I  confirmed this with the Slideme app store app.)  It has Wifi, accelerometer, 2GB Flash, a SD card slot, a speaker, and a stylus. The power and volume buttons are on the right side, and the card slot and USB port is on top.

It shipped with a 4GB SD card and a case. I’m glad that they included a case, but I do wish it didn’t stink so much. You can tell it’s made from cheap plastic. But on the upside you can get at the card slot and all the ports without removing the case, and the case does have a kickstand for landscape mode.

The touchscreen works well, and so do the 4 buttons.  The screen resolution might seem low (just over 100 ppi), but I’m not bothered. I do think higher would be better, but I’m happy with this screen. And I like the general shape of the tablet. It has about the same dimensions as one of the larger hardback books.

This tablet reminded me why I liked 9″ screens over 7″ screens. It’s just so much bigger that you can see more at one time. With that in mind, I’m not sure that the 9″ Novel will be better at web browsing. The 7″ Novel as an extra 120 pixels in width, and while that’s only a 25% increase it makes a significant difference.

Here’s the 9″ Novel with the  7″ Novel.This should give you a pretty good idea how big it is.

Apps

This tablet ships with the same reading app as the other Novel tablets, unfortunately. I’ve never liked it, but since I can install other reading apps I don’t care. It didn’t ship with an app store, so the first thing I did was install SlideMe. I don’t have much in the way of apps yet, but I did install Aldiko without any problems. I also just got the Kindle app working (it couldn’t find my Wifi before).

Aldiko and Kindle app are both just running just fine.

Check out the picture below to see the apps that ship with the tablet.

Video and Audio

I haven’t done much yet, but I did run the sample video that Pandigital included. It was shot at 640×480 (30fps), and the tablet appears to be dropping about a third of the frames. I wasn’t expecting it to be a PMP, but I’m still a little disappointed.

Video

So you may have read one of these stories going around about Amazon charging for free ebooks, all of which were sparked by a story in the Washington Post yesterday. Right now I’m sitting back and getting irritated by everyone (well, almost everyone) who has written one of those stories. That little piece of information is not news, and it is also out of context.

It is not news becuase there have been people charging for public domain ebooks forever. It did not start happening recently; it has happened since the first ebookstore opened.

It is also out of context becuase most of the stories fail to mention that most of the other ebookstores have this same problem.You can find people selling public domain ebooks in Fictionwise, B&N, Redgroup, and Sony, and that’s just the ones I bothered to check. Amazon are not alone in this, and they should not have been singled out. Furthermore, Amazon also maintain an extensive collection of free ebooks; you just have to go look for them.

Here’s the thing. What we’re looking at here is something called a convenience tax. In buying pd ebooks you’re paying to avoid the hassle of having to go out and look for a free copy. The convenience tax is why, for example, things cost more at a store near the interstate than at one far away. This is a normal part of economics.

BTW, I would never criticize anyone who has purchased a public domain ebook. I have. I’m irritated by the bloggers, not the customers.

by Tony Cole of Ebookanoid

Recently I came across a short post in which the author bemoaned the rather unimaginative and unfriendly manner in which most eBook sellers displayed their wares.  He made the comparison to how enjoyable it is to browse happily around the shelves of a real book shop (especially the independent ones)  as opposed to how it is at Amazon, or Barnes and Noble, for example.

He pointed out that when one wanders into a real bookshop, with a vague idea of what one is looking for, one almost always ended up buying some other book as well, in a sort of impulsive manner.

Whilst he made no suggestions about how online eBook sellers could achieve the same atmosphere on their sites, he made a plea for them to try and reproduce the happy chaos that is the hallmark of a truly enjoyable book shop.

This is something I have written about in other posts, and I tend to agree with  him Even in such sites as Books on Board or Kobo, who have attempted to do this, one is always offered a choice of the type of books one has asked for.   You select Thrillers, and you are offered a range of eBooks in that genre, but are highly unlikely to stumble across an interesting eBook on gardening or some other totally unrelated topic, which in a real book shop always happens, and I know one tends to then stagger out of real book shops with more books on differing subjects than you ever intended to do when you entered the shop – plays hell with the credit card, of course.

There has to be a way to replicate the happy mix of unrelated books one finds in a book shop, without making finding and selecting the type of book one set out to find originally too complex.

I know that they all offer a side bar with a list of all the genres one could wish for, but you have to plough through loads of windows and lists to browse in this manner, which very few of us are prepared to do.  This is a pity for both the buyer and the seller, as it inevitably means one buys only the book one set out to find, for the shop it means lost income, for us it means missing just that serendipitous find that is one of the main joys of real book shops.

Geographical restrictions too………..

A further irritation of online bookshops is the matter of geographical availability.   After hunting and finding the eBook one wants, we are all too often told (as we attempt to purchase it) that it isn’t available in our country.   Can you imagine a book shop having books on its shelves, which they then tell you that you are not allowed to buy as you live in the wrong part of town?  Whilst I understand the reason for this problem – writer’s agents make different deal with publishers in different countries – I still find it a real problem.  As far as I know, only Kobo have attempted to address this problem, by means of identifying the country you are in (by using your computers internet address – IP), and placing a note beside any eBooks that can’t be sold to you where you are.  This at least saves you wasted time in choosing a book and starting the check out business, but it remains a serious problem that needs to be addressed by the book sellers and publishers somehow.

If you have any brilliant ideas as to how online eBook sellers could address this problem, do let us know, as eBook buying should be as enjoyable as paper book buying, I feel.

The UK based consumer electronics company View Quest have just started selling a pair of Android tablets. The Slate5 (800×480 screen resolution) and Slate8 (800×600 screen resolution) are based on the same 600MHz RockChip CPU, and they have Wifi, a resistive touchscreen, 2GB Flash, a microSD card slot, speakers, and they both run Android v1.5.

You can find them at Bennetts, where the Slate5 starts at £149.99 and the Slate8 at £199.99.

Before you go, I want you to look at the speaker holes on the Slate 5 I show at the head of the the post. I beleive the bottom pair of holes are for the speaker. That’s a rather distinctive look, wouldn’t you say? I think the Slate8 is the same tablet as the one that cleared the FCC last week. The specs are identical.

I want to do a survey of free PDF apps for Android. Unfortunately, I don’t know of very many. What’s your favorite, and what’s good?

BTW, there’s one catch. It has to be accessible outside the Android Market. It would also be great if it ran on v1.5.

So far I’ve tried and discarded txtr (it’s crap), and I have found the PDF experience on the black pandigital Novel to be decent. (It has no annotation, but for simple reading it’s okay.) And I know about Adobe Reader for Android, but since I can’t access the Marketplace it’s beyond my reach. Could someone grab me a copy, please?

I just heard about this site today on Twitter. I’m sure this isn’t the only site that helps you share ebooks, but it’s the first that I’ve heard of. While I don’t have any ebooks from B&N, I do approve of the principle.

NookLend.me

Edit: They’ve had to change the name to Bookfriend.me

But they do have a couple curious twists on their site. The ask you to buy ebooks through them. They get a cut, of course, but I’m hoping that they are planning to work out a better account integration with B&N.  It would be nice if they could pull from B&N a list of ebooks you bought. You could go down the list and check off the ebooks you want to lend. Wouldn’t that make it easier for the user?