Monday, April 14, 2008

Waiting for, the new firmware.

Our team is actually working on the development of the new firmware. We are late for that first official update, nevertheless we are doing all that we can to supply you rapidly with your new firmware, integrating a maximum of new feature and bug fixes.

A first hint about what will be integrated in this upgrade is that it will sensibly change the navigation button management.

37 comments:

Derek A Benner said...

Thanks for the news about the status of the firmware update.

However, I have one niggling comment. I've *NEVER* requested a gestion of the navigation button. What IS a 'gestion' anyway?

Alfredo Novoa said...

'Gestion' is 'management' in French.

Luis T said...

Cool to know...

In any case, I only need a better way to clasify all my titles (tags ideally, but folders could make it)
and maybe, a numeric way to know the page I am in (not only by a graphical %).

And well... some stability improvements wouldn't do any harm.

About the rest, I am pretty satisfied, I have to say.

Keep on the good work!

Alchemeron said...

This is good news. What I really want is better PDF handling-- custom zooms and such.

Christine said...

Those things are nice, but what if you start with making it save my place in a book EVERY TIME? It's a pain in the butt to have to go page by page to find where I left off.

It'd be nice if it found words that are in the dictionary, every time. What's the point of claiming to have dictionary integration when it doesn't find words that are in there? (oh right. sales.)

Personally I think it would be good if you worked on getting the things it's already supposed to do WORKING CORRECTLY EVERY TIME before worrying with anything else. Including pdfs, and stability, the dictionary, the date, and saving the correct place in a book.

Luis T said...

Christine...

it does already go to the last page you were reading in a particular book. At least if you switch it off. You can also use the "back" button to do. And even the "go to page" function. (That would work better with a numeric reference, as I said my a previous post)

And yeh, Alcheron, better pdf handling would save us sooo much time of format conversions!

Alfredo Novoa said...

Christine, if you are using a SD card, I recomend you to re-format it using FAT32.

Christine said...

No no, I mean saving the last page every time, as opposed to most of the time - which is what it currently does.

The problem has nothing to do with an sd card, it has to do with the cybook not saving the last page read. Most of my books are not on a card.

Perhaps if bookeen's site had a troubleshooting area, they could mention that sd cards should be formatted as fat 32. See how nice that would be?

Alfredo Novoa said...

My Cybook only loses the last page read when the battery gets completely exhausted. Something which is logical, by the way.

Christine said...

What? You're saying if the battery dies, the device won't work anymore? That's outrageous! Everything else I own continues to work with a dead battery.

Since bookeen isn't going to do it, I've started a tips and troubleshooting wiki over at mobile read. Come for help or to add anything useful that you know and want to share.

Gen3 Tips and Troubleshooting

Derek A Benner said...

Christine,

Excellent Wiki! (Of course, having my photos of the proper orientation of the SD card have *nothing* to do with my feelings. )

Christine said...

Actually I was wondering who posted that and where it came from. I'm glad to know it's ok to have it on there. :)

pais15 said...

hello
what about to read mobipocket books in landscape mode?
or improve the loockup to see the nearest word when not found the requested one?
anyway cybook is a great ereader.
regards from spain

Anonymous said...

The navigation buttons currently are confusing. Hope the update will be easier to understand.

The hardest part for me is the bookshelf view.

I have 150 titles, most from Project Gutenberg, with long titles that are not shown.

I would love a way in the Bookshelf view to go to from the Last Bookshelf Page to the first page. Have you tried looking for a book in catalog when you are unsure of the title or date? (I have many ebooks that originally were named THE PROJECT GUTENBERG COLLECTED POETRY OF ROBERT LOWELL.) (Most of these words will not appear in the 20 book bookshelf view). Even if I edit the Title/Author in Mobipocket Reader, these long/bad titles still don't change in Cybook. I spend a lot of time going from bookshelf page to page to find a book I can't remember.

When I am in 20book per page bookshelf view, I want a way to advance to the next group of 20. Now I need to click the button 4 times to move through each group of 20.

Alfredo Novoa said...

Christine, I meant that if the battery is depleted the Cybook does not save the last page read.

Otherwise it works perfecty for me.

lynxpardina said...

I'm really looking forward to this new improvements. I hope they include the possibility of assigning different tasks to the buttons, page number on mobipocket files, better pdf and html management and improvements to order and browse the library.
:-)

And the top will be the possibility of searching a word inside a document, but I wonder that this will have to wait... :-(

Anyway I'm really happy with the reader.

Unknown said...

I'll second Christine ~ it doesn't automatically save page position EVERY time. The battery can be 100% and still happen.

I'd also like to see page no, folders support and pdf zoom too

Minh said...

Can someone please, explain to me what is going on regarding the new firmware. I know nothing about technology and have been reading like crazy about Bookeen (I plan to get myself one). Should I buy it now or should I wait for the new one with updated firmware(??).

Thank you,

Anonymous said...

I'm ++1 on the "save my place in the book every time". It NEVER saves my place in books on the SD card, so I stopped putting anything except reference books there. And it NEVER saves my place in PDFs, no matter where they are.

Other than that, I love my Bookeen.

Unknown said...

Odd. Never had a problem with saved places myself, but I'll attribute that to luck. I have heard that the Mobi PC client can cause bookmarks to go away when it syncs books, so if you do use that you might see if manually copying files to the SD card instead will help matters at all.

As to buying now versus waiting...I'm happy with my purchase, but I'm still looking forward to the update. As it stands now I have no problem reading books, and they look great. I'm hoping for better organization though (like folder support), as well as more zoom options for PDF files. The device is usable in its current form, then, and I don't regret the purchase, but the software can definitely use more polish.

The Sweede said...

New firmware! brilliant.
As many others I have several hundred E-books, many of which I have had to recode from MS-reader formats or PDF to either plain text or HTML.

The reason I have picked these, is because they are kinda universal.

I would love if the Cybook could support RTF format, or if there is another plain text markup format out there that might be usable for e-books.

Creating an open XML language for E-books could be very useful I believe, as one thing I am missing is tagging the books, or being able to integrate meta data like author, publishing house, title, related books, ISBN number, etc (long list and can grow).

Sure I could recode all my books into mobipocket, but the effort of so many books is ridiculous. An easy way for tagging and changing both title and other info like for MP3s in Mediaplayer would be fantastic.

Finally, being able to change sorting in the library view will become very useful. Sure folder structure is a solution, but I think meta data inclusion for files would be a lot better.

JacobU said...

I recently purchased a Cybook (via books on board) and it didn't work OUT OF THE BOX. It has been weeks of back and forth on various remote repair attempts (reload firmware,charge battery etc). I asked for a refund,but they are unwilling. Returning a defective product for a refund would usually be standard policy in the US. Buyer beware.

Bookeen said...

Dear Customer,

Books on Board’s support team is very effective. We are not used to hear customers complaining about them.

Still, please don't use the blog as a mean for customer support. You can deal with them directly.

Regards,

Guillaume

JacobU said...

Guillaume,
I don't usually post these kinds of entries, but I am VERY frustrated with the BooksOnBoard support. They shipped me a Cybook that doesn't work. It happens. We spent a week of emailing trying to get it to work and couldn't. Being in high-tech, I understand that too. What I don't understand is that after all that, when I get I asked for a refund, I get a response (and I quote - my emphasis): "If the product has not been damaged by you, it will likely qualify under the warranty... You may ship this to us entirely at your expense and we will return the repaired or replacement unit - if it qualifies - to a US address at our expense." Their only justification is that it took me too long to actually try the product, and learn that it doesn't work, so therefor I somehow deserve a defective product.
Look - you guys are going up against companies like Amazon - unless you build an ecosystem of retail partners with top tier customer support (dare I say coddling),you will be toast. From my experience with "BooksOnBoard" - they are not such a company

Georgios said...
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Georgios said...
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Georgios said...

Folders would warp it for me , thank you very much..

BTW I can't seem to be able to convert any CHM files to Ebook format with the Mobipocket program. Any ideas anyone? Thx

Georgios said...

..oh and playlists for the mp3 player (m3u, pls whatever).Essential.

Unknown said...

One more feature for the list of changes. I have over four hundred books. Turning on the machine takes quite a while since it must catalog all of the books before it can display anything.

However, most of the time I don't need the catalog. I am in the middle of reading a particular book. My preference would be that, if you are actively reading a book, turning it on would send you directly to that book. This would cut down the start up time for up to 80% for me.

Of course I do realize that if I subsequently go to the library I would need to load the entire list.

Derek A Benner said...

I'd have settled for just the fixes they had in mind for the end-of-January update. We're fast approaching the Ides of May and no firmware update in sight.

Please! would you make a set-point and release a firmware update already?!?

Unknown said...

Why you insist on keeping your entire library on Bookeen. I keep only a dictionary and around 20 books. Other 150 books I keep in my desktop, and when I want to read them, it is easy to upload them to Bookeen.

Derek A Benner said...

zarko.modric,

Some of us prefer being able to switch to another ebook whenever we wish and not be tied to the PC. After all, we tend to take our Cybooks with us as we travel.

But it's a user's choice and there's nothing wrong with either approach.

Unknown said...

I've got my set 2 weeks ago via a friend from US. Confirmed that I've the lastest firmware. Not sure whether it is bug or a feature -
1. After reading 6 pages of the manual, the set freezed. Waited for 10 mins and restarted the set.
2.Noticed that if I click the right button too fast, my set also freezed.
- The freezing is very common especially for large pdf files (> 3mb)
Any clarification would be much appreciated.

magiske said...

PDF have never been working.
Could use a lot of new features ect, but I bought a device that should be able to read pdf's, but apparently bookeen could care less..

/M

Ganesh said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Help!! I've downloaded the new firmware ver 1.1 release and tried to upgrade my set. However the upgrade hangs for more 1.5hrs. Now my system hangs. Any assistance is appreciated.

Doscian said...

One function I really would like to see implemented is the ability to reflow pdf documents. Although it isn't a full-proof method even in acrobat reader, it could be a great help when reading A4 formatted documents on the cybook. The zoom function is certainly an welcome addition, but for documents that big, it is of limited use.

Also, the cybook seems to have stability problems with jpeg-compressed pdf files. I would appreciate if that problem could be addressed.