Review: Elonex 511EB from Waterstones
When I was younger, I was taught that a roll of papyrus in ancient Egypt cost the same as the monthly wage for the average citizen. Nowadays the cost of paper is negligible. That's how it goes with new technology - it's frightfully expensive to begin with, but after a while it's as ubiquitous and disposable as paper.
Ebook readers are the latest in a long line of "written-word" technology. From clay tablet to papyrus to the printing press, humans have always found better ways of displaying words. The latest innovation is e-Ink. A remarkable material which simulates the look and feel of paper - but where the display is controlled by microelectronics.
As a book lover, I've been eager to get my hands on a Kindle, or nook, or Sony eReader - but they're all prohibitively expensive. Until now. Waterstones - a leading book retailer in the UK - has started selling the Elonex 511EB. An eReader with the retail price of £129.99. Now, that's not quite as cheap as paper - but it's around half the cost of the Kindle.
Unboxing
The Elonex 511EB.
You also get a quickstart quide, a USB cable and iPhone-esque white earphones. The device comes with a 4GB micro SD card (Sandisk branded) - enough for around 8000 books. There are 100 free eBooks included - you can also download them directly from Elonex.
What's In The Box
Cost
I won a £20 Waterstones voucher in the Times' Cheltnam Microfiction Competition - so the cost for me was £110. You can also sign up to Waterstones' loyalty card - which will net you 389 points. That's £3.89 off any subsequent purchase. At a shade over £100 it's certainly the cheapest eReader I've found. It lacks some of the features of its high-priced cousins - no wireless, no touch screen, smaller screen. But, to my mind, that's not a problem.
Features
Here's a run-down of some of the more interesting features of the device.
- Text-to-speech. A synthetic voice will read in English, Mandarin or Cantonese. The voice can be set to male or female. It's not the best TTS I've encountered, but it's adequate.
- Memo recorder. As well as a QWERTY keyboard for you to write your own novel on, there's a built in microphone so you can record any thoughts you might have.
- Format support. The device will render TXT, HTXT(?), HTML, PDF, ePub and DOC. It admits that complex DOC and PDF may not render correctly. It has Adobe Digital Editions support should you wish to read a DRM'd eBook.
- SDHC. The device comes with a 4GB microSD card and will take up to 32GB. That's probably more books than you could read in a lifetime - but leaves plenty of room for...
- Music playback. MP3, WAV and WMA. It doesn't say what bitrates etc it supports. No support for OGG, which is a disappointment. The two speakers on the back are loud enough - but aren't going to be replacing your HiFi. The headphone socket is a standard 3.5mm jack.
-
MP3 Screen
- Picture support for JPG, TIFF, PNG, GIF and BMP. Obviously it's only a black and white screen with 8 levels of grey. You can set one of your images to be the start-up screen.
- Security. You can set a password if you're worried about it being lost or stolen.
- The screen is 800*600 at 170dpi. The refresh rate seems a mite quicker than the more expensive screens - but only a mite.
- The device shows as a mass-storage device when plugged in to a computer - so there's no software to install on your Mac or PC. I did have some troubles with Linux - see the bugs section.
- There's a lock button at the top. It also has the usual array of eReader functions - bookmarks, text search, remembering your last position, font size changing. It comes with two built in fonts - Arial and Times.
- Lots of settings to play around with.
Bugs
For a device this cheap, there are bound to be one or two gremlins. There's support in the device for firmware upgrade - so hopefully Elonex will fix them. Incidentally, eReaders like this usually run Linux. There's no mention of it on the box and Elonex doesn't link to any GPL'd sources - so maybe it's running a totally custom OS. Update! Pdurrant at the MobileRead forums notes that this is a rebadged version of the WISEreader N520 - a device made by Hanvon and running WinCE 5.0.
Firstly, it doesn't seem to handle non-standard characters very well. The "é" in "Les Misérables" is rendered as Chinese character. (The text is a lot more crisp than my scanner can show)
Character Encoding Bug
Text doesn't flow very well in text files. It takes all the line breaks a literal breaks in the text - as you can see here.
Text Flow Bug
This is particularly bad in HTML as you can see here.
Alicehastextflowissues
When we take a look at the HTML, we can see the issue.
Alice's Adventures in HTML
The line breaks here are ignored which leads words to run in to each other. This is the fault of the HTML file - but this shouldn't have got through quality control.
Linux support. I'm one of those crazy people who runs Ubuntu Linux. The 511EB should just show as a USB drive when plugged in. It doesn't. I'm not sure what the problem is, but I can't get it to show up. The SD card is removable so you can get access to the files that way.
File System
It's a little inconvenient - but it did lead me to this discovery...
Beneath a rubber flap is the microSD card and a rather strange looking port. It may well be a micro USB connector - the new standard for charging mobile phones - or it could be something proprietary.
micro usb?
There's no manual. Most of the features are self explanatory - but for those who don't like exploring a device, it wouldn't have been any effort to include a manual on the device.
Verdict
This is a great device. It is missing a few of the features of the Kindle - but at this price point, who cares? Sure, no one wants to throw away £100 - but if you left this on a train, you wouldn't be half as upset as if you'd lost an eReader costing £250.
The e-Ink screen is made by Prime View International - they're the same company who make Sony's eReader screens. So the quality of the screen is really good. It has a crisp display - once you've set the fonts to your preference - and a quick refresh rate. Like all e-Ink screens, it can be read in direct sunlight. There's no backlight, so you'll need a torch if you want to read under the covers.
There are a few bugs - but they're not show stoppers. Hopefully there will be some updates to the firmware.
If all it did was display text - it would be a bargain. Considering it plays music, has text-to-speech, has a full keyboard for note taking AND a microphone, it's a lot of kit for very little cash.
I haven't exhaustively used the device - so I may be missing something that's important to you. Please leave a comment if you'd like to know anything specific about it.
Waterstones
I'm a little disappointed to have to write this review. But the information on Watersons' website is woefully inadequate. Would it have been too much effort to link to a manual, explain what file formats it supported, or had several pictures of the device? I bought this from a physical store where they didn't even have a working device on display - only a cardboard model. If retailers are serious about selling high-tech kit, they need to ensure that all the information a customer needs is available to them.
Who would spend over £100 on a device without first seeing a detail spec-sheet? I hope this review has given you enough information to make your mind up about this device.
Waterstones Elonex 511EB Review - Part 2
Elonex 511EB Firmware Update
The 511EB Is Getting a Firmware Update
Disassembling an eReader
Lorna says:
I'm extremely disappointed that there's no backlight. As you say, it was only a mock model in the store so I didn't see the screen, wrongly I assumed it would light up. I find it very difficult to read, especially by the light of a bedside lamp.
Waterstones told me that it was important that they pointed out that once I'd taken the cellophane off I could not return it unless it was faulty. Doesn't really seem fair when they only showed me a mock up in the store and the sales person said it had just come in and she didn't really know much about it.
Also, I find it difficult to navigate the various menus. No instruction book! I really can't quite believe that.
Should I have gone for the Sony afterall?
I've found the instruction manual - it's at http://www.hanvon.com/en/downloads/ebook/Manual/N520_English%20Manual_20090922.pdf (Thanks to Jeff for the correct URL)
Should hopefully answer some of your questions.
T
Jeff says:
Jeff says:
http://www.hanvon.com/en/downloads/ebook/Manual/N520_English%20Manual_20090922.pdf
Jeff says:
the link works if you change the hyphens after '520' and 'Manual' to underscores
Lorna says:
The upgrade will also include a fix for the 100 free books, fixing the search facility and possibly putting a notetaking facility on there.
To be fair, *no* eReaders are backlit - even the Sony ones. The eInk just doesn't let light through. You can get a book jacket with a built in light.
The more I play with it, the easier it gets. The menus aren't as intuitive as other readers, but they're pperfectly adequate. Having played with the Sonys, I can't say that they're radically different.
I agree that they should have working models on display. It's unfortunate that they won't take it back - but, much like any product, "caveat emptor".
Thanks for the comment.
T
Lorna says:
My eight hours initial charge should be finished just in time for bed.
Now I'll have to resist the temptation not to be on the Waterstones site too often downloading books. Can't see me ever reaching my 8000 quota!
uidroot says:
Does the device have any sort of dictionary support?
Thanks
No - there doesn't appear to be any dictionary support. You can always load a dictionary ebook and use the search function.
T
uidroot says:
Neil says:
The connector looks very much like micro-USB to me, but, I guess the pin-out behind it could be anything.
In terms of connecting to Ubuntu, how does the device show up with lsbusb and dmesg | tail ?
I've just tried my micro-USB cable, and it fits. Windows XP didn't detect anything and there's nothing displayed on the unit - it doesn't even charge. The manual simply says "Reserved USB Hot [sic]"
lsusb shows it as "Microsoft". From memory 045e:ffff. dmesg just says it can't access the device. I'll do a c&p once I'm back on a Linux machine. May try to upgrade to 9.10 to see if that helps.
T
Neil says:
Not being able to access the device is odd - I can understand it not being mountable, but, to be unavailable for mounting, and yet mount correctly under Windows... hmm..!
Interestingly, the JZ4740 can run Linux.... Hmmm... flashing possibilities ahoy!
I'll upgrade Ubuntu and do a full dmesg report later on in the week.
Neil says:
(Several friends have reported issues upgrading from 8.x to 9.10; a clean installation seems safer, but, even then, a couple of have struggled with hardware recognition - depends on the specs. of your machine, but, a VM image might be a safer way of testing?)
lsusb shows
lsusb -v gives
Think I'll do a clean Ubuntu install and see if that helps. Unless you can suggest any voodoo?
Neil says:
Neil
IanJ says:
nita says:
NewUser says:
Thanks for the comment,
T
nita palmer says:
first off love the review well informative and i love my e reader buttttttttttttttttttttttt
please dont laugh ok i have placed a book mark on to a page tried to remove it and now i have 3 bookmarks on the same page hehe and do you no i can not find anywhere that tells you how to get it off again wandered if you could help me please
Duncan Smart says:
Thank you very much for the link to the manual - that answers all the questions left unanswered in the quick-start guide. We bought two of these readers yesterday for a trip to NZ (to save weight from carrying books). So far the readers seem to be extremely good value. I have saved pdf files and Word documents to save some more paper being carried on the flight and it has opened all of them.
I spent a lot of time trying to work out which was the best value ebook reader and came to the conclusion that the 511EB was excellent value. If I had seen your review first I would have come to that conclusion a lot quicker. Thank you for such an excellent review.
sandra says:
Neil B says:
Could anyone please let me know how good / bad the PDF support is? The Elonex support guy didn't know if it supports PDF in landscape mode and if there is a zoom option in landscape mode. Most of my PDFs have images / graphs so reflow isn't a good optionfor me. Device looks great value!
PDFs work. It will reflow the text, or you can use the arrow keys to scroll around. The text size can be zoomed.
It didn't cope with a PDF which was just images (scan of a magazine) but it will show the images in PDF documents. The options it has are "Fit Window", "Fit Width" and "Normal // Reflow". "Fit Window" shows the whole page on one screen, "fit width" zooms to the width.
By "landscape mode" do you mean "rotation"? I can't find any way to rotate the screen. I don't have a PDF printed in landscape to test it on, though.
If you have a particular PDF you'd like me to test, let me know.
T
Cristian says:
Can you confirm this? You can get issues of MSDN Magazine in CHM format here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc159440.aspx
More about CHM file at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Compiled_HTML_Help
This would be a killer feature for me.
Mixed news, I'm afraid. I've tried it out with one of the magazines - http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/a/7/3a7fa450-1f33-41f7-9e6d-3aa95b5a6aea/MSDNMagazine2009_07en-us.chm
Bad news: It didn't detect the .CHM file, so there was no way of reading it.
Good news: I unzipped the file and copied the directory to the eReader - I was able to open up the individual .HTM files.
Bad news: It didn't display the inline images and there's no clickable navigation.
So, a bit mixed for you. You can certainly read the text - and search it - but it won't look wonderful. You can always convert the CHM into a PDF or ePub - take a look at http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_conversion
I'll edit the information on the MobileRead Wiki.
T
Peter says:
Many thanks for the review, it is quite useful given the attitudes at Waterstones; I had the same ridiculous conversation with them, they knew virtually nothing about the device, refused to open a box, but told me if I bought the device I wouldn't be able to return it unless faulty.
Just a question (on behalf of the multilingual readers out there) if you don't mind. Do you think the installed fonts are unicode? The fact that it substitutes non-English characters with Chinese ones is worrying. I would like to use it to read cyrillic-based languages (Bulgarian, Russian) and wondered if this could be done if the text is in unicode.
If this is not the case, do you think there would be an obvious way to add to or substitute the installed fonts? Or perhaps use file formats (pdf, epub?) with embedded fonts?
Cheers
I can't see any obvious way to install new fonts (no /font directory!) so short of a firmware update, I don't think it's possible. It *seems* to respect the fonts within PDFs - but I haven't tried many of them.
I think that the character encoding bug I encountered was a one off - I haven't found any other problems within other books.
If you can find me a unicode file with Cyrillic, I'll happily test it for you.
T
Peter says:
I am away from my PC, but cobbled together a small Cyrillic+Latin UTF8 text file (how to get it to you?). Would you be so kind to try two Cyrillic html files as well please (they are on the MobileRead forums, http://www.mobileread.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=34134&d=1250153823)?
I appreciate your help very much - I was on the brink of buying the reader, and only this issue stopped me.
Both texts displayed identically - here's what they looked like.
I'm not sure if the charset on the documents is correct - but that's what you get.
I don't speak Russian - hope that answers your questions.
T
Peter says:
Thanks for the help and the time spent.
Martin Rogers says:
I then drag the "picture" of the book in Library view onto the 511EB device in the left hand side. It displays 3 options and I select Replace Book. Then it says Product Authorisation and then the book is transferred.
I then select "3 Digital Editions" and "3 The Pacific" but it then displays a Note screen with the message "No valid lisence for the book" (Their spelling!).
If you do not have this trouble do you mind letting me have all your settings and anything that may help me.
Dino says:
Quick question, can you use the keyboard to write notes or is it purely for navigational purpose only?
Thanks,
Dino
You can use the keyboard to search, navigate, use the media player and type in a password.
Neil says:
Fit to width does remove the white margins on the PDFs I've tried. The text is still legible - but this will depend on the font size in the original document.
There is no rotate option - but you can zoom in with or without reflowing the text. If you can send me a sample PDF - I can send you a screen shot of how it looks on the reader.
T
Neil says:
Neil says:
Here is a typical PDF that i would like to be able to read on the 511EB if possible. The example PDF (Apple developers guide) can be downloaded from here: http://camplus.co.uk/tmp/iPhoneAppProgrammingGuide.pdf
Page 63 of the guide is a good example of a page with a simple small image together with a mixture of fonts of different sizes and thicknesses. it is 8MB is size which is reasonably typical for a PDF, but i have read that eReaders sometimes struggle with larger PDF documents due to their limited memory size.
Ideally i'd like to be able to read a horizontal line of text without having to scroll left and right, but I don't mind having to scroll up and down.
I'll try and find the link to the light for the 511EB now while I'm on a desktop PC.
Thanks again for all your help.
Neil
Here's a picture of page 63 at three different zoom levels (there's also a 4th larger one - but I'd suggest buying a pair of glasses!)
Once again, my scanner doesn't show how crisp the text is. At the zoomed out level, I can read the text - but it's not as comfortable as the next level in. The fonts and formatting all seem the same as when I view on the desktop.
You can reflow the text - but you will lose some / all of the formatting. There's no rotation option - which is a pity.
I've opened PDFs which are 16MB, so it didn't have any difficulty with this one.
Hope that helps.
T
PS - Your eBay-fu must be much stronger than mine - I can't find a single thing that even looks like a USB mini powered light!
Neil says:
Paul says:
As a Linux user, I was disappointed to discover that the device ran Windows 5.0 CE and it wouldn't show up as a storage media in Linux (I tried two different kernels).
However, I found that the memory was a removable micro SD card (aka Transflash) and my trusty £1 card reader I bought from Poundland worked splendidly. Stroke of luck.
My initial impressions were disappointing - all the pre-installed books were poorly formatted, with line breaks all over the place. I tried a couple PDFs from my collection and found that on complex PDFs, the reflow was so slow that it took over 10 seconds to change the page. Not good. Simpler PDFs worked OK, though.
I've found that the Epub format is handled well, and converting books to Epub is a trivial task using the free "Calibre" software.
I can't help but feel that this product is a rush-job. The primitive Windows CE interface was obviously designed for a stylus. The OK/Cancel screen appears - but where's the Cancel button? Yes, I know it's the arrow above the OK button, but I bet this will flummox some people.
Also, the keyboard is wasted. There's a Search File function available from the main menu. It looks like a powerful tool, until you realise that it's utterly useless. Sure, you can find a file, but there's no way of opening any of the found files! Try it to see what I mean. Again, it looks like an unfinished feature that needs the stylus. Also, there's no search facility within the ebooks. You have to ask yourself, why did they bother including a keyboard? It's almost entirely wasted. Has anyone found a feature that makes use of the keyboard?
That said, I'm reasonably happy with the device, but only at the price. The interfaces are half-baked. Linux users will need a micro-SD card reader (£1 from Poundland) It struggles with complex PDFs. I'm converting all my PDFs to Epubs which are, to be fair, rendered very well. (Project Gutenberg's Epub files are excellent)
IanJ says:
I have captured a USB debug output with the device connected and opened a bug with apple (not sure what this will achieve if anything but I figured I'd do it anyway).
I also contacted the Calibre author, he said he can add new devices to the software but only if they show up as mass storage devices. I told him I'd run the debug from within the application under windows so that he can get the device ID and write a driver for it so at least it will work under windows once I've managed to get him the info.
In the meantime I'll try to discover why it shows up on windows ok but not mac / linux. If I have any joy I'll post here.
Oh, and with regard to the search being useless, it's not useless, it's just poorly documented how it works. If you do a search for book title in your library the first two spaces are taken up by the search box. Basically if you press the number 3 it will jump to and open the first book title it finds that matches, 4 would be the second match etc. It's quirky I know and it's probably because the interface was designed for a touchscreen but it does still work, with text search within documents you just use the arrows to navigate from what I remember.
Hope this helps!
Oli Housden says:
However, my (MacBook) computer has not recognised the ebook after connecting it through the usb cable, even though the ebook screen says it is connected. Do I just have to wait until it has finish charging?
Paul says:
Peter says:
What is the power rating of your Motorola charger (output voltage and current)?
Paul says:
All USB power supplies are 5v.
The ebook takes about 2 hours to charge from the Moto charger.
Peter says:
Oli Housden says:
Howard Osborn says:
Demi says:
I noticed the bug mentioned above with the Classic Ebooks and found 2 or more words merging in to one, making it difficult to reader especially for my son who is dyslexic. I took it back to the same branch and was told it was not a fault and wasn't allowed a refund. I was told it was either because I hadn't charged the batteries or perhaps it was a transcription error. I was worried if I downloaded a ebook I would break the warranty and the fault would appear again.
The staff including the manager were adament that I was in the wrong and because I had opened it I was not entitled to a refund unless I could prove their was a fault.
i took it to another branch and they refunded it immediately and thanked me for point this production fault even though I travelled 30 miles to get a refund.
i now got the Sony PRS 300 although less facilities I don't have the same problem, I hope they sort this problem out soon with the Elonex and this particular branch learns customer service it seems to be driven by profits and sales unlike the main branch.
Paul says:
The problem with the formatting is easily solved though - delete all the books that were supplied on the card, then download whatever you want from Gutenburg in Epub format. Their Epub books have much better formatting than the supplied books.
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
Harlen says:
One question though, with epub files does yours save your location or are you able to add bookmarks? neither seem to work for me though other file types are okay.
The 511eb does save my position in epub files. Although if you've zoomed in the text, it returns you to the top of the page. So if a page of the epub takes up 3 pages on your screen, it will return you to the first screen of the page.
I also found that bookmarks work fine in epubs.
Hope that helps
T
Chomp says:
Do you have a link for the "DRM document"? I can't find it. The USB host could be used for WiFi, I guess. Although it's more likely that it would be integrated into a new version.
Thanks
T
Chomp says:
Sorry didn't realise earlier I put a R in the title should have read DM. Below is the link be warned it is a large doc at 91.3mb
http://www.hanvon.com/en/images/downloads/ebook/Ebook%20DM/Ebook%20DM.rar
Despite these minor short comings I am enjoying using the ebook
Peter says:
I wouldn't repeat the points already made in the other reviews, but will just add a few additional things.
My one came fully charged. When I plugged it to the PC (WinXP), the device was recognised all right. The charging light did not come on, however, but I suppose this is because it came charged.
The contrast is very good, page turn is fast for an eink screen.
For the multilingual readers: it sems that the fonts are unicode. At least I tried it with a plain UTF8 text file containing Latin and Cyrillic and it displays fine. I also tried Cyrillic pdf with embedded fonts (about 950 KB). It also shows, although page turn is slower after reflow. Some special characters may not appear however (see above Terence's tests). I haven't played with latin accented characters, umlauts etc. so don't know if they show up correctly.
Search function. There is a search function within the ebook text. To use it, press menu, which will show the available options, one of them is search. I checked it briefly, and it seems to be case sensitive. PDFs however don't have the search option (which may also be the case for some of the other formats, I haven't chacked all).
My reader shoes the same format blunders with the free books as already reported. Hopefully Elonex will get out a firmware update quickly.
Cheers.
sandra says:
It comes with a USB cable. So you'll either need to plug it into a computer, find an adaptor or see if your hotel has a charger.
Because it charges via USB, it should work with the same charger as many mobile phones (BlackBerry, Motorola, etc).
That said, the batter life is meant to be good for 8,000 page turns - so it should last you 🙂
T
Howard Osborn says:
BoX says:
when you have results, use the number keys to choose the book. this is badly implemented as you need to start at "3" for the first book. this is because the search function uses up the spaces for "11 and "2".
does anyone have the firmware for Hanvon N510, which is what it is?
BoX
Oliver Dudok van Heel says:
Have you been able to find how to add notes? I'm very tempted by this one, but being able to write notes on books/docs is quite a key feature for me.
Thanks, Oliver
Mark B says:
Mark B says:
Nicola says:
What is the trick to getting the elonex to show up on a mac book? When I plugged it in to the usb, nothing changes, no device shows up etc etc.
Do I have to download software before being able to access it?
and finally, how do I delete the already installed 100 books?
It would really help me out, I asked the bloke at waterstones and he said it works on macs...but he didn't know how!
It looks like the product isn't really supported on the Mac.
As others have mentioned, you can simply take the micro SD card out from the top of the device. You can find a card reader at PoundLand or any good electronics shop. Plug the SD card into the reader, the reader into your Mac and you'll have access to all the books on the card. You can delete them, rearrange them or add new ones that way. You don't need any special software - the card will just show up as another disk drive.
If you were specifically told by staff that it would be supported on the Mac, you should be able to return it for a refund. Or contact Elonex Support and see if they can help.
All the best,
T
Nicola says:
nicola
The book directory is "e_book". Just putting that on your card should be enough.
The complete list of directories (excluding any files) looks like this.
If you go into the settings menu, on page 3 there's the option to reset to factory default and / or clear all temporary files. I don't know if that will help recreate the filesystem. There's also a reset button on the back, but I guess that just resets the hardware - not the SD card.
Hope the above is useful.
T
Howard Osborn says:
Thanks for this. Do the entries e-note and e-notepad mean that notes can be taken on this machine, or is the card formatted for a different model?
Thanks.
T
Howard Osborn says:
I live in fervent hope that Elonex and Waterstones working together can enable a text editor for the benefit of their users. 🙂
Peter says:
I'm getting an error message when I try to open particular files (html) and wondered if anyone else experienced the same. I would be thankful if you could try the sequence described below to see if the error is reproduced, or it is a particular issue with my reader:
(1) Open Bookcase, then Free Books, go to page 4 and open book No 4 ('Les Miserables'). The book cannot be open and a message appears 'Note. Current file error or non-existence!'. The same happens when I try to open 'War and Peace' (the last of the free books).
(2) If I now try to open some of the other html books, some of them would open, but some wouldn't. For example, 'Bleak house' on page 2 of the free books catalogue would not open.
(3) Turning the device off and/or resetting it helps to some extent, as after this I can open for example 'Bleak house' (but only if I hadn't tried 'Les Miserables' or 'War and Peace' before this). The reader works until I try again one of the odd books ('Les Miserables' or 'War and Peace') which replicates the problem.
(4) I don't think the problem is with the SD card or similar, as when the reader is attached to the PC as an USB device, the PC is able to read everything from the card perfectly well, including the odd books.
(5) Finally, I downloaded 'War and Peace' and 'Bleak house' from Project Gutenberg in html and epub format to check. The epubs of both books work fine. The htmls behave exactly the same as described above ('War and Peace' doesn't work and appears to affect subsequent attempts to open 'Bleak house'), which makes me think there is a glitch in the reader html parser, or perhaps my device may have a hardware problem. I wondered if this is what Elonex meant with the '100 free books issue' message on their web site, or they referred to the formatting problems.
Two clarifications to my previous post above. 'Shoes' is a typo and should read 'shows'. The other thing is that only Arial seems to be an unicode font.
Cheers.
BoX says:
http://www.elonex.com/support/products/ebook/511_eBook.shtm
the talk of an issue with the 100 free books
BoX
BoX says:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/webmaster/4028371.htm
Use notepad ++. Select the last word's end of the first line and second line's very first space.
Then hit Ctrl + H and in replace type
or
Use notepad ++. Select the last word's end of the first line and second line's very first space.
Then hit Ctrl + H and in replace press the space bar
both work with slightly differing results
IanJ says:
I opened the example file up with with a text editor that can show the carriage returns, do regex replacement and replaced '(.)r(w)' with '$1 $2'. Basically it strips any carriage returns that are breaking up sentences without destroying the rest of the formatting.
If someone would like to give this file that I processed a go to see how it looks on the reader then it'd be appreciated: http://contractcoder.biz/files/David%20Copperfield.txt
If the above is fine I can either batch process all the free ebook .txt files to fix the problem and put them on my site to download, or I can supply an easy to use perl script to use on any files you have this problem with or maybe I could make a page for people to upload the file reformat it and give them back a file download.
I think I'm going to be buying one of these tomorrow, it's easily the cheapest reader with the most functionality available in the UK at the moment.
Howard Osborn says:
Abdul Bari says:
roy lovelock says:
after trawling the internets for an age i returned to waterstones at lakeside again the staff were very helful and allowed me to measure up my machine to the others they sold, i found it was approx the same dimensions as the sony prs600. i went to the sony shop in lakeside and tried it for size - perfect but being the sony shop they had very little stock and were way over priced (£50 for a standard case without a light).
in the end i came home and ordered this one
http://www.medgestore.com/products/prs600-executive.psp
its a bit pricey after postage to the uk but will do the job, ive also ordered thier light that runs of aaa cell and fits neatly into the case.
hope thats helpful
roy
M Amos says:
NT says:
Not only does it leave you with a pretty good level of protection, it also means there's somewhere obvious to store it -- in the DVD rack!
It's not a sturdy piece of metal like the Sonys - it's lightweight plastic. There's some flex to it.
The keyboard and buttons all have a nice firm action - although the dedicated volume keys aren't wonderful. The cursor keys can also control the volume though.
The USB socket grasps the lead tight enough and the SD card cover fits snuggly, so won't fall open.
There's no removable battery - so there are no sliding covers to worry about.
Thanks
T
Howard Osborn says:
Sky says:
I have a hunch that the note-taking facility might only be available with the touch screen version, which costs £199. If anyone proves me wrong I'll be delighted though.
dizaster says:
Or will I need to convert my library to another format ??
many thanks
Rob Pope says:
Coverts lit individually or in bulk.
Great for managing your books also when you get into the hundreds.
Input Formats: CBZ, CBR, CBC, EPUB, FB2, HTML, LIT, LRF, MOBI, ODT, PDF, PRC**, PDB, PML, RB, RTF, TCR, TXT
Output Formats: EPUB, FB2, OEB, LIT, LRF, MOBI, PDB, PML, RB, PDF, TCR, TXT
So does it all basically.
I have just put my order in for one of the Elonex devices. If people need a converter, I can hightly recommend Stanza. It supports most formats and can convert all of them to the epub format. This is done simply by "File" -- "Open File " -- Then select your file . Then choose "save as" and make sure your file extension is "filename.epub" .
Thanks for all the other info and tips guys 🙂
Regards
major_disaster says:
A firmware update to make more use of the keyboard would be usefull and a case is a definate requirement.
Some documentation would be usefull as well.
Have to agree that Waterstones customer service / knowledge is laughable.
IanJ says:
If you look at the quick start guide that came with the ebook reader the second page shows you the menu layouts for both the 511EB and the 511tEB. The touchscreen version has 8 menu items, the 5th one being for 'Memo', 6th for 'Tools'. The 511EB currently has neither of these menu options.
The keyboard is still useful for book title searching, bookmarking and searching for text in certain e-book formats. The text search and reading function definitely works within .txt and .html files although not in .epub (just option to bookmark in the menu).
Hope this helps to clarify the situation with regard to use of the keyboard for taking Memos.
BoX says:
they seem very open to suggestions and were very helpful.
BoX
roy lovelock says:
anyways i took it out today to see if there was any drop and yes there is, the power is around 50% left.
so ive now set it to auto shut off, but i thought you might like to know it still does consume power albeit very low when the screen is on.
luckly it only takes a little while to charge so i can use it later to today.
roy
Keithyd says:
O'Reilly has some good free technical ebooks http://oreilly.com/openbook/
For contemporary fiction, I highly rate Cory Doctorow - all of his books are freely - and legally - available from http://manybooks.net/authors/doctorow.html
Finally, the Internet Archive has a huge collection - http://www.archive.org/details/texts
Other than that, I suggest looking at all the different eBook shops out there. If the exchange rate is good, there's nothing stopping you buying from abroad. You won't even have to wait for delivery!
Keithyd says:
Emm says:
Regards
Lorna says:
They told me that they will be putting an update download on their site within the next few days. This should fix the problem with the words running together on the ebooks, the fact that some of the free books don't open, the problem with the search facility and possibly (but she didn't sound too sure) could facilitate note making using the keypad.
Fingers crossed
If this update doesn't happen soon I'd appreciate if more people could ring Elonex directly, give them a bit of a (gentle) kick!
So, it seems there will be some fixes! I'll write a new blog post when I get the software. In the meantime, don't forget to email to let them know you're interested in getting the new software when it comes out.
T
IanJ says:
Hope they can get it sorted, the thing that worries me is it's rebadged Hanvon hardware which probably means that it will be down to Hanvon to fix the firmware (I don't see any mention of elonex within the software). So no matter what Elonex promise it will be down to Hanvon as to when we get a fix.
potatouk says:
Lorna says:
Seems to me they did a real rush job on this reader and sent it out half finished.
Alastair says:
One question, in the screenshots I see a title bar with battery information and time. Is this always present or is it possible to display only the text of the document? I hate having title bars.
The title bar is always present. It shows the book title, whether there's an SD card, the battery and the time.
There's also a foot showing which page you're on and how far through the book you are.
As far as I can see, there's no way to remove them.
I can honestly say that I don't find them annoying - although it would be nice to have more screen real-estate.
T
IanJ says:
I have opened a bug with apple regarding the e-reader not showing up as a mass storage device and provided them with debug information. I have also sent the USB Probe output to Elonex along with a description of the problem incase it's a firmware problem (which it may well be as it doesn't show as a mass storage device under Linux either).
Hopefully we'll get some joy one way or another so we can use the cable to manage our e-book libraries on Mac and Linux rather than having to resort to using a memory card reader.
IanJ says:
{{{
('USBSTORDISK&VEN_&PROD_&REV_JZ4740_PAVO&0', 1, u'G:')
}}}
This may well be why the device doesn't show as a removable storage device on mac and linux.
If we can get Elonex to fix this then maybe it will work on all platforms, having no identifier also means that the author of Calibre can not currently write a driver for the reader to work with his software.
I'll contact Elonex regarding this issue, hopefully they can get a fix into the firmware.
IanJ says:
Device VendorID/ProductID: 0x045E/0xFFFF (Microsoft Corporation)
But as a mounted mass storage device on windows it doesn't display device or vendor info, maybe because there's no native driver for it on windows?
*sigh* back to square one.
*sigh* back to square 1
IanJ says:
Hopefully there will be native support for the Elonex EB511 / Hanvon N520 shortly in Calibre (on windows, no mac or linux until the mass storage issue is resolved).
Ticket, if anyone wants to monitor progress with this: http://bugs.calibre-ebook.com/ticket/4335
Keithyd says:
There are two aspects here - screen refresh & responsiveness.
The screen refresh is very quick. So much so that when reading text files I sometimes don't notice that the screen has changed! I find that by the time my eye has scanned to the top of the page, it's fully updated.
Secondly is how responsive it is. For text files, epub and HTML it's very quick. PDFs are a bit slower - if they've got lots of images or you've set it to reflow it can be a little annoying. That's simply because the device is doing more work to calculate what's on screen. It's not unbearably slow, but it is noticeable. So, I guess it depends on the sort of texts you'll be reading.
I have noticed that it occasionally misses a turn. I'm not sure if that's me not pushing the button properly or a bug. Either way, a quick tap gets it going again.
The font is very readable. It has "Arial" or "Latin" each of which can be set to "Clear" or "Smooth". I find Clear Arial to be perfectly readable. Very easy on the eye.
Finally, how often you turn the page depends on the font size. On the largest font size, you get about 40 words to the page over 10 lines. On the smallest, it's about 180 words per page over 20 lines. You can adjust the line spacing to give you a greater or lesser number.
There are about 350 words per page on an average paperback. That said, I don't really notice that I'm continually thumbing the button.
I'll try & post a video this weekend showing the refresh rate.
T
Keithyd says:
Tony Edwards says:
What a superb blog. I thoroughly read the blog and comments and then went and bought my Elonex 511EB from Waterstones website shop. I must say that I am delighted with the product in terms of capability and price. I have created my own epub book in order to test how easy it was to prepare a text book for the reader. No problems, the Elonex handles epub very well indeed. This is an excellent buy. I now need to find a nice leather case for it and a separate battery charger. I am now seriously planning to put several textbooks of my authorship (Hypnotherapy etc) into epub and offer them in this manner.
To other respondents - keep the comments coming to help with finding cases, books, etc.
Dave E says:
The 511EB isn't recognised as an eReader to Calibre (yet). But it should be seen as disk. Click on the "Save To Disk" button - it's next to "Save to Device". Make sure you save them in the "e_books" directory.
Hope that helps,
T
Dave E says:
Lee says:
Excellent review and some very nice detail in the comments too. I've been using Microsoft Reader and Mobipocket on an ancient iPaq for a number of years now, keeping an eye on how the eink devices are progressing. On the back of this review and my excitement for it my fiance went and bought this yesterday for me as an early birthday present and I'm very please she did!
The Waterstone's guy said the £129 was a "limited time offer" though he didn't know when it would end, he expected the price to go up to £179 in the near future. Might have been sales schpiel though...I don't know.
So far, first impressions of it are excellent. The screen is pin sharp, the device is very light and comfortable to hold and the page turn buttons are perfectly placed. I was well prepared for the formatting niggles, having put up with similar problems in Reader for a long time, and to be honest it's not a major issue for me.
I use Calibre, which is a fantastic program. Almost to eBooks what iTunes is to music. And having easily converted all my .lit books into EPUB, there's an option "Save to Disk" where I can specify to save all the EPUB files to disk, and copy every one of my books across in a oner, and have them sorted on the Elonex 511 in separate folders by author and title. Perfect!! =D
My other ebooks are mostly Mobipocket DRM, which I might have to re-purchase under an Adobe Digital Editions DRM version, but I can take the hit on that book by book if I decide it's worth it.
So, in short, check with your local Waterstones to see if they think the price is going up soon as well. If it is, snap it up now. Using Calibre, even without the native support, is an absolute doddle, and I 'd highly recommend this reader.
Thanks again Terence for the superb review!
Kevin G says:
Great blog and a lot of ver useful information.
I recently purchased the 511tEB from Waterstones and am impressed by the clarity, speed etc.
One of the things that I have noticed, however, is that I have purchased 5 books recently i epub format from 2 suppliers. Out of these 5, 3 of them work fine, but 2 of them (both from different suppliers) do not work on the reader.
If I try to access them, the reader displays 'processing' but then just hangs there. I have left it processing for up to 15 minutes, but nothing happens.
I have tried reinstalling the books, to no avail. They all work fine in adobe digital editions.
Spoken to book suppliers and no one is able to help ( although they are really trying). Getting to the stage that I am unsure if any book I buy in epub format will work on the machine or not.
Has anyone else had similar problems.
I am considering whether to try to send this back and change it for a Sony pocket. I know less space, etc, but don't want to buy books I cannot read.
Any help would be greatly appreaciated.
Regards
Kevin
M Amos says:
All the EPUBs I've tried work. Do yours have DRM "protection" on them?
T
M Amos says:
SteveH says:
Has anyone found out how to make this work? And if so, can you help me out with it, please?
TIA.
Rob Pope says:
Stooby says:
1. The text to speech, does this only support certain formats? Can it for example work on pure text based PDF's? Alternatively is there an easy way to convert PDF's into a format supported by the TTS?
2. The problems with the preloaded books, is that specific to these books or does it affect other documents?
Thanks for anyone's help and to echo other's posts, thanks for such a great review.
The Text-To-Speech only works on TXT & HTML. It doesn't work on PDF. You can manually copy the text from a PDF into notepad and save it as a .txt file.
The problem with the pre-loaded book will also affect any other book which doesn't have spaces at the end of each line. That said, I've not come across any other books where it's a problem.
T
Stooby says:
I should have asked this question at the time but I forgot. I've read the battery is soldered in. Is this true and if so what on Earth do you do when, as all rechargeable's do after time, you find the battery holding less and less of a charge. Is there a way to change it at all?
There's no panel to get at the battery. I'm not sure if it is soldered in. It looks like there are some screws on the back (under the rubber feet) but I've not got my screwdriver out to look at the battery.
Even if the batter was reduced from 8,000 pages to 800, that's more than enough for most novels. Alternatively, you can use it while it's charging.
T
Stooby says:
Roy Biddle says:
I purchased one on Friday last and I was really impressed with it.
I have also encountered the problem of merged words with the pre-loaded books, which has already been highlighted.
Plus there's another problem I've come across with two DRM ebooks that I downloaded from Waterstones. I transfered the ebooks to the 511EB and on trying to open either of the books, I get a "No Valid Licence for the Book" highlighted. Waterstones couldn't help me and Elonex Support have informed me that the software is presently being updated.
I can't find any mention of this issue on the Adobe website and no such problem mentioned on this site
I have to say that I'm not confident with Waterstones or Elonex Support and I would appreciate it if anyone has any ideas.
Thanks again.
c.budd says:
c.budd says:
Shona Patterson says:
Jack says:
Jeff says:
HOWEVER: this case uses a "click lock" adhesive strip, two of which must be attached to the back of the reader. These mate with the lining inside the book cover in a manner similar to Velcro. In order to lock the device in place you have to apply a bit of pressure on it. The first time I did this the reader no longer came up as a removeable drive and when I turned it on it wouldn't respond except to tell me that I'd run out of available memory. Turned out that in installing the device into the cover I'd flexed it too much and dislodged the compact flash card.
In short, the case is sturdy and will protect your eReader, however the 511EB is not particularly robust so you really have to be careful when installing it!
SteveH says:
Are there any leather wallets available?
Lee says:
I just ordered one of these at the weekend...just over a tenner inc delivery and it should do the job. It comes from Singpoare apparently, so will likely arrive early next week. I know you tend to get what you pay for but I think the £50 they ask for these on the likes of play.com is just ridiculous!
Anyhoos, once it arrives i'll post my verdict! Can't really grumble for a tenner, like. I'm just hoping it doesn't get stopped through customs! 🙂
Steve B says:
Eamonn says:
I am having a problem with turning the device off. It prompts to confirm with an 'OK' or 'cancel'. I press OK and nothing happens. I can only go for 'cancel'. This is the same with connecting to the PC which brings about another prompt. This has only occured in the last few days. I tried resetting the device but to no avail.
Any ideas? Thanks, Eamonn
Just to check - are you pushing the "OK" button on the keyboard? It's the one just above the right arrow. The one above that is the cancel button which is quite easy to hit by mistake.
If that doesn't work, you may have a defective unit.
Hope that helps
T
roy lovelock says:
i measured up my machine to the others instore and found it was approx the same dimensions as the prs 600 (sony).
so i ordered from here
http://www.medgestore.com/products/prs600-platform.psp
here are some pics if your intrested
the case is made of leather with swade inside, and is very well made. it fits perfectly on our machines except the top left hand corner sometimes moves over, but the machine is still solid in there. it could do with being tighter but i can move it around and upside down without any worrys. - i could always pad it behind the machine if it became an issue which i dont think will happen.
it totalled up to £60 thats including the light (very handy) and delivery.
for the £10 extra i think its not cheap but good value that will protect the machine for years to come.
roy
Eamonn says:
Tony Edwards says:
I like Roy Lovelock's case! Bit pricey though - half the cost of the 511. What was the import duty?
Has anybody found a UK manufacturer pf suitable leather cases. What was the make of Eamonn's ebay leatherette case?
Why on earth hasn't Elonex arranged suitable accessories like Roy's case? It is a bit like selling a car with no seats!
roy lovelock says:
roy
Chris says:
Stephen O'Donnell says:
Need to get a case for it. Overall I am really pleased with my purchase. Annoying that the update isn't working though.
Lynn says:
Jeff says:
Lorna says:
Downloads and instructions: http://www.elonex.com/support/products/ebook/511_firmware_update.shtm
M Amos says:
BoX says:
never mind maybe tomorrow 🙂
Jack says:
Also what does this firmware update fix?
Lee says:
Also, there's a stud fastner to keep it closed, but it feels to me to be on the wrong side. If you open it as you'd normally expect to (with the fastener facing you to the right) the Elonex is upside down on the inside left...counter-intuitive!
I find that putting the Elonex in upside down and using the cover the other way round works better, and when it opens the Elonex is the right way up on the left, with easy access to the page turning buttons.
All in all, absolute bargain at 6.99, plus 3.99 delivery. It took just over a week to deliver from Hong Kong.
Lee says:
roy lovelock says:
have you tried soaking the case then getting one of those shoe odore eaters, put it in a box and leave it for a few days.
the odore eaters are pretty strong (timpsons sell them) and hopefully will kill any dead fish smell.
good luck mate, that sounds terrible.
roy
mentor says:
rip out the pages from the notebook (well...ok! I cut em out neatly), stick the Elonex to the inside back cover with the sticky pads, et-voila, a hard cover to protect the screen, plus when its closed it looks like a cheap notebook, not very theivable looking imo .
Jo says:
Jack says:
Jack says:
I like the update
Fred says:
I seem to have lost one of the font options, Arial ok but other font has gone replaced by option called Black ?.
I can now set timezone, but some of time zone txt is missing.
Looks like a quick hack by Elonex as some options seem to have foreign language text.
It can read .doc format OK now, only tested with one file though.
I created an epub book using calibre and it seems that you can change font style and size using some of the settings in the calibre epub output options which is nice and something I'll experiment with further.
Les says:
Oh and Lee, it doesnt smell of Fish
Stooby says:
A question. I think given the comments I may be able to find a case that roughly fits but I've noticed that you can also buy screen protectors. Are these advisable e.g. do they leave the screen sticky when removed? Are there any that fit the Elonex's screen?
If anyone has found any can you supply a link? Thanks everyone for all the questions and answers, we've found a fantastic product here.
Stephen Biddall says:
M Amos says:
Stephen Biddall says:
M Amos says:
Stephen Biddall says:
Stephen Biddall says:
Stephen Biddall says:
M Amos says:
Stephen Biddall says:
Ron says:
In both cases the more I increase the font sizes, the more of the horizontal text I lose, necessiating having to scroll from left to right and back again in order to read what's been written, an unsatisfactory state of affairs.
Why is this? Am I doing something wrong?
I have now converted the novels that I wrote into HTML and they work perfectly in the same way as do the free books.
I am now frightened to purchase anymore books in PDF which seems the most popular format, as I don't expect them to work.
Any advise you can give? will be most welcome
box says:
Sue says:
NT says:
Wiggy25 says:
The Sony can be bought for £139(WHSmiths) or £149(Waterstones)
The Elonex £129(Waterstones)
The main differences at this moment are the SOny has lots more accessories such as charger and cases.
Although after speaking to Elonex customer services on 29/01/2010, they did say in the next few weeks a charger will be available as will a case!
So the only major difference now is that the Elonex has removeable memory.
It's also a bit ominous where we can buy everything from as the Waterstones stores I spoke to told me once the Elonex had sold out it wouldn't be stocked again, it was just a limited edition.
So with the price of these two units so close which to go for now?
Read very hit and miss reviews on the Sony for loading bought books as the Sony software is so bad.......
So still not totally clear cut.
Alastair says:
Note also that you can get 8% of the price back if you buy via Quidco.com. Quidco take the first £5 that you earn in cashback as their admin charge, but this is a one-off annual fee.
Alastair says:
I am not quite frugal enough to jump through hoops for 8% of £1.40. 😛
wiggy25 says:
Downloaded the update and that all works perfect, added the new menu item and the instruction manual.
When going into the the 'Digital Editions' folder there are now two folders in position 1 (Annotations) and 2 (Thumbnails)
They don't seem to hold anything or do anything but they can't be removed, not sure what thats about.
Also along the bottom of the screen you have the previous and next box along with the double arrows for moving forwards or backwards 10 pages....how are these activated?
I think the instruction manual has quite a bit of information missing, not a great bit of translation either.
Still very easy to use and I think that some of these on screen icons are used for the touch screen only, would be nice to be able to remove them in this version.
Howard Osborn says:
Stephen O'Donnell says:
Howard Osborn says:
Rob Pope says:
Howard Osborn says:
Rob Pope says:
Its coming to the non touch version later this month.
Howard Osborn says:
Howard Osborn says:
Kev Morecroft says:
If not how simple would it be for me to convert a load of pdf novels to another format using something like calibre and what would be the best file type to convert them to?
Jack says:
Jack says:
The guy is giving away his novel for FREE
Jay says:
thanks for the great review!
Just bought a 511 today on the strength of your it Was admiring my new baby and decided to give it its initial charge, so I plugged it in to my PC's usb port and a red light came on to indicate charging. All well and good. But then it all went horribly wrong!
I had a bit of a problem with the pc and I rebooted forgetting that I had the e-reader attached. It had only received about 20 mins charge at this point, instead of the initial 8 hours (at least) recommended. When the PC came on again the red light was off. I tried pressing the power button but it came on blue.
Does this mean that:
a I've messed up my (irreplacable) batteries charge lifespan somehow by interrupting it?
or
b the batttery came fully charged for some reason? Has anyone else got one fully charged or nearly so?
Any help would be appreciated as I'm leaning towards the former as it 'coincidentally' went off red when I interrupted it, and it has taken the shine off my new toy.
thanks
Jay says:
Help!
roy lovelock says:
in your case it sounds like there is an problem, see if hitting the reset button fixes it.
roy
Alastair says:
Lenka says:
Any one who can help?Trying to choose between Elonex 511EB and iRiver Story.Is the £50 extra worth spending or not?
Stooby says:
Alastair says:
Mark Oates says:
The Elonex displays .DOC files satisfactorily, and zooming while not pretty at least displays all the information. It doesn't have as wide a repertoire of file types as other readers, but for me the handling of .DOC files is very important.
Abel says:
PDF version:
http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3236.pdf
HTML version:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/2donq10h.htm
I would like so see the section which starts with "En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme", which contains some common Spanish accented characters. Would be really, really good to know if both HTML and PDF work.
Thanks very much.
The HTML file shows í etc rather than the correct symbol. The PDF works perfectly. The epub on the site renders the characters fine but has odd line breaks. I'll update the firmware on my device later this week and see if that improves the HTML / epub rendering.
T
Abel says:
Gavin Nash says:
Great review and nice little forum you have going here.
just wanted to give some hope to the Linux (and maybe Mac) users out there - I bought one of these readers today, plugged it into my Kubuntu PC and it identified and mounted the external disk straight away. I'm running a fully updated 9.10 64-bit version using kernel 2.2.6.31-19-generic. I've also updated the 511eb firmware.
It may be that this is specific to the 64-bit kernel - I'll have a play with my 32-bit laptop when I have some time, but take heart, it works!
Gavin Nash says:
One thing to be aware of - I had to try two different USB cables before it was recognised. Neither of them was the one that came in the box (I think I've left that one in the office...) but one didn't work at all, even though it appeared to be charging correctly.
Howard Osborn says:
Stephen Biddall says:
Ben says:
Great blog ! any advice on what to do when, having successfully downloaded a book you click to open it and it says "no valid lisence for the book...." ?
Ben
I don't buy DRM'd products, so I'm unable to help you. I suggest calling Waterstones or whoever you rented the book from. Have a read through the comments above and on the other part of my review to see how other people have solved this problem.
T
Mark Oates says:
Mark Oates says:
Mark Oates says:
Martin James says:
Ta
PM says:
I suspect you may have worked it out by now but if you go to the audio section and choose a folder with audio in it will automatically start the next song- then just navigate to what you want to read. I haven't been able to get it to move to the next folder - by that time I am quite happy to back to the main and redo the above process. I have found that battery life certainly goes a lot quicker with audio but it isn't too bad as ong as you don't use the speakers.
les says:
nita palmer says:
thankyou again
nitax
What you can do, is overwrite them. You can have 5 bookmarks per book. So, go to the 1st page and at it as a bookmark 5 times.
Hope that helps.
T
Jack says:
henry says:
I found that if you just rename the ebook file, the bookmarks get cleared out.
A.Tait says:
if the new update gives note taking functions, their mood will be unbearable.
Stephen Biddall says:
Once it's available, I'll be doing another blog post showing you how to update it, what new features it has added and what bugs have been fixed.
If you'd like to speak to Elonex, their number is 0871 222 3456
T
BRIAN MILLER says:
Arriving home I opened the package only to find minimal help by way of a small pamphlet. As it was pre-loaded with some very old ‘classics’ I switched on and found it very easy to use but most irritating in that many words were joined together making smooth reading most difficult. I also tried the male and female ‘talking voices’ and was appalled at the foreign sounding, flat and monotonous voices attempting to read works by Charles Dickens and Shakespeare.
After sorting out Adobe Digital Editions I tried to download a newly purchased ebook. It was at this point I discovered that my computer was not compatible (I have an Apple iMac). I hurriedly arranged for a family member to lend me a laptop which was configured to Windows. (The subject of compatibility of computers was not mentioned by Waterstones). I was becoming despondent but determined to press on for a solution.
I finally succeeded in downloading an ebook two days later after many ‘phone calls to Adobe, Waterstones and Elonex. In the process I also managed to ‘update’ and eliminate the 'no licence' and the word joining problems.
Sadly, the ebook went through the ‘processing’ bit interminably (I switched off after 30 minutes) Elonex advised that the new update promised on 2nd. March was delayed but it would sort out my problem sometime next week when the long awaited update became available (possibly).
Another ‘phone call to Waterstones stating the 511EB was ‘not fit for purpose’ produced a prompt: ‘Once sold these units cannot be returned’.
Meanwhile, I am £130 poorer and back to paper books Is this the way to treat an 82 year old disabled pensioner - or any customer come to think of it? Waterstones had better be ready for a very strong reaction!!
Brian Miller
Rob Pope says:
Howard Osborn says:
Howard Osborn says:
My full review of the firmware is at http://shkspr.mobi/blog/index.php/2010/03/elonex-511eb-firmware-update/
It is different from the previous version on their website - as evidenced by the version number and different checksums. The previous version was 0.41. I suggest you try downloading it again to make sure the old version wasn't cached on your computer.
There's no note-taking yet. That's coming soon. I suggest people call Elonex to ask them when it will be.
OpenInkPot - http://openinkpot.org/ - is a Linux based firmware. The 511EB runs Windows CE. From the look of the website - http://openinkpot.org/wiki/Device/N520/Overview - no one is working on it. If you were to donate (either a unit or some cash) you might be able to get someone to work on it.
HTH
T
Howard Osborn says:
I'll try downloading again as you suggest. Sorry if I've misled anyone.
I think the Openinkpot team were working on the N526 (511 teb).
Howard Osborn says:
Howard Osborn says:
margaeyre says:
My hubby bought me the ebook at the beginning for February as a (very) belated Christmas present. I'm fairly happy overall, with a few exceptions: I need to convert most of my ebooks to txt to avoid Chinese characters and to be able to use all the menu options, such as search and saved page. At least on mine, if I'm reading a book on a word doc I need to (painfully) skip page by page until I reach the correct one. On a txt book, it automatically directs me to the last page read.
Another problem is pdfs and image files (I've only used jpgs so far). If the image is bigger than the screen, or if I zoom it out, I can only see the top left corner of the image, I haven't been able to work out how to "navigate" through it.
Hopefully, the next update, postponed, as it was mentioned, to the 22nd, should fix this.
Something else I'm not happy about is the lack of a cover/case. As I use it mostly at home, it is not a big problem, but I'm always afraid of dropping it or of my little one getting his hands on my toy (my son has already destroy one mobile phone...)
The mp3 option I thought it was going to be useless, but I find it easier to carry just the ereader than both the ereader and my mp3 player. But it does exhaust the battery a lot faster. It plays through the speakers or using earphones, so that's great. I tried recording my son's babbling, but I played it back and I didn't think it recorded loud enough. Maybe I just need to look harder at the different options.
Finally, I thought the lack of charger was very cheeky. Just imagine buying a mobile and then being told you need to buy the charger separately. I don't think so. Their loss, as I discovered that I could use the old charger for the aforementioned destroyed mobile, as it perfectly compatible. Check your amps first before trying this out at home!! It takes half the time than charging it on the computer.
All things considered, I'm happy with my latest toy. In a couple of years' time, I'll probably find it terribly outdated, but I think the same of my first mobile, and my first mp3 player. Anybody remembers their first walkman?
Stephen Biddall says:
Gerry Potter says:
I get no removable disk on my desktop with Elonex 511 but I get one on my Netbook !!!
I am running Windows7 on PC and Windows 7 Starter on Netbook.
Can you explain?
Regards,
Gerry Potter.
Stacie says:
Name of Book
Author
2
8
0
Then the rest of the page is blank. Is this just because PDF is messy to convert or am I doing something wrong? Other then this my Elonex is working much better with the new firmware.
Jack says:
Evad says:
at 12 quid they are an excellent buy and the reader fits perfectly in it.
Howard Osborn says:
Les says:
First convert the PDF file using mobipocket creater (free software) and then convert the output file - prc or html - to epub in Calibre. You will get a much better quality file, though you may need to play with the paragraph settings in calibre so you don't get a blank after each line.
Found this really useful for work documents that tend to be only published in PDF and which I don't want to have to open up my laptop to reference.
Stacie says:
Les says:
http://www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/default.asp?Language=EN
les says:
The only downside I found was that the ghosting of text sometimes got to be annoying, however since getting home and installing the firmware upgrade this has all but disappeared.
In comparison with my wife who took paperbacks instead my observations were that
1. I could slip all my books into a jacket pocket rather than take up valuable case weight
2. I had dozens of books to choose from - unlike my wife who had read her 3 books by day four and had to resort to the hotels book swap shelf
3. I didnt need to charge the reader all week despite 5-6 hours reading per day.
4. I couldnt read during take off and landing (them's the rules)
5. I'm less likely to leave the 511 on the sunbed as a marker whilst I nip off for a few minutes.
6. Dont sit on it by mistake if you do leave it as a marker on your sunbed as that loud cracking noise is going to be expensive.(nearly happened)
7. I need to get a better case as the pencil case I'm using the dye comes off in warmer more humid conditions and its leaving marks on the casing
8. My wife now wants her own 511 - ordered
L
roy lovelock says:
thanks
pete daly says:
Would it be ok to use the charger from my blackberry to charge my elonex reader or would it overheat or translate all the books into hieroglyphics?
I've used my BlackBerry charger to power the reader - it works fine.
Happy reading.
T
pete daly says:
lanced says:
Jack says:
pete daly says:
To change the subject I found an old writing pad holder made of leather and it just happens to be the perfect size for the ebook reader.
I can't remember where I bought it but it's worth keeping yours an eye on cheapie high street shops that are just trying to sell a bargain rather than an overpriced specialist accessory
http://shkspr.mobi/blog/index.php/2010/08/the-511eb-is-getting-a-firmware-update/
Please, please, please call or email Elonex and ask when they will be releasing it.
Peter says:
Adobe digital editions does not work with books in this format on the Elonex ebook.
As lots of people have said, you just get the message "No valid lisense"-their spelling not mine.
So You do't bother ringing Waterstones- you can see from this blog that they have no idea.So you ring elonex who quicly let you know that the only option is to contactAdobe.So after lots of emails they ring you and give very confusing advi ce that they don't know if this ebook works with digital editions but it may not be working because the permissions haven't been downloaded, even though I am able to read my books on my laptop with my Adobe password.
So now I wish I'd never bought this piece of junk that I can only use to view non-copyrighted books.I think I will go back to real paper books because life is just too short .Any body want to buy my book for about £100?