Quote:
Originally Posted by richman
I guess it's relative, I don't know how much you payed for it , since you had to have it imported, but I got the 505 from sony deal for 150 , so for that price it's a good product , but if you paid double that, then yeah, probably the jetbook would be cheaper. As to contrast and clarity, the 505 and kindle 2 have the same contrast and clarity, so you didn't make bad decision to get the 505, compared to other models that are out there at this time. You could try font hacks like I did and get the ones people on this site recommend, it does make it clearer and bolder. Also, I loaded on BOLD fonts so I have no problem reading on mine. If you have tiny-tinnie font, it would be harder for me to read stuff, in pdf format. I don't use anything in pdf format on my 505, I just convert my pdf's to epub or sony format, if you are going by how pdf's in pdf formats look on 505, I don't like it. But converting them makes them COOL for me. I'm sure you have read in the forums about calibre and other conversion programs, because just putting unconverted pdf's on my 505 would SUCK big time for me.
I guess you are just hoping the next generation of eink stuff will be better and I agree.
The jetbook looks good at 169 , and I would love to hear more from people that have both the jetbook and 505 , so I can hear more how they stack up against each other. And which one you take with you the most.
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I make custom-sized PDFs with the fonts I like, which to me is superior to LRF and EPUB. It allows me to control the justification, hyphenation, spacing, indentation, multiple fonts, REAL italics, and all the trimmings much more conveniently, and my resultant ebooks are much more finished and refined than if I slap them through Calibre like the stuff that can be downloaded from this site (no offense intended to the good folks who do conversions, but I'd much rather take the source files and make a set up a good pdf. I only download the LRFs of books that are low on my reading priorities list, that I don't want to spend the time reformatting).
I actually did change fonts on my reader, and I started a thread back in the 505 forum
here regarding font choices. I'm satisfied with the readability of my fonts, but more than $200 for a specialized text viewer that can't produce sharp, clear text is a bit of a letdown no matter how you slice it. I'm into typography, and ebook readers just can't make beautiful text yet. That's one of the big things I'm hoping will be resolved. It's why I can't bear to read the ebook version of any book I have a hard copy of, unless the hard copy is falling apart...the text quality of ebook readers is so much lower than that of even the most cheaply printed mass market paperbacks and print-on-demand setups that I don't even particularly enjoy reading with my Sony that much. It's just a compromise that I tolerate so that my cramped apartment can continue to sustain life, not much better than my EEE PC.
But yeah, in a few years, who knows? Perhaps the display technologies will improve enough to satisfy those of us who are not content to stop at "readable". TFTs seem to have promise in that regard...e-ink I'm not so sure about.