Frustrated with Cool-er

[Moonraker]

Today I bought the Cool-er E-reader from Argos (UK).

I had previously downloaded the manual for this device to check it out and I thought - great - it's what I want - all those formats it can read - PDF, RTF, TXT, PRC, HTML and ePub. 8 shades of grey, 8 different font sizes, 3 fonts, Folders, Portrait and Landscape, SD memory card slot, MP3 files and Sudoku!

But I was very disappointed to find the the formatting for PRC, and HTML is dreadful just looks like txt. No bold, no italics, no line spacing, no nuffink! Bearing no relation to the original nicely formatted files. I gave up on the other formats after that to concentrate on ePub hoping it would be better.

Well, it is in a way. It retains all formatting so that's something. And I can change the font size - up to 8 different sizes. However, for the life of me I can't change the font. The reader has 3 different fonts to choose from - Georgia, Courier and NTX new. No matter which one I select they all look the same. I thought perhaps it was because the original html had Times New Roman as its main font so I tried changing it before creating an ePub file. But no luck - the font was still the same on the cool-er. The free PD books that came with the reader would not change font either. My favourite font for reading on my Gen 3 is Verdana and I can't get used to the font used for ePubs on the Cool-er.

Also, the page numbers in the right margin irritated me no end. once they got up to double and treble figures they superimposed over the text. I had to increased the right-side margin to 15% before I got an improvement and even then the last character was very faint because of the page number.

Even though this ebook reader has not crashed on me, and it feels pretty stable, I am very disappointed in its representation of ePub and the awful HTML and PRC rendition. So unless anyone can tell me what I am doing wrong I shall be returning it to Argos.

[wallcraft]

If you are making your own ePubs, e.g. with Calibre (--extra-css), try :

body {
  font-family: sans-serif;
}

If no font is specified the default is the standard serif font, at least with this you get the default sans-serif font.

[sassanik]

The page numbers in the margin are a "feature" of epub and shows up on other epub devices not just the Cool-er. I am trying to remember if I was able to turn it off or not, I am thinking no for some reason.

Does your Cool-er have the newest firmware? I believe they fixed the font issue.

As a generalization the firmware is pretty stable. I had issues with mine getting stuck on the greyscale start up page and becoming un responsive. I have heard that has possibly been fixed as well? I did not have problems with my Cool-er freezing up when reading it.

I used Calibre with my Cool-er and it works really well with it.

The mobi files and PDF's don't display terribly well. With PDF's this is pretty standard, I am not as sure with the mobi files. I just converted them over to epub.

Amy