Pocketbook Note-Taking Review

[language gamer]

I bought the Pocketbook 360 because it looked like a great device with a great price tag. So far, after hammering out all the kinks, it’s proven to be well worth it. The interface and device itself are very well-designed and user friendly, the device has great customization options, and some nice extra features. There are several great reviews out there that discuss these aspects in depth, but I wanted to write a review that focused in particular on the note-taking features, specifically targeted towards academics. I hope this review is helpful and I welcome feedback and discussion. My understanding comes primarily from my own experience using the device, so I apologize for any inconsistencies or omissions.

As a pure reader, the Pocketbook 360 seems more than adequate. Many of us, however, need to interact with books in more complex ways. The popular misconception seems to be that note-takers should get larger e-book readers with touch screens in order to properly make notes. Browsing the MobileRead comparison chart, it seems like almost none of the 5” devices have note-taking features and most of the 6” devices that do employ touch screens. I have nothing against these devices, but I don’t see why we can’t do just as well without sacrificing portability, lower price, and simplicity.

Here are the positives of the 360’s note-taking capabilities:

1. As I mentioned before, the mere presence of note-taking features in a device this size and price is unprecedented. That already ranks high enough for me to purchase one.

2. Exporting. This is the main feature I was looking for. As an academic, traditionally I gather all my resources from printed texts, yet do all my actual work on the computer. This means I have typed out by hand hundreds of pages of quotes onto my computer. Trust me, this gets extremely tedious. The ability of an e-reader to make the direct transition from book to computer is a must. The 360’s notebook works by saving a html file and a folder of images to the internal memory. Connect the USB cable and simply drag the selected notebooks to your computer.

3. Save to any notebook. Instead of automatically saving your notes to a file based on the text you are reading, the 360 enables the user to specify the destination notebook every time a note is made. This is a very valuable feature because it lets the user organize notes according to a particular theme or have multiple texts by a single author stored in one place.

4. Notebook Interface. In addition to downloading the notes to your computer, you can access them through the main menu. Each notebook displays the text of each note in sequence, allowing you to read through your comments. This is a very handy way of reviewing the main points of a text or quickly searching for something that captured your attention. Since all good quotes need context, each note links back to the original text enabling one to easily find the quote’s original place in the text.

5. Directional Keypad. Personally, I find the keypad better than a stylus. A major benefit of an e-reader is the ability to read with one hand. Since I can make a note with just a few strokes of the directional pad, I can take notes without interrupting the flow or position of my reading.

6. Bookmarking and screenshots. Although I don’t take advantage of either of these features often, the 360 has two more potentially useful note-taking features. If you want to capture an entire page instead of a single quote, you can either bookmark the page for future reference or you can make an image of the entire page using the screenshot feature.

I am organizing the negatives as a wish list because they are all potentially fixable. Taking care of the high priority fixes would in my opinion make this device a major player for academics interacting with ordinary texts (although it will probably never compete with larger devices for users who work extensively with large graphic-heavy documents, even though it is capable of handling them).

High Priority Fixes

Copy Text
I understand that in some situations, making the notes into an image would be useful. These are still books, however, and I mostly read books for the text. The 360 desperately needs a way of exporting the notes in some text format, which should work with the existing HTML. There could be an option to toggle between text and image settings for note-taking or the device could automatically copy both. However this happens, there needs to be a way for users to interact with their notes.

Static Numbering
Academic users will typically need to cite quoted passages. It is vital for there to be static numbering attached to each note. Each note already comes with a header that displays the text, providing a perfect place to add a numbering system. A system like the Calibre method of using the chapter and paragraph numbers would be exceptionally valuable. If a format contains its own static page numbers (like epub), these could be displayed as well. Without a feature like this, the 360 is somewhat clumsy for serious academic purposes.

Medium Priority Fixes

Backup to SD card
In my opinion, data cannot possibly have too many layers of protection. An option to manually or automatically backup the notes to the SD card (without using the USB cable) would be very useful.

Highlighting
Although note-taking is more important than an independent highlighting feature, it would be very nice to be able to see what passages have been noted when viewing the text. I often go through books multiple times and I actually like seeing the traces of my previous thoughts in the book. A simple toggle to display highlighting on all passages in the notebooks would suffice.

Annotation
Although annotation is an important part of interacting with texts, it’s not crucial since the on-screen keyboard is a bit slow for lengthy comments. Still, for users who are willing to put in the time, having a way of appending comments to a note would be very valuable. Even a slow way is better than no way.

Low Priority Fixes

Bookmark Limit
According to the manual, you only get 30 bookmarks per book. Unless there’s some feature of the device that makes it unable to process more, this seems like an arbitrary and unnecessary limit.

Tips
Thanks to Ulli, Francesco, and Forkosigan for helping me find work-arounds for some of my initial criticisms. Here's what I've learned so far:

In PDF files, you need to map the note-taking feature to a button that is not used for directional movement. The long press on the up and down keys should work, but the short press won't. After that it should work fine.

If the passage you want to select is in the bottom half of the screen, you can scroll up, which will wrap around to the bottom of the screen. This saves quite a few clicks.

Conclusion
The Pocketbook 360 is a great reader for simple reading applications. For more advanced engagement with texts, the 360 has enough features to allow significant note-taking, although it falls short of being a truly high-performance tool for academics. You can easily make notes and read them both on the device and on a computer, but these notes cannot be easily manipulated or cited. The device also lacks the highlighting and annotation features that we are accustomed to having with physical texts. Although this device isn’t fully ideal, it can handle serious academic use as long as you adjust your note-taking style accordingly. Given the low price and the many advantages the 360 has over comparable e-readers, it warrants serious consideration.

[Ulli]

At first, thx for your nice review to the PB Enjoy your time with it, i guess it will bring more fun in studying.

PDF Support
I haven’t really played around with this feature, since I don’t do a lot with complicated PDFs, but it doesn’t seem like there is built-in note-taking support for PDFs. Even though this isn’t a big deal for me personally, it is an omission that could be a problem for many users.

There is a note-taking-feature for PDFs, works fine and im using this feature often I set it up on longer holding the "down" button.

[Dulin's Books]

Thank you language gamer for your input on this topic. PocketBook is actively working on academic purposes for its current and upcoming devices and input like this from users is invaluable.

[Yar-PocketBooker]

language gamer, thanks and kudos for the review! this definitely deserves some karma!

[Francesco]

Originally Posted by language gamer

Center Selection Bar
Under the current configuration, the selection bar begins at the top of the screen and you have to scroll down to your quote. Starting the selection bar in the center would allow you to scroll up or down, greatly reducing the average number of keystrokes to select a passage.

Not necessarily. Perhaps you haven't noticed, but if you scroll up when the selection bar is at the top, the bar will jump to the bottom. So the number of keystrokes actually depends on the distance between the initial position and the text you want to select, regardless of what the initial position is (center, top, or bottom).

Nice review, thanks.

[brecklundin]

very nice objective look at the PB360. I would not have considered the needs of someone using a 5" device for research, but after reading your take, I could see it having a place for such a use...

[Forkosigan]

Center Selection Bar
Under the current configuration, the selection bar begins at the top of the screen and you have to scroll down to your quote. Starting the selection bar in the center would allow you to scroll up or down, greatly reducing the average number of keystrokes to select a passage.

As soon as the line of the cursor, you can press the joystick "up" and move the cursor to the very bottom of the page, thus you never have to move the cursor to the line more than the middle of the page.

[brecklundin]

Originally Posted by Forkosigan

As soon as the line of the cursor, you can press the joystick "up" and move the cursor to the very bottom of the page, thus you never have to move the cursor to the line more than the middle of the page.

Whew, good thing I read Francesco's post because for a minute I read your comment first where you wrote the users needs to push the joystick UP to move the "cursor" to the BOTTOM of the page... That almost melted a part of my brain I might need again some day!! hehehehe....but I am feeling muuuuch beter now...

NOTE: I making joke because I see the context for your comment but without Francesco's full comment yours just reads kinda funny...just want to be sure we don't trip over anything lost in translation.

[Forkosigan]

Originally Posted by brecklundin

Whew, good thing I read Francesco's post because for a minute I read your comment first where you wrote the users needs to push the joystick UP to move the "cursor" to the BOTTOM of the page... That almost melted a part of my brain I might need again some day!! hehehehe....but I am feeling muuuuch beter now...

NOTE: I making joke because I see the context for your comment but without Francesco's full comment yours just reads kinda funny...just want to be sure we don't trip over anything lost in translation.

Excuse me, did not notice the message Francesco, he correctly explained the same thing.

[EowynCarter]

How does notes on PB360 works ?
I already have trouble typing on my cellphone...

[kacir]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

How does notes on PB360 works ?
I already have trouble typing on my cellphone...

IMHO, typing on PB360 is much better than typing on a cellphone. I really hate using cellphone to enter any text. I send like 1 text message per 6 months using my phone. If I really, really need to send one I send it from my cell provider web portal.

Entering text on PocketBook is much better for me than entering text on my cellphone, but ... I would not want to write any substantial texts. A word or two is great. Or if you want to issue a few Linux commands at the terminal emulator to find a config file. In that case you will very much appreciate that many of basic unix commands (cp, mv, ls, rm, du, df, vi, ed, ...) are very short ;-)
(Old teletypes and consoles that were used as interfaces for first Unix systems were unbelievably slow by today's standards)

For closer description of PB on-screen keyboard see this
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...959#post654959
and a few following posts with screenshots.

[EowynCarter]

So bacicly, you type one to select the area, and a second time to select the letter ?

[kacir]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

So basically, you type one to select the area, and a second time to select the letter ?

Exactly.
You press up, down, left, right or OK depending on what area the character is located in,
then you move cursor using up, down, left, right and confirm with OK.
Neat thing is, if you click the first click wrong, you can still use up, down, left, right to navigate to any character, even in different area.

[language gamer]

The typing is better than a cell phone, but writing out a full paragraph of thoughts will still take longer than using a pen or a normal keyboard. Still, it's definitely good enough to warrant some sort of annotation features.

Thanks for the heads up about scrolling from the bottom. That's a major time saver!

[EowynCarter]

I have the says the idea is quite ingenious. But not enough to allow for some serious note typing.