Anyone has bought DPT-S1?

[Heba]

I wonder if anyone who bought it, and can kindly give us a review.
(It's available now in Japan via Sony's website and in the US via Worldox)

Thanks.

[Nate the great]

You can also find it on Amazon for $1,800 or so.

[skipper113]

I bought a DPT-S1 for around 90,000 yen = $900. I bought it for the purpose of reading pdfs and writing memos on presentation materials in meetings etc.

The device works as expected, and I use it mostly to read epaper editions of WSJ, company annual reports and calibre extracted pdfs. Zooming and switching to 4x4 or 16x16 is nice, but its speed is not anything close to an ipad and can be stressful especially when your pdf has a lot of pictures.

Writing feels much better than any pen/stylus I tried for thinkpad tablet 2, ipad using evernote's pen, or z ultra. It is not as good as the boogie board though, since DPT-s1 does still lag a bit and the pen does not have greyscale shades embedded. Your writing looks 'blocky' (2x2 pixel) and after a few seconds lag, it tries to smooth out your writing to put some anti-alias effect onto the writing. Touch of the penpoint is softer than that of a thinkpad stylus, and there is less sound of the tip touching the screen which sometimes bothers you when you write on a glass screen such as an ipad.

Battery life feels close to that of a kindle paperwhite, but wifi and folder syncing eats up a lot of juice. Charging time feels close to a paperwhite too (I don't think the battery capacity is big).

Since it supports webdav, I tried setting up a mirrored version of dropbox+webdav to connect. This didn't work that well, since DPT-S1 will try to sync everything under a folder recursively and it is really slow. The downloading could take minutes, which is stressful, and it feels much faster and less stressful by syncing your stuff on dropbox or something, then taking out the target pdf when needed on the go by using an android device or something via a SD card (which is not ideal for iphone users though).

Overall, I am really satisfied with the device as a gadget lover. But I also feel that ipad air is good enough for ordinary consumers who want to read pdfs readily on the fly and are ok printing out A4 or letter-sized paper.

What I would want from the device is some vnc application.
Rendering doesn't have to be fast, but if I can vnc onto my computer and have basic input via the software keyboard and stylus, I wouldn't have to take the whole burden of downloading pdfs, but rather be able to see what I need to see. It shouldn't be hard as (I suspect) the device is android based.

Another thing I am trying to do (if I have time!) is to use raspberry pi to act as a vnc server, and run guacamole or tightvnc server and try to access it via the DPT-S1 web browser. HTML5 works at least partially in the browser (Google docs work for most part), so it would be worth a try.

Apologies for the long reply. I am happy to answer any questions.

[skipper113]

Adding a picture of how epapers look like. Apologies for the bad quality.

http://s10.postimg.org/ea4zfz1l5/image.jpg

Newspapers which are letter-sized look really nice on the DPT-S1, which the screen size is optimized for. Epapers which are A4 sized are not as good, since it is longer on its vertical side and fonts can get quite small (need to zoom which is slow).

I don't know if it has replaced my writing, but it has surely replaced my newspaper readings (ipad does this too, but at least for me, words flow into my mind better when I read on a epaper and scribble on them).

[Heba]

Thanks so much for your reply! I'm not a geek enough though to understand some of the terms you use. Can you give me examples of the websites the device can and can't display? can I text chat on facebook, for example?

Thanks so much.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by skipper113

It shouldn't be hard as (I suspect) the device is android based.

I'm pretty sure it's linux.

[markom]

Originally Posted by skipper113

Adding a picture of how epapers look like. Apologies for the bad quality.

http://s10.postimg.org/ea4zfz1l5/image.jpg

Newspapers which are letter-sized look really nice on the DPT-S1, which the screen size is optimized for. Epapers which are A4 sized are not as good, since it is longer on its vertical side and fonts can get quite small (need to zoom which is slow).

...

Is there a landscape mode for pdfs as for the browser? How fast is it then at flipping through?

I know that there is no double-page view for landscape at the moment, so using some virtual printer or k2pdfopt app is the way to go till they upgrade the firmware.

[onyxuser]

what its CPU and how much RAM it has?

[joblack]

It would be even more interesting to know if it it is possible to flash a Japanese DPT-S1 with an American firmware. That would solve a lot of problems.

[T.W.G]

So it can't display Din A4 sized papers properly? I thought it was intended for that!? :-) I want a device where I can read and annotate Din A4 sized papers without zooming and without problems.

[kaiser s]

It displays A4-sized documents perfectly. I've also come to find that the more I use the device for making notes, the closer I get to feeling like I'm writing on paper. It takes some getting used to and a few tweaks on the pen's advanced calibration settings. Afterwards the pen input becomes quite accurate.

[maakros]

I have also adquired this device and as indicated by others is quite good at displaying pdfs either portrait or landscape or for taking notes.

Although the japanese version is "usable" I would prefer either to be able to switch to english or more preferrable to switch to an english firmware.

Is there anyone out there that has been sucessful at any of the two above?

Thanks

[JSWolf]

Too bad it didn't support ePub. That would make it much more useful (IMHO).

[maakros]

Some feedback,

After a couple of days of use at work I can say that it is really a good substitute of paper. In my honest opinion, it is the first device that it is close that can be used professionally as epaper. It needs however some refinements to be incorporated to make it competely functional (in my oppinion, all are minor tweaks, and not limited by the current technology implemented in the device, either sofware or hardware wise).

The device is very responsive (given the limitations of e-ink technology), battery seems to last as specified (no time yet to confirm), reads drawings reasonably well (I am an engineer and I have tried A3 single drawings over 1mb without any problem, zoom etc are acceptably fast/useful.


- Ability to communicate with other devices via Wifi in a more flexible way than WebDav (Dropbox? Beaming files o android/iphone for emailing attachments etc?).

- Ability to extract single or multiple annotated pages from an existing pdf.

- Ability to change filenames/ basic file operatios from the device (cut,paste,move, create folders) to get a better organization. This is not a major deal as it can be done while connected with a usb cable.

If the three above are implemented the device would be simply perfect as first iteration of really functional epaper.

Still using the japanese version and getting used to it.

Again if anyone has access to the english firmware with instructions of how to install it, it would be very much appreciated.

[fgdas]

Could somebody test if DPT-S1 supports usb keyboard?
It's shame Sony did not include bluetooth.

I was hoping for hands free page turning...