My e-slick mini-review

[foxitupbaby]

Ok, I got my e-slick, have used it a little while and finally got a chance to take some pictures and a video of it.

Note regarding the video: I fumbled a bit with the landscape mode because I never actually use it. I prefer to see the whole page at once. It's actually pretty easy.

I didn't go too in-depth into the mp3-player or bookmark capabilities because i don't really use either of those features.

I also forgot to demonstrate the side button-presses. You can skip several pages at a time by pressing the r/l buttons. You can also skip through lists of files that way if you have a ton of them.

Pictures here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/37016797@N07/sets/72157616278907450/show/with/3407472627/)

youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tkrlt_aaJwQ)

Overall, I'm very impressed with the e-slick. It handles pdf's the way you'd like, making it easy to read them in the original formatting. It charges fast and holds it's charge for a long time when not in use. Interface is intuitive and very easy to use. I was pleased to see that resizing pdf's to fit the full screen worked very well.

A few things that could use improvement:

Make the e-slick automatically save the current page when it turns off. Right now it'll only store the page you're on if you exit out to the main menu prior to it shutting off. It can be frustrating if you've read 20 or 30 pages to have to navigate back to where you were.

Another thing I noticed is the button sometimes double presses unless you only press the very outer edge. If you accidently press the the inner gray area (not the inner square, but the darker gray area of the navigation part) it'll either refresh the current page or go down and then back up to the current page (not positive which). That also should be corrected.

A suggestion regarding storing the last page for files - you make small position files to store the current position of documents older than the last 10 so you can get around the problem of trying to keep track of a number of them. Just small corresponding files that store the current location and loaded at the same time as the document.

Landscape, reflow, and zoom (other than the full page zoom) I have no use for me because I like to see full pages at once and never use those modes. I'll leave any feedback regarding those and text files to others who deal with them more. I would not reflow anything except for plain text anyway because in my opinion it makes files look terrible.

I also would not recommend this for reading text-books because you really need a larger reader to be able to see the text clearly when it's that small and you don't want to constantly be scrolling up and down.

Other than that, I also noted like others that the battery life is far shorter than the 8000 pages the spec give it. I would say something like 300-600 would be a more accurate guess.

All in all, a very sleek, well thought-out reading device. I'm very happy with my purchase and would gladly recommend this to anyone who wants to read their documents on the go.

A great place to get nicely formatted classics is planetebook (http://www.planetebook.com). You can also get them from Guttenberg etc... I just liked their versions because they were clean and neat.

Update 4/4/9: I just had a strange problem with my e-slick. It froze and wouldn't respond to anything until I pressed the reset button and then unplugged/replugged in the battery. Hopefully it was just that once *crossing fingers*

[christina]

Thanks much for your feedback. I will let out developers know these.

About 'the battery life is far shorter than the 8000 pages'.
--It has a theoretical prerequisite: small text file, in Fit Page mode, keep flipping page without pausing. Hope you understand.

.....
A suggestion regarding storing the last page for files - you make small position files to store the current position of documents older than the last 10 so you can get around the problem of trying to keep track of a number of them. Just small corresponding files that store the current location and loaded at the same time as the document.


I don't understand this, would you please dwell on it again? Thanks.

[Robbie]

It seems that eSlick doesn't match my need a little bit since it is not good to read textbook and academic journal research papers with two columns including tables and figures. I will test it once I have it.

[foxitupbaby]

Thanks much for your feedback. I will let out developers know these.

About 'the battery life is far shorter than the 8000 pages'.
--It has a theoretical prerequisite: small text file, in Fit Page mode, keep flipping page without pausing. Hope you understand.



I don't understand this, would you please dwell on it again? Thanks.

This makes sense. I think I assumed it was talking about pdf viewing, which consumes more power than text (also I typically run it with "fit-to-text" taking more processing power). It's not that big a deal, as I've never had it run out of power when I've been using it. It just means I have to plug it in every couple days.

In terms of the last page loaded indicator, my recommendation was to make a small file corresponding to each file on the device telling it what page to load/bookmarks/etc... I would just have it make that file when the document is first loaded to avoid the need for maintaining a database. A simple check for that file's preference file when you load the document. If it's present, you read the last page and go to that. If it's not, you create the file. This would allow for storing the "last position" on all documents instead of just the last 10. For organization's sake and to avoid clutter, you would either want to hide the file while on the viewer or create a separate folder to store these.

It seems that eSlick doesn't match my need a little bit since it is not good to read textbook and academic journal research papers with two columns including tables and figures. I will test it once I have it.

As far as I'm aware, it handles all those things fine. If you looks at my images, you'll notice a few are for screenplays and those actually have complex multicolumn layouts (it's not just done by indentation), which is one of the reasons Kindle can't display them properly.

The reason I recommend against using it for textbooks/academic journals is because of the text size, not because it can't display them properly. I don't like reading in layout mode, which would be a prerequisite to see complex charts properly without squinting and struggling to read them. If you have some that you can "fit-to-screen" without elaborate borders you may be okay. If you have some you want me to check for you, send me a PM and I'll post them back to my twitter.

[ooooo]

Awesome review, I was in the market for a device that handled PDF. So the only two devices available were sony's PRS-700 and fox it. I ended up going for the sony reader, I was able to get it for $30 more than foxit's device.

If you want I can also take pictures for you on my sony reader for comparison. I actually wish I had some comparisons before I made the purchase, but I'm happy with my purchase. I just wish the screen was a little better.

Sony's PRS-700 supports zooming and panning the image. The screen is most likely worse than the eslick due to the touch screen. Eslick has the nice fit to content view option, which I wish I had. Sony also has a reflow which is pretty nice. I loved how sony supported more than just PDFs. I'm sure eslick will be able to support more in the future.

[Robbie]

For me, a student, price is one of main considerations. If possible for me to buy one sony 700 with $30 more than the price of eSlick, I do choose sony 700. How did you get it with that low price? Just curious. :1_11:


Awesome review, I was in the market for a device that handled PDF. So the only two devices available were sony's PRS-700 and fox it. I ended up going for the sony reader, I was able to get it for $30 more than foxit's device.

If you want I can also take pictures for you on my sony reader for comparison. I actually wish I had some comparisons before I made the purchase, but I'm happy with my purchase. I just wish the screen was a little better.

Sony's PRS-700 supports zooming and panning the image. The screen is most likely worse than the eslick due to the touch screen. Eslick has the nice fit to content view option, which I wish I had. Sony also has a reflow which is pretty nice. I loved how sony supported more than just PDFs. I'm sure eslick will be able to support more in the future.

[gazzar]

It seems that eSlick doesn't match my need a little bit since it is not good to read textbook and academic journal research papers with two columns including tables and figures. I will test it once I have it.

I'm also hoping to read two-column academic journal papers when my eSlick arrives, but I am more hopeful as tools exist to allow you to reformat a two-column pdf into one-column. In fact I posted instructions on how to do this using LaTeX but the post was removed by a moderator for some unexplained reason. I since discovered a tool called papercrop that does this but I haven't tried it.

[foxitupbaby]

Awesome review, I was in the market for a device that handled PDF. So the only two devices available were sony's PRS-700 and fox it. I ended up going for the sony reader, I was able to get it for $30 more than foxit's device.

If you want I can also take pictures for you on my sony reader for comparison. I actually wish I had some comparisons before I made the purchase, but I'm happy with my purchase. I just wish the screen was a little better.

Sony's PRS-700 supports zooming and panning the image. The screen is most likely worse than the eslick due to the touch screen. Eslick has the nice fit to content view option, which I wish I had. Sony also has a reflow which is pretty nice. I loved how sony supported more than just PDFs. I'm sure eslick will be able to support more in the future.


I would, but it wouldn't really be an accurate comparison since things like lighting, etc... would be a bit different so it wouldn't really be a clear matchup probably.

[Grace]

Ok, I got my e-slick, have used it a little while and finally got a chance to take some pictures and a video of it.

Pictures here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/37016797@N07/sets/72157616278907450/show/with/3407472627/)

youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tkrlt_aaJwQ)

Overall, I'm very impressed with the e-slick. It handles pdf's the way you'd like, making it easy to read them in the original formatting. It charges fast and holds it's charge for a long time when not in use. Interface is intuitive and very easy to use. I was pleased to see that resizing pdf's to fit the full screen worked very well.


All in all, a very sleek, well thought-out reading device. I'm very happy with my purchase and would gladly recommend this to anyone who wants to read their documents on the go.
.

Thanks for your feedback, foxitupbaby. We appreciate that you like Foxit eSlick and have good comments on our Forum. I am thinking if we can put your comments on our Customer Testimonial page for eSlick. Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

[foxitupbaby]

Sure, go for it. I'm happy with mine and since you'll be supporting ebook stores soon, even the complainers about being a pdf-only reader should be satisfied. :1_11:

[Grace]

Thanks for supporting. foxitupbaby.

[dracodoc]

I'm also hoping to read two-column academic journal papers when my eSlick arrives, but I am more hopeful as tools exist to allow you to reformat a two-column pdf into one-column. In fact I posted instructions on how to do this using LaTeX but the post was removed by a moderator for some unexplained reason. I since discovered a tool called papercrop that does this but I haven't tried it.

Papercrop cut pdf page into multiple gifs, because it was made for reader that not fully support pdf. Gif have fixed resolution so you will not have optimized effect when zoomed up.
If landscape mode and "fit content width" or cropping off edges are still not enough for some pdfs, I think you can use acrobat or other util to convert pdf to word, then merge columns in word. This conversion will not be perfect, but still usable. I wish foxit can come up with a better implement of this, like a feature of pdfedit --it don't have to done in eslick which is not powerful enough.

[foxitupbaby]

Hey, an idea for GUI improvement. Any possibility of making the main menu customizable.

My idea is that you'd add an option in the "home" screens menu to select which options to display on it.

So for instance, right now you have

<Recent Document>
-----
SD Card
Memory
-----
Music

If you could toggle on or off certain parts, then for instance maybe someone could do something like

<Document 1>
<Document 2>
<Document 3>
-------------
SD Card

And not even see options they don't use (which would be Main Memory and Music in my case).


Another suggestion, add an option in menu to reassign the music button to open the current document. That way it would be much easier to switch back from navigation without having to press the "return to previous screen" button several times. Alternatively, make it open a document bookmark screen that you can have list several documents that you're currently reading (so you don't have to go through the file system every time).

[wanchope]

Another thing that is really nice to have is the feature to show the full title of the books. Currently you can only see the fisrt few words. But if several books happen to be of one series, and the first part of each title are exactly the same, you can't reall tell which book is which in the menu on eslick.

Thanks.

[foxitupbaby]

Have you tried just making a separate folder for the series and naming the books their series names rather than having the series appended to it? If they showed the full title everytime for long titles, you'd get significant slowdown and it would be using a lot more resources for normal titles that aren't very long. Folders are probably the best bet for that. Hope that helps!

[christina]

Thanks foxitupbaby for the suggestion. I have forwarded them to our team.

[wanchope]

Have you tried just making a separate folder for the series and naming the books their series names rather than having the series appended to it? If they showed the full title everytime for long titles, you'd get significant slowdown and it would be using a lot more resources for normal titles that aren't very long. Folders are probably the best bet for that. Hope that helps!

The files are already in seperate folders by the series, but I'll also have to change the title of every single file. Not very user friendly, don't you think?

I'm not sure how the other brands deal with this problem. But there's got to be a way without slowing down the system. Just thinking aloud, maybe you can shrink the fonts in the menu a little bit or make it show the full title only after the cursor's been on one file for more than 3 seconds or something.

[foxitupbaby]

The files are already in seperate folders by the series, but I'll also have to change the title of every single file. Not very user friendly, don't you think?

I'm not sure how the other brands deal with this problem. But there's got to be a way without slowing down the system. Just thinking aloud, maybe you can shrink the fonts in the menu a little bit or make it show the full title only after the cursor's been on one file for more than 3 seconds or something.

There isn't any way I'm aware of that they can do it without a) slowing it down or b) taking away functionality from one of the few buttons the e-slick has. Neither one of those is a good solution.

epaper is designed to be low power and ONLY refreshes when you press a button. Increasing the refresh rate would both rapidly drain the battery and make the device visually unusable. Using long file names would cause unnecessary resource consumption for very little practical benefit (as far as I'm aware).

The best solution for your situation is just to do a batch rename job (or several if need be). I've included some information for you below on batch converters, which seems to be the best solution in your scenario. Your problem is primarily one of organization. A batch/bulk rename utility will work for you, if you're willing to try it.

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/renamers/Batch_Rename_Picture_Files_Tools_Tips.htm
http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Main_Intro.php

[wanchope]

Oh, there isn't any way, isn't there? That doesn't sound very creative to me.
For your information, Sony PRS 505, a device launched more than 18 months earlier than eslick, has this functionnality to automatically shrink the font size of the long file titles to fit a bigger part of the name, if not full, into the view. And by doing this, they a) did not sacrifice too much of the system performance; b) did not dedicate one button, though 505 does have more buttons than eslick.

This is the only device I've checked in my last 5 minutes. I think your team might have more time to do a more thorough market research to bring in some other "impossible" ideas. Again this is not a critical issue to the device, but just don't kill the idea for improvement way too early.

Thanks for the software though!

[christina]

Thanks wanchope and foxitupbaby for the dicussion. I will gather all your feedback to our team, they will then discuss further for adding as a new feature.

Thanks!

[foxitupbaby]

Oh, there isn't any way, isn't there? That doesn't sound very creative to me.
For your information, Sony PRS 505, a device launched more than 18 months earlier than eslick, has this functionnality to automatically shrink the font size of the long file titles to fit a bigger part of the name, if not full, into the view. And by doing this, they a) did not sacrifice too much of the system performance; b) did not dedicate one button, though 505 does have more buttons than eslick.

This is the only device I've checked in my last 5 minutes. I think your team might have more time to do a more thorough market research to bring in some other "impossible" ideas. Again this is not a critical issue to the device, but just don't kill the idea for improvement way too early.

Thanks for the software though!

I agree it would be useful and I apologize if I came off sounding negative. You had a problem and I was primarily trying to come up with a solution for you that you can use right now to make the eslick more usable for you. Regardless of future functionality possibilities or impossibilities, there is a solution that you could use to get around the issue of long names (namely using bulk conversion software which actually is relatively painless once you try it once). I hope that you'll look at it, since you'll get more pleasure using your eslick at present.

In regard to long file names, maybe it would be possible to have the icon/font size user-adjustable through preferences to make longer file names fit (by using smaller icons/fonts).


Also, please understand that although I love my eslick device, I am in no way associated with FoxIT the company so don't take anything I saw as something official. I'm just another eslick user trying to help other eslick users. Cheers!

[wanchope]

Thanks, man!

[christina]

........
Make the e-slick automatically save the current page when it turns off. Right now it'll only store the page you're on if you exit out to the main menu prior to it shutting off. It can be frustrating if you've read 20 or 30 pages to have to navigate back to where you were.

.......

This issue has been fixed in our internal new edition. :)

[wanchope]

Great to learn! We are really expecting your firmware upgrades. The 1st one will be out tomorrow?

[christina]

see here please:http://forums.foxitsoftware.com/showthread.php?t=13865&page=3