Well, I now have a PB Color and have used it for two days, thought I would share my reaction here. And, maybe get some help with a question or two from the PB Color "old-timers."
First, I purchased it from Newegg. I was a little concerned with various complaints by Googling Newegg. But it seemed to me that if they really had it in stock most of the complaints were about how Newegg may not police their third-party sellers/shippers as does Amazon. In this case Newegg would be the shipper. Anyway, I rolled the dice and 'lo the PB Color arrived within five days of the order.
I immediately loaded up a few comics as they were the main reason I purchased the device. I wanted an ereader that does color so as to be able to read the comics in bright sunlight. At first, I was far, far less than impressed by the color. It did seem to be very low in saturation and was not at all like a printed page of color would look. However, the human eye is adaptable and after an hour or so I found the color to be more than acceptable. And, wow, it certainly beats black and white on a regular ereader. IMHO anyway.
My main problems with it so far have been how it handles collections and (probably) my own fat-headedness in understanding how the heck the Pocketbook Cloud is supposed to work.
As mentioned here it seems that you cannot choose more than one book at a time to add to a collection. That is just stupid. What I finally did was to side load the comics I wanted to carry into folders within their own COMICS folder. Then I can use the library function of viewing by folder and see the comic groupings I like. OK this was when I noticed the weird effects of syncing to the PB Cloud.
What would happen is when I read a comic it would then sync to the cloud. But it would sync so that on the cloud it was no longer with a cover graphic. Worse, once it had sync'd to the Cloud the listing of that comic in my PBC's folder view would then carry a cloud icon and rather than quickly loading from the actual copy of the comic in the folder it would download that comic from the cloud!
After some thought I realized there was actually not a reason in the world I could think of for me to use the Pocketbook Cloud. I have no other PB devices and would never use the PB app on my iPhone or my iPad instead of the far, far, far, far better Comic Zeal program So I turned off Cloud sync and even logged out of the Cloud. Now it all works as I had hoped but I cannot help wondering if I maybe should have not done it this way?
Anyway, there were a few other surprises. One was the many books included in non-English languages. First I was erasing them one by one but then I usb-mounted the divide and saw there were simply folders of various languages so I deleted all but the English folder. Very quick that way!
Then there are the "adjustments" in the settings view. What they do is anyone's guess. The contrast one is about the only one I am sure what it does. And it simply has very invisible to regular look and no real way to vary from, say, good to better. None of the adjustments are mentioned at all in the manual.
What the manual does talk about a LOT is the Frontlight and the Smartlight. This would be cool except as far as I can tell there is no Smartlight on the unit! The Frontlight is the brightness. The Smartlight according to the manual controls the color temperature. But, no, there is not a Smartlight I can find. The manual shows two swipe adjustments. But on my unit BOTH the swipe adjustments work for only simple brightness and not at all as the manual shows. Frustrating but, on the other hand, I really was not expecting anything but the frontlight anyway.
So, overall, this is what I expected. A revolutionary first-iteration of technology that will no doubt look pretty darn primitive in a year or so. But, for now, I am having un and do not regret purchasing.
First, I purchased it from Newegg. I was a little concerned with various complaints by Googling Newegg. But it seemed to me that if they really had it in stock most of the complaints were about how Newegg may not police their third-party sellers/shippers as does Amazon. In this case Newegg would be the shipper. Anyway, I rolled the dice and 'lo the PB Color arrived within five days of the order.
I immediately loaded up a few comics as they were the main reason I purchased the device. I wanted an ereader that does color so as to be able to read the comics in bright sunlight. At first, I was far, far less than impressed by the color. It did seem to be very low in saturation and was not at all like a printed page of color would look. However, the human eye is adaptable and after an hour or so I found the color to be more than acceptable. And, wow, it certainly beats black and white on a regular ereader. IMHO anyway.
My main problems with it so far have been how it handles collections and (probably) my own fat-headedness in understanding how the heck the Pocketbook Cloud is supposed to work.
As mentioned here it seems that you cannot choose more than one book at a time to add to a collection. That is just stupid. What I finally did was to side load the comics I wanted to carry into folders within their own COMICS folder. Then I can use the library function of viewing by folder and see the comic groupings I like. OK this was when I noticed the weird effects of syncing to the PB Cloud.
What would happen is when I read a comic it would then sync to the cloud. But it would sync so that on the cloud it was no longer with a cover graphic. Worse, once it had sync'd to the Cloud the listing of that comic in my PBC's folder view would then carry a cloud icon and rather than quickly loading from the actual copy of the comic in the folder it would download that comic from the cloud!
After some thought I realized there was actually not a reason in the world I could think of for me to use the Pocketbook Cloud. I have no other PB devices and would never use the PB app on my iPhone or my iPad instead of the far, far, far, far better Comic Zeal program So I turned off Cloud sync and even logged out of the Cloud. Now it all works as I had hoped but I cannot help wondering if I maybe should have not done it this way?
Anyway, there were a few other surprises. One was the many books included in non-English languages. First I was erasing them one by one but then I usb-mounted the divide and saw there were simply folders of various languages so I deleted all but the English folder. Very quick that way!
Then there are the "adjustments" in the settings view. What they do is anyone's guess. The contrast one is about the only one I am sure what it does. And it simply has very invisible to regular look and no real way to vary from, say, good to better. None of the adjustments are mentioned at all in the manual.
What the manual does talk about a LOT is the Frontlight and the Smartlight. This would be cool except as far as I can tell there is no Smartlight on the unit! The Frontlight is the brightness. The Smartlight according to the manual controls the color temperature. But, no, there is not a Smartlight I can find. The manual shows two swipe adjustments. But on my unit BOTH the swipe adjustments work for only simple brightness and not at all as the manual shows. Frustrating but, on the other hand, I really was not expecting anything but the frontlight anyway.
So, overall, this is what I expected. A revolutionary first-iteration of technology that will no doubt look pretty darn primitive in a year or so. But, for now, I am having un and do not regret purchasing.