WikiReader - first impressions

[Sean Moss-Pultz]

Hi Torfinn

Really appreciate your feedback. My comments are inline:

On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 5:48 AM, Torfinn Ingolfsen <tingox at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> After a few days with the WikiReader, here are my first impressions:
> The obvious things:
> - good size: this device is small enough to drag along (ok, it won't fit in my trouser pockets), but has a big enough screen to read on comfortably
> - use in places: I knew about the "missing" backlight. I can read the WikiReader while commuting (most tram's have good lighting), but on the other hand it is difficult in a "cosy" cafe, because the lighting is not s good there.
> - scrolling: this works great, even better than I thought. One friend asked: how do I get to the next page, but was happy with scrolling after I told him to use that instead.

Are you running the latest kernel? (The way to tell is if you have
kinetic scrolling, yes == latest kernel)

  http://cloud.github.com/downloads/wikireader/wikireader/kernel-2009-10-30.zip

Scrolling is really really good there.

> - history: it's there when I turn on the device - and I like that.
> - the search button removes the on screen keyboard so I can scroll on the search screen. Yes! I like that.

That's another fun "random" like way of searching.

> The questions:
> - search screen: where is the "delete word and start over" button? (this was the first question I got from two friends trying the device)

You can hold down the backspace key. It will delete the word extremely
fast. We're working on a few minor UI changes for the next release.
Clear will be more obvious.

> - why isn't there a back button? Sure, I can use the history button and select from the list (and that works quite well), but a back button would save one keypress

We didn't want to add another button. We might use left to right
swipes in a later release. Not sure yet...

> Annoyances:
> - it is impossible (for me at least) to take out the microSD card without using a tool (pliers or something). Why do I want to take it out? To actually show people the small size of a Wikipedia database. :-)

Push it in and it will pop out (beware it will *really* pop sometimes)

> - the buttons on the on screen keyboard is a bit small for my fingers (it is easy to press the character left or right of the one I want). I don't know how to solve this yet.

Software. If you've used an iPhone, the keypad is 70% of WikiReader's
size. And typing is a lot better. So just bear with us. We're working
on this big time.

> - sometimes, the history screen is unresponsible, I have to press the other two buttons a couple of times before I can select anything on the history screen

Working on this, too...

> small annoyances:
> - the moment it takes to display an article (after selecting it, either from the search screen or from a link) is just long enough that the device feels a bit slow sometimes.

Same as my last comment :)

> Some things I haven't figured out yet:
> - how do I get another Wikipedia (for example the Norwegian one) onto a MicroSD card?
> - how do I convert an e-book and put it onto a microSD card for the device?

Like David said, we encourage you to check out github.com/wikireader for now.

> All in all - I really like this device.

Great. We love to hear this!

  -Sean