After receiving my Delstar OpenBook today, I've discovered a huge amount of issues and bugs. So I think we need a thread dedicated just to the issues and bugs.

So far I have to say the Delstar OpenBook is rubbish. I'll be brutally honest, this device has so many shortfalls that it will take them weeks if not months to correct them. However, I am hopeful that the problems lie within the firmware as the hardware does seem to have a lot of potential. But as of this moment, I have to advise against any one purchasing one of these.

Rather than create new posts within this thread, I will continuously update this first post with any new issues and bugs I run across. Please post your issues and bugs as well.

I tried viewing the same book formatted in HTML, ePub, FB2, and TXT. Additionally I tried to view two PDFs, one of which is the Delstar OpenBook manual neither would open. I have to say the every format I was able to view looked like a text file with absolutely no formatting. No format seems to be read other than just the text.

Here is my list of current issues and bugs:

Last updated: 1654 UTC (11:54am CDT) on March 17, 2010

• It will NOT open any PDF, including the Delstar OpenBook manual!
• Landscape mode loses page numbering and book title.
• Pagination numbering scheme is way off compared to ADE. An 1150 page book in ADE is 2400 pages in OpenBook.
• Extra spaces appear next to single and dbl quotation marks
• words are very often run together--no space between them.
• No Bold, Italics, etc. in any format--just plain text.
• Apparently no CSS styles being applied in any format.
• No images showing up in any format.
• FB2 and TXT are better than ePub and HTML.
• HTML and ePub are total garbage.
• Frequent crash and reset.
• Jump To menu gets confused when trying to enter page numbers.
• Huge right margin which is unadjustable.
• Landscape mode seems unusable at current time.
• Has great difficulties with large book files (3Mb or greater)

Book Menus Available

• Page Jump
• Browser Mode (not discussed in manual)
• Flip Time (how aften to auto turn the page)

Book Menus Missing

• Set Color
• Set Font

This device appears to be months away from release, so why did they release it with so many bugs and problems?

Final comments as I returned my OpenBook

Just FYI: I was able to return my OpenBook to a local Walgreens store, no questions asked.

Good luck to those of you who choose to stick it out in hopes that they get the OpenBook firmware/software corrected. I hope they do. However I think there are way too many issues with the OpenBook to quickly patch them with a firmware upgrade. For one thing, the software they are using to display the various ebook formats apparently is merely stripping out any format tags and rendering what is left in plain text. Delstar really needs to put true rendering software on the OpenBook, or one of the MR geeks needs to figure out how to do that, before the OpenBook will be a true eBook reader. In its present state I feel it is little more than a photo viewer and MP3 player. The LCD screen looks good and the hardware definitely has potential, but there is a lot of work that needs to be done.

Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained, as Ben said. I think it was worth the gamble, and since Walgreens will refund all but the inexpensive shipping fee, nothing lossed.

Photos

Here is a side by side comparison of the same ePub file as viewed on the Libre and the OpenBook:

...
The official delstar website is: http://delstar.net/

And the customer service e-mail addresses are: info@delstar.net and Delstarswc@aol.com

One may also write a review and report bugs on the Walgreens website:


http://www.walgreens.com/store/catalog/Electronics/OpenBook-E-Book-Reader/ID=prod6016669&navCount=1&navAction=push-product
I can attest to the PDF thing not working. The pictures pre-stored on the device open fine. I put a folder of pictures in and they were read as well. The device crashed on me at one point and restarted itself. I was trying to open the owners-manual pdf file. The music player played the tracks that were on the device as well and I haven't tried uploading other files.
Yes, the photos looked quite nice. Unfortuantely it cannot display images within ebooks though.
Are you certain of that? Which books with images did you try, may I ask? This matters to me as it is a big reason I'm interested in this reader - the ability to display color pictures within a book.
I tried HTML, ePub, FB2, and TXT, and none would display images. I could not get PDFs to open, so I don't know if they will display images.

Basically, the OpenBook is a text only viewer which shows no formatting, no images, etc. And it does a terrible job with word spacing and quotation marks.

It does have a photo viewer that displays photos nicely, but it cannot display any images in any book format I was able to open.
I would love to know what OS this is running or if I can get a driver to tweak it. The hardware seems good but the software is certainly lacking.
Would OpenInkpot work on this, for starters?

I know so little, so if that's just dumb please excuse. =}
Not out of the box... no.

BOb
There's a 45 meg firmware update on the site for .doc and .pdf. I've downloaded the files but I will do some poking around before I actually update. It's unfortunate that you Jswinden has decided to return it. It seems they are a lot more cognizant of the problems with the device and are willing to address them. Hopefully the update works. On another note, what is openinkpot? Google time!