An ERA Update

 

Back in March, I began my journey with the Pocketbook ERA (A New ERA Begins). There were the typical problems of learning a new piece of tech and figuring out how to work with or around its idiosyncrasies.

My main two issues were with managing collections (series/authors/etc) on the ERA itself and with the buttons, which were a much harder press, almost a snap, than the gentle press I was used to on my old Oasis.

The button issue is still an issue. I suspect it will stay an issue for as long as I own the ERA. What I have done to mitigate the stress created on my thumb from being forced to press so hard is to switch hands more often. It is not an ideal solution, but it is one that works and one that I can deal with. Plus, given the Era's shape and weight, switching hands more often has the added benefit of giving that particular wrist a break too. For someone with as small hands as mine, the ERA is just a tad too big.

The second issue, managing collections on the ERA via Calibre has been solved. When I got the ERA I knew there was a plugin for Calibre to do just this. However, trying to deal with the ERA and the new plugin all at the same time was simply too much for me. Once I was used to the ERA, I began working on the plugin (PB Collections Plugin). The first thing I had to do was just install it. I didn't try to configure it or mess around with it or anything. I just installed it and let it sit for about a week. Then I began meticulously reading through the plugin thread and following the steps exactly. Once the plugin was setup correctly and I had the correct column created in Calibre, I began creating new collections in Calibre. I put my ERA on the arm of the couch and began typing in collections in Calibre that were on the ERA. Then I began assigning books in Calibre to the various collections. At this point, I still hadn't plugged the ERA back in to Calibre to get everything transferred. I wanted to get used to doing all the scutwork ahead of time and to become familiar with the process. Once I had all the collections on my ERA created in Calibre and all the books assigned to the various collections (this was about a week later, again), I plugged in my ERA and let Calibre and the ERA do their thing. Once everything was transferred, I had several instances of double collections of my ERA from my manually created collections (when I first used the ERA) being slightly different from the Calibre created collections (usually upper/lower case letter differences). I just went through and deleted the manual collections and all that was left were the Calibre managed collections, with all the books in them that were supposed to be.

That is a snapshot of my Calibre library. The PB Collection column is the one that applies to the ERA. Whenever I want a book in Calibre to be in a collection on the ERA, I simply assign it to a collection or create a new collection and when I send the book to the ERA all the info goes along with it. Much, much, much simpler than doing it book by book on the ERA itself.

Now that I have the plugin working, my time with my ERA is going much smoother. Just like a computer, data management is half the battle when it comes to an ereader and I've got that half of the battled licked. The other half of the battle is actually reading the books I put on it. But have no fear, I feel like I've got that part of the battle licked too. GI Joe's got nothing on me!

I suspect this will be the last post I do specifically on the ERA. Obviously, feel free to ask questions about it or Calibre and I'll do my best to answer. Or I'll just do the ol' razzle dazzle jazz hands thing and pretend I answered your question ;-)

A New ERA Begins

I have been using ereaders since ‘08. However, in 2017 I bought a Kindle Oasis. It was everything I wanted in an ereader. It was small and light enough to hold comfortably in one hand. It had a warm front light so I didn’t need to sit directly under a lamp to see what I was reading. It worked with Calibre without a hitch. Most importantly, it had BUTTONS. I hate touching a screen when I am reading. Mainly because I half the time I am eating and my fingers might be greasy, etc. Thus, for the last 7 ½ years I have enjoyed ereading bliss. Sadly, the battery is beginning to wear out on the Oasis (it has the bulk of the battery in the cover) and I have to charge it twice a week now (when I first bought it, it would last from 7-10 days on a charge). It has also begun to show signs of software degradation as well as hardware degradation (screen might take a double tap to select something, or a button will have to be pressed several times to get it to respond). I realized it was time to get a new ereader.

The landscape has changed dramatically since ‘17 though. Amazon no longer makes an ereader with buttons. They have also begun seriously locking down their kindle devices in much the same way that Apple has screwed their Iwhatever users over. So a new kindle wasn’t an option this time around. In fact, most ereader makers had stopped making devices with buttons. I ended up going with the Pocketbook Era, a device from ‘22 that still had buttons.

I knew there would be a learning curve and I had hoped that any issues would all fall into that category. One positive thing from the get-go was that I didn’t need to register the device or create an account at Pocketbook to use the Era, unlike any kindle device. I created my various collections (series or authors) and then began moving books onto the device from Calibre. I only moved a couple at first, as I didn’t know how things would go and I am glad I started small.

My first, and probably biggest, issue with the Era was that I couldn’t go into a collection and then add multiple books to it. Everything on the Era is built around books as individual files and how everything is handled is based on that. That meant that I had to select each individual book and move it into the collection I wanted. That is totally bassackwards! It was also incredibly frustating as I had to do this for all 80’ish books. There is a plugin for Calibre called Pocketbook Collections that was created to take care of this problem, but most plugins are created by people who live this kind of stuff and so what seems easy, commonsense and “duh” to the creators are like calculus problems for the rest of us, while blindfolded. I gave it 10min of my time and then gave up. I was already frustrated and trying to do something “more” while frustrated would just lead to more frustrations. So I moved each individual book into its proper collection, one by *&^% one. I will not do that again. Which means I will have to conquer the plugin. I’ve conquered other Calibre plugins, so I know I can conquer this one too. The slight hitch is that I have recently quit Mobileread.com (where the Calibre and plugin help forums are) because I told someone from Massachusetts to step in front of a bus. That’s not acceptable behavior and so I closed down my account so there wouldn’t be any repeats of it. I can’t act like that and I won’t accept it in myself. But that means its up to me and my pal Google (the lying piece of trash) to figure this thing out. I will, albeit very slowly. But I work best in first gear anyway. It’s just annoying when you know you could be going 60mph.

So everything was loaded up and I got the light settings how I wanted, the text size and spacing just how I wanted and the margins how I wanted. I was good to go! Then I experienced the second issue.
The bleeping buttons, of all things. They were not the softpress buttons like all of the kindles I have used to date, but were much more “haptic” (a hard press until it literally “clicks”) like the Barnes and Noble Simple Touch of years gone by. The reason that is a problem is that kind of hard pressing does a number on your thumb after a while. Considering that I will read for hours at a time, necessitating a LOT of button pushing, I could tell my thumb would end up hurting after an hour or so. Now, the Era also has a touch enabled screen so I could touch the screen, but I don’t like being forced that way.
That’s it, my only problems. Both are surmountable and something I’ll get use to. But for anyone thinking about the Era, they need to be aware of those issues.

The biggest thing I like about this Era is that it is bigger than my Oasis. That means I can use the same font size and have more words on the page to read. And the Era actually weighs a little less. More words on the page means more reading between page turns, which adds up to more time reading overall. While it might only mean an extra minute or two per book, given the number of books I read per year means an extra book or two per year. That’s not a lot and for some people it would mean nothing but that they are worrying about numbers. But I LIKE to read and getting the opportunity to read even one extra book a year is a wonderful thing.

As I begin to use the Era on a full time basis, I’m sure I’ll stumble over other negatives and positives. But this is my reader now and I’ll simply have to accept those for the quirks they are.