Talk:WikiReader

Specs

Does anyone have more detailed specifications? E.g. dimensions and weight.

Does anyone know if by buying a WikiReader you actually support the Wikimedia foundation ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.8.184.95 (talk) 15:52, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

AFAIK it does not. Janschejbal (talk) 09:44, 16 October 2009 (UTC) I was wrong. According to an openmoko youtube comment wikimedia does get something. Janschejbal (talk) 11:02, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't consider retail cost to be a specification and propose that it be moved from the specifications into the main body of the article. If the device were open hardware then a pricing of the bill of materials might belong in the specifications section, but as it stands I propose it be revised. LeeColleton (talk) 20:28, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Battery life

A one year battery life? Come ON. What's the real battery length? Overlord11001001 17:34, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

That is indeed what they claim. --Cybercobra (talk) 19:00, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

It's 1 year at 15mins / day or about 90 hours of constant use. ProstheticHead (talk) 16:59, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

They've obviously failed to take into account this phenomena. --Cybercobra (talk) 23:28, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Technical details

Could someone please find/provide some technical details like screen resolution, exact screen (not device) size etc.? Janschejbal (talk) 09:44, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Have a look at this page: http://wiki.github.com/wikireader/wikireader/hardware-specifications (I would update the article myself but since it's my company I don't think it's ethically right) mosko —Preceding unsigned comment added by Moskovich (talk • contribs) 14:45, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the requested technical details (screen size, resolution) have already been added since this request. Mosko, you are very welcome to stick around to provide sources, point out errors, propose changes, etc. Thanks for declaring your WP:COI. Rror (talk) 15:35, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Other Wiki Content?

Does anyone know if this device supports content from other MediaWikis? It would be great if this device was more of a MediaWiki framework device that would allow for anyone to take their MediaWiki instance offline, load it on a flash card, and then use the WikiReader to port that content anywhere. --Greg (talk) 09:28, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

A highly unencyclopedic answer from the twitter stream [1] :) Rror (talk) 12:31, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Technically we can support anything in mediawiki format. Minor changes are need to the python scripts that process XML files into the native format. This is not currently documented outside the source codes themselves. Moskovich (talk) 15:54, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

We've started to post builds for languages beyond English at | http://dev.thewikireader.com Moskovich (talk) 09:02, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I parsed/rendered a combined dutch + english version of wikipedia for the wikireader, maybe the fact that other versions are available could be included? [2] JobSnijders (talk) 11:47, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Limitations

I added this section in good faith because it is important to understand what this device is---and is not. I own one and love it, but the device could be better. The silently missing chunks of article information originally encoded as Wikipedia tables and formulas is particularly irritating. Go ahead read the Morse code article on the WikiReader and discover that you cannot learn Morse code from the article---when all the lights (and Internet) go out---because (predictably) the information you need was stored in a "table"! Want to know what the heat index is? Tables and formulas again. I'm hopeful that we'll be able to remove some of the "Limitations" bullets sometime in the future. It's just a small matter of programming. --- Bruce D. Lightner (talk) 18:43, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

"Undo" of WikiReader "Spec" Regarding 40% Free Space

Undo of revision 376357122 by Duydaniel (talk). Curious to know my contribution was deleted? Did I get this wrong? Bruce D. Lightner (talk) 03:24, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Pricing

This is why it is a bad idea to put pricing info in Wikipedia articles:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0MC0820903

$20 for a product that we say costs $99. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:55, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Obsolete Discussion

16 gb microsd card problem I bought a Wikireader online and it came with a 4GB Microsd Card. It works fine with the 4GB chip but when I put a 16Gb Sandisk card in it, it would turn on and turn back off (or sometimes it would work for a while and turn off). I E-Mailed support@thewikireader.com and they said that they've been having many complaints with the 16gb cards lately and that the voltage requirements of these cards may have changed. They suggested using a rechargeable lithium ion battery because a more powerful battery than the alkaline battery that it came with might be needed (though I hardly used it yet so the battery it came with is still new). It seems that the most common MicroSd voltage requirements are 1.8 volts and 3.3 volts (I think I've seen 2.9 volts somewhere as well). So, in effect, it doesn't really seem like the Wikireader really supports 16 GB unless one could be found that uses less volts. This should perhaps be mentioned in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.130.93.49 (talk) 20:26, 1 May 2012 (UTC) Hi! I don't want to discourage suggestions to improve the article (and your suggestion is a good one), but we need all such information to meet certain standards before being added to Wikipedia. In this case the standards are at WP:OR and WP:V. If you can find reliable sources that verify the 16GB SD problem, we can add it to the article. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:27, 1 May 2012 (UTC) The 16GB card is SDHC type of Secure Digital card. Various hosting devices may or may not support SDHC and SDXC cards for various reasons, including host firmware not recognizing the cards or not supporting the file system type FAT32 or exFAT, may not support the higher current requirements of the higher memory sized cards. All types of SD cards must support the 3.3 Volt bus interface, then if they support 1.8 Volt will go through a series of steps to operate at the lower voltage, if the host doesn't support 1.8 Volt then obviously it won't try to work at the lower voltage. 2.9 volts in NOT a standard SD card voltage, but instead might be the lowest voltage that some 3.3 Volt cards may operate. Some cards may work better in a host device than other cards. Unless you know for a fact why your card isn't working in the device, then you shouldn't post GUESSES in the article, also it is well known that all types of older host devices don't support some of the newer SD card types. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 03:26, 2 May 2012 (UTC) The original author of this thread. After doing some tests, the problem turns out to be an error with their base files, they should fix it. I'm going to remove this from the Wikipedia discussion since the problem is more of a technical issue than a product support issue. On Wikipedia, it is considered better to strike out and/or collapse and/or archive talk page discussions rather than deleting them. In particular, you should not delete comments by other editors. See WP:TALKO. No problem; I corrected it. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:56, 12 May 2012 (UTC) (original author of entry) Just so everyone interested knows, in an E-Mail with them it looks like they are going to fix the problem now.

current status and replacements?

what's the status of this project? i can't find a way to purchase that thing online, so can we assume it's dead now? if not, where can it be found? if so, how to frame this in the article? are there replacements? Maybe a link to Wikipedia:Database_download#Offline_Wikipedia_readers? unsure... --TheAnarcat (talk) 03:36, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I'm pretty sure it's dead. Unfortunately I can't find a reliable source which says so to update the article. Comments at github are not sufficient. However, [3] has a link in the last comment to unofficial updated data files from November 2014.-gadfium 04:18, 23 June 2015 (UTC)