My review on the Sony Reader (eBook Reader)

[Stiganator]

The Sony Reader (PRS-500) as a piece of hardware is great.

The Screen is just like a book. Easy to read no eye strain, the refresh time is not really a problem. It says 2 secs, but it is more like .75 to 1 sec. If you hit the page button with one line of text left, it provides an essentially uninterrupted reading experience. My one issue was that when I imported 900 or so documents via Sony Connect Reader (see sucks) it froze my Reader, this might be be because it was trying to do some formating on the reader, but one would think that the process of importing would do it on my significantly more capable computer.

The software on the other hand is complete rubbish. Sony Connect Reader is the worst piece of software I have ever used. If I had to take a guess, I would say it is written in Java, but that would be insulting to even the slowest of Java programs. It is possible Sony created its own language called SUCK++. Transfer rates were sub USB 1, and that wasn't to the device but to a memory card. TXT, RTF etc work fine, but PDF is hit or miss. A well formatted pdf looks great if its rotated to the horizontal viewing. But this is not great for half-assed scans of the Art of Electronics or other such manuals, it does well with the text, but the figures don't show well.

A must have is Book Designer 4.0 (freeware), it will let you format your documents into the Sony (BBeB) format, which will let you add a selectable Chapter menu etc, but it is a lot of work if you have a lot of books.

The retail price is unacceptable ($300), but with the SonyCard offer is is reasonable ($60 with a no fees credit card+100 free books, google "sony reader $49"). The SonyCard is painless, but does take 10-15 days to get the card and 10-15 days after you order to get the device. Note it can only be ordered from Sony Rewards site. It will discount the item to 5950 points (1 cent=1point) hence the $60 tag.

The 100 free books have be be from Sony's eClassic catalog. After going through the A-Z list, I had twenty books that I genuinely might read, the rest are "Classics" which I understand to mean "Suck". If you get off to Anna Kourina, War and Peace, etc this a great deal, but if you like anything more modern than 1914 you're in trouble. I ended up just picking every book on the featured list to get my way to 100 and be done with it.

 

[JJChicken]

Originally posted by: Stiganator
If I had to take a guess, I would say it is written in Java, but that would be insulting to even the slowest of Java programs. It is possible Sony created its own language called SUCK++.

:laugh: you made my day :beer:

 

[bassoprofundo]

I agree with the exception of your description of the classics. Describing timeless classics by authors such as Tolstoy, Twain, Dickens, & Chesterton with a single word description like "Suck" tends to at the very least make you look narrow-minded. It's not all my bag either, but it's a case of stylistic preference more than a case of bad quality material, and hey, they're free! Oh, and it's "Anna Karenina", btw... lol But, I digress...

This is a great piece of hardware, especially with the Sony Card deal. If you've ever read E-books on a PDA and wished for a way to read books without the added after-effect of feeling like your eyes are on fire, this thing is a godsend. The screen is absolutely as easy to read as your average paperback, and the ghosting is minimal with the newer firmware. Plus, the size of the text can be increased on the fly if you're visually challenged. Try that with a paperback... It's nice to have the ability to play music and display pictures from the device as well. If you get tired of reading, load up an audiobook (no Audible support, though) in MP3 format and listen away. The battery life has been great on mine so far (I can get through a couple of paperbacks w/o dipping below the halfway mark.) It's also a good-looking device that has resulted in quite a few interested inquiries when I pull it out on my commute.

The software IS a little rough though, and the Sony store makes me shake my head in disbelief. The fact that you have to browse the store from within the confines of their software to purchase a book is bad enough, but it lacks some of the most basic usability features. For instance, when redeeming your 100 free classics, there's no mechanism to select the ones you want say, by checking a box, and then clicking a single button to purchase. You have to either click "Buy Now" individually on each one (if you have it enabled), and then navigate your way (God help you the first couple of times you try) back to the classics page to buy another, or you have to click to add them to your cart, which also takes you to a confirmation page where you have to navigate back to the classics page again, at the end of which you can click to buy all at once. The bottom line is that every selection requires navigating through multiple pages at molasses-like speeds. At the end of my 100 books (I did it the 2nd way after doing a few the first way), I clicked to buy them, and the software bombed out. When I went back in, all my credits were gone, but luckily, all the books were in my online account to download. The bad part??? You have to go to each one and manually click "Download Now" again. No way to download them all at once... Besides these issues, the prices are no cheaper than you can get the titles for in hardcover if you do some digging. A big advantage of the e-book format is a decrease in production and distribution costs. This should reflect in the prices. Call me old-school, but if I'm going to drop $20-25 on a novel, I want the real thing and not a DRM'd up file I can only read on my reader and a few other devices. For $10 or less, I might make that compromise. I worry about the longevity of the product if the store can't make any $$$, and they won't make many sales at these prices.

Despite the software & Store problems, though, this device is a must-have for a serious reader/technophile. Even if you don't want to mess with Sony's store, there is quite a bit of free content out there up for grabs. Add the aforementioned Book Designer software to clean up other formats and export to the Sony format (although the Reader does a decent job with TXT, RTF, and HTML on its own), and you should have enough material to last a lifetime. I've converted 20-30 books from a variety of formats (PDF, LIT, PDB, TXT, HTML, RTF) that I already have into the Sony format using Book Designer with minimal work and nice-looking results. I hope that this is just the tip of the iceberg for innovation on the e-book front. I've been reading them since I had my old Palm Vx, and this is definitely a step in the right direction.

 

[BooGiMaN]

the ghosting still bothers me at times...