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432 of 442 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Summary of Impressions of Sony Reader from an Owner, December 15, 2007
I bought the Sony Reader earlier this week. If you're reading this review, you may overlook it, looking for reviews published after the advent of Amazon's Kindle. The Kindle's been out for a couple of weeks and I bought the Sony deliberately instead of the Kindle (never mind the fact that Amazon's sold out of Kindle). So here's my review, my reflections and thoughts. I'm going to go kind of far afield, but I think you'll get more out of my review that way.
I'm a lifetime reader. I'm the guy that's always got two or three paperbacks in my briefcase/backpack/suitcase. Part of it is the feeling that I may not like the one I'm reading and I might want to switch. Another part is that I'm perfectly comfortable reading a couple of books at the same time. I don't get confused and have a hard time understanding why people do.
I've been looking for years for a better way to do this. I tried reading Ebooks on my Treo cell phone and in fact, read a couple that way. Joe R. Lansdale, I'm looking at you...Hap and Collins have had a home on my Treo for a while now. The only problem is you can't fit enough on your screen. One book is a couple of thousand page-downs on the Treo and, well, that's a lot of work. The font isn't too big and if you jack up the size (which you can do), well, multiple your couple of thousand page-down by a factor of two or three.
Its a wierd synchronicity that I started looking at readers independenly of Amazon's producing the Kindle. It may be the media seeping into subconscious, but I swear I looked at a couple different ones before I even knew the Kindle was out. Finding the Kindle, I saw the advantages. The Wireless functionality makes the bookstore more or less obsolete and gets rid of my IPOD's reliance on the desktop computer. The Wikipedia functions, the lookup anything dictionary all sounded like a lot of fun. The Kindle was expensive, but let's face it, when you read as many books as I do, the cost savings in ebooks vs paper books (particularly those big heavy hardbacks) will make up the difference in short order.
So, I learned all I could about Kindle vs. Irex Iliad (which is better than all of them and around $700) vs Sony Reader vs some older devices like the IBookman. The Sony Reader won and here's some of my reasoning:
* I don't care that much about the wireless capability. Once installed, downloading a book to the Sony Reader takes a negligible amount of time. I think I downloaded a dozen books in about 2 minutes. The reliance on the PC that makes my experiences with the IPOD so special? So far, its been pretty easy. I kind of like using the computer this way.
* My second reason is that I was able to go to a Sony Style store and actually pick up a Sony Reader. I was able to play with it, see how it feels in the hand. Without its cover case, its pretty light. In fact, it feels a little fragile. With the cover case, it feels like a book, even if the weight differential makes holding it a bit of a challenge at first. I couldn't do this with a Kindle and as much as I like ordering stuff online, I wasn't going to pay $400 until either I handled one or met someone who had.
* The Sony bookstore seemed to be cheaper than Amazon's and Sony was offering a deal. Buy a Reader by the end of January and you get 100 free ebooks from Sony's classic library. Wow! Free books!
* I got a Best Buy gift card for the holidays and another one for Amazon. And while you might be buying Best Buy when you buy through Amazon, you can't use Amazon to buy Best Buy. So, I wound up buying the Reader at Best Buy and the SD card through Amazon.
Impressions:
1). The software that comes with the Reader isn't ideal. The conventions used throughout Windows, Itunes, etc. are there for a reason and most of them aren't duplicated in the Reader software. In fact, the software is almost too easy. Download a book, upload it to the Reader. There's very little help in organizing, finding info about the book, etc. Sorting isn't that easy. Synching is done by selecting the book(s) on the screen and manually dropping them on the Reader icon. Doesn't sound bad, but when you get a couple dozen books in the library, figuring out which ones have been synched and which ones haven't may be a challenge. What's more, the descriptions of the books is lacking. You can't tell which books are in a series, which is first, if anyone actually liked them and I found places where descriptions literally ran into each other. This needs to be improved. Seriously. Oh! One thing...VERY IMPORTANT. The software will only run on Windows XP and Vista. If you have Windows 2000 or earlier, you're out of luck. This is important.
2). The buttons on the Reader were stiff. They seem to have loosened up. One problem I've noticed is a tendency to hit the side buttons accidently. You can go to a specific page in a book (something I can imagine using too often) by clicking the numbered buttons on the side. But once you do, you have to go back into history to find your place. Note...this happens whenever I close the cover. There should be a function to 'lock' the buttons after a couple of minutes of inactivity. You can turn the unit off, if you think of it.
3). The screen is sharp. Just as advertised, when you start reading, you quickly forget you're on a device. It is very much like reading a real book but without having to balance it, turn pages and deal with the bend into the binding. The Reader's reignited my love for the written word. It really is an upgrade in the craft of reading and writing.
4). The selection of books in the Sony store is a little thin. Its certainly thinner than those available for the Kindle on Amazon. Both Amazon and Sony use proprietary formats so you can't just go from one to the other for the Reader (don't know if Sony stuff will work on Kindle). The offer from Sony Classics is certainly real, but its not always apparent which books are free and which aren't. I downloaded 4 books from Dickens and discovered one of them cost me $3. Having said that, I also discovered that there are MILLIONS of classic books for free online in Sony's format. The 100 book offer is there for you if you buy on time but there are a lot of items that I will never read and in which I have no interest. How likely are mnost people to want Abraham Lincoln's State of the Union? But its good to know its out there. If you need links to these sites, email me.
5). There is a definite cool factor to the item. One of the best features is one that NO one seems to be talking about. I know my inlaws will love it for this one feature alone. You can blow up your text! No more too-fine print...you can pick one of three sizes of fonts. Note my earlier observation that the bigger the font, the more page turns. The 'annoying page flash' between page turns become unnoticeable very quickly. Read for a couple of hours and then read this review. You'll have noticed the first dozen page flashes and not a one after that.
6). Its really easy to buy, download and add books to your Reader. REALLY easy. Its maybe too easy. I don't think I'm missing the wireless capability of the Kindle at all. In fact, I have too much on my Reader already, something like 40-50 books between ones I bought and ones I downloaded either for free from the Sony Classics offer or from websites. They all work, they all look great and most of them have some artwork (one I got off the website was for The Little Prince with original artwork in it...which is good, the artwork is critical to the story) in it. Its in black and white but generally good. Oh, and it really holds a charge. Once I charged it up, I've been using it for 5 days and haven't lost one bar from the battery thermometer.
Pros:
Fun and easy to use
Its lightweight and you can hold a lot of books in the interior
The e-ink technology is remarkable. Its a lot like reading a real book
Fonts can be enlarged. This is important for older adopters but I find myself enlarging fonts as I stand reading during my commute.
The functionality of importing Word documents is excellent, particularly since almost anything online can be copied and pasted into Word. But the title of the documents isn't able to be changed and links to other places within the document don't work right
Cons
There's a large selection of books out there but not as large as you might want and sometimes the list doesn't always make sense. For example, I was looking for Stephen Baxter Exultant series and they had 2 of the 4 books available.
There's very little in the way of textbooks, professional or academic. I'd really like to see much more of this. Saving kids from having to carry textbooks is just the start. I'd love to see all kinds of manuals, website downloads, etc in the future.
As noted in many other reviews, the ability to read PDFs is a good thing, but you can't read the actual contents because you can't zoom on them. So, it can be a useful for storage but not so much for reading.
You can have hundreds of books on the Reader. But you can only read one at any given moment. This hasn't changed...
Executive summary: Very cool device, like it alot. It doesn't do a lot more than advertised but what it does, it does well. I'm happy with my purchase and expect to use it often.
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279 of 292 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sony PRS-505 - WOW!, October 10, 2007
The PRS-505 is Sony's second version of its portable book reader. This unit supports written documents in Sony's proprietary eBook format as well as PDF, RTF and text formats.
The display on this unit is improved from the 1st generation, and the text is highly readable. The display could appear a bit brighter, but does not strain the eyes as the first generation did. Because of the display technology, the brighter the light in which the page is viewed, the more readable it is.
There are a great many public domain titles available around the Internet for free. And Sony's CONNECT software enables users to brows the Sony bookstore and purchase titles.
For a limited time, purchasers of this unit receive credit to download 100 books free from the "Classics" collection at Sony's CONNECT store.
This unit also supports playing MP3 and AAC audio files, a feature that I haven't as yet tried.
When connected to a computer, the memory of this units shows up as a USB Flash Drive, and unencrypted book and audio files can be "dragged" to the memory for viewing and listening without having to use Sony's software.
Sony's software requires MS Windows, thus Macintosh and Linux users are out of luck; Macintosh users with Intel processor machines that can run windows via Boot Camp or virtualization (Parallels or VMware) can run Sony's software successfully through those mechanisms; this is the method that I am using on my Macintosh.
All in all, if you are looking for a way to carry a bunch of reading material as well as personal documents, this product offers a way to do so conveniently and provides the possibility of traveling without a cumbersome laptop computer.
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149 of 155 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Nice reader, but pricey, November 3, 2007
I've read e-books for years on my PDA's from Palm to Pocket PC. I recently bought this reader from Sony, and I really like it. It has a much bigger screen than the Pocket PC phone I've been using most recently (XV6700), or any PDA I've used for that matter.
Pros:
-Supports RTF, TXT and PDF formats without any conversion. The included software makes it easy to add books to either the main memory or one of the memory cards-simply drag and drop.
-Nice, clear text, readable under the brightest of lights. It's easy on the eyes, and after reading for hours on it, my eyes are not strained.
-Supports mp3 playback while you're reading. Not a feature I use, but it may be nice for some.
-It's light enough that my hands don't get tired holding it for extended periods.
-Supports additional books on Memory Stick Pro Duo and Secure Digital. It's the first Sony product I've ever had that supported anything other than Memory Stick.
-Ability to store multiple bookmarks to keep your place if you're like me and read many books at the same time.
-Reads PDF files. None of my PDA readers could do that, I had to use Acrobat on the reader, which I didn't like.
-Good battery life. My PDA's got 3 hours or so if I was lucky. Not sure how many hours I'll get off of a charge, but it seems like it'll be a lot.
Cons:
-No HTML support. Seems like it would've been easy to add this. There are free converters to convert HTML to RTF/TXT format.
-Refresh rate is a bit sluggish. On my PDA's it would turn the page instantly, this one has a small delay to draw the page, but it doesn't bother me. If you think it might, you might want to try a demo unit at a retail store first. Still, it draws the page in a second or less.
-No backlight. Probably not included due to battery life, but you can't read it in bed at night with the lights off. I bought a 15 dollar LED clip on light and use that, and it works great with it. This way I can read at night w/o bothering my spouse.
-Price. This isn't cheap. It was worth it to me since I read virtually all my books as e-books, and I was sick of the small screens on my PDA. So I guess the value depends on how much you'll use it.
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