 It's as good as you could expect |
| Review Date: November 26, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Kent Roorda, Denver, CO United States |
| We've owned a Sony reader for over a year now. First, it sure beats having to travel with a bunch of heavy and space consuming books. One reviewer said that the font size couldn't be adjusted. This is completely false. The font size can be adjusted VERY easily. Another reviewer mentioned that the screen wasn't backlit. Probably knowing more about electronics than that reviewer, I can assure you that there is a very good reason for NOT backlighting such a large screen... That reason is power consumption. Backlighting requires a great deal of power; even more power than creating the actual letters and words on the screen. Face it, a regular book isn't back lit either! If you would like to read in a dark environment, you can use any number of small, LED, book reading lights that are available for under $10. Otherwise, in standard light, reading the Sony book is just like reading a piece of white paper... very pleasing to the eyes, and, again, you CAN adjust the size of the fonts to suit your eyesight. In addition to being capable of holding up to around 160 books, the Reader can also be used as an MP3 player. Very Cool and Nice! You can listen to music by itself, or, while you are reading. Downloading both reading material and music on to the player is simple via your USB connection. If you want to increase the memory of the Reader, you can do so by using a Sony Memorystick or a standard SD memory card. And, the memory cards just slip in the side of the unit. After you use this product, you'll wonder why you have so many paperbacks laying around. It is extremely convenient, easy-to-use, space and weight saving, and downloading a book costs about the same as the best price you would pay for a paperback book. (There are also many books and publications that can be downloaded for free). This would be a wonderful gift for someone who loves to read. |
ABSOLUTELY Love My Sony Reader AND eliminates Paper
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| Review Date: August 31, 2007 |
| Reviewer: John Schinter, Chicago, IL |
The Sony Reader is an absolute marvel. First of all the screen - is incredible - the brighter the light - the easier it is to read the screen. It was described to me as liquid paper, and is a different technology than LCD's. An LCD is backlit - and in bright sunlight difficult to read.
Not the Sony Reader - It has no backlight, and is intended to be just like a book (ie. Needs light to read).
It is elegant, light, CRISP screen, and capable of storing E-Books, MS Word Documents, and Adobe .pdf files.
MOST Amazing is the battery life - it is rated in page turns, not hours on. It takes virtually no electric power and can stay on indefinately, and only takes power when you turn a page. (Allows 7,500 page turns on a re-charge)
I have read more than 5,000 pages already, and find it so easy to carry around many books that I have always wanted to read, but couldn't find the space in my briefcase to carry the book(s). I have 80 books currently on mine....... So many books are available for free on the internet.
Even better - is the Sony READERS ability to play your favorite music while reading your books, because it plays MP3's.
And if all that isn't enough - You can store pictures in it as well.
Could not recommend this product higher - MUST HAVE!!!!!! |
I Like This Reader!!
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| Review Date: September 26, 2007 |
| Reviewer: L. J. Clark, Fairfax, VA United States |
(Actual Score: 4.5)
I really like this thing. I have a couple reservations, and some cautions, but I hope this concept finally gets off the ground. I've tried eBooks on a PDA...It sucks. I've tried eBooks on a laptop...It sucks. My first business trip with this reader and I re-read "1984" (Sony should have asked the publisher to make one more pass at the eBook and clear up a couple dozen obvious typos/scanos.) -- and am looking forward to reading more books.
Typically, Sony tends to overcharge, and then lets you pay again and again for the privilege of using their products by using proprietary content and or accessories. This is genetic - the company cannot help itself any more than Microsoft can't help fouling up DRM. Luckily I got my reader for just about $200.
I like the look and operation of the Reader. Some have complained about the page turn speed, but I find it not that much different from what you'd experience with a "real" book. Page turning is easier than a real book - and the page stays flat on the table should you choose to do something like dine and eat at the same time. The contrast between page and print is no worse than a mass market paperback book. Increasing the print size also improves readability in dim light, or whilst aboard bumpy transport. Outdoors and in strong light it is fantastic (something that can't be said for LCDs). Maybe another pair of "page" buttons on the right side of the bezel for those who hold the coffee cup in their left hand.
Some would like to see an illuminated display, but that would just fatten the package up and might even compromise the quality of the display when not illuminated or under strong lighting conditions. Overall...This reader is a joy to use.
The future? I'm sure that we'll see some marginal improvement in the display contrast in models down the road. Likewise, I'd expect processor power to improve a little in the future, without any power consumption penalty. As for content, this would be a much nicer way than a PDA or smart-phone to read downloadable content (including news and info from sources such as AvantGo.com). With a moderately improved search and indexing capability, it would also be outstanding for manuals and other references. A rugged, waterproof version would make this the champion beach book.
It would also be nice for a future product to be a little more accepting of alternate formats. I'd prefer to see a wider choice of vendor products that all allow a range of formats to be read. We managed it with HTML and the internet...Why not eBooks? Publishers could even embed HTML-like capabilities into a DRM shell that would keep content development and publishing costs down. I have yet to try RTF documents on my reader, but that project is in the near future.
Potential problems? The urge to consolidate functions into one device is pretty strong. There are legions of folks out there just itching to junk this product up with calendars, phone lists, games, and all that other PDA stuff. Folks...It's a freakin' book. Enjoy it for what it is. I'd rather have a good eBook reader than a half-fast PDA.
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Amazing product if you convert your pdfs (which is easy)
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| Review Date: September 18, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Katie Punsly, |
I've had some eye problems (convergence insufficiency), but I love reading so much and I can't stop (probably not helping eye strain). This was absolutely perfect for me. It's simple and does one thing well. I don't plan to use it for music or pictures, even though it has support for this. I don't even use the Sony library, because I think it's a rip-off. Every book is pretty much available for free on the Internet. There are tons of torrent sites and even e-Libraries that have free book checkouts. Online-literature and Project Gutenberg has classics. No one needs to buy books anymore, and this may be my last purchase from Borders Books. Menus are a bit slow, but it's livable with. There are only two things wrong with it, but the major one is easily remedied.
1. There is no backlighting. I wouldn't mind to read this in the dark, but if I can't no big deal. It's not like I can read books in the dark normally, and it would be a huge battery drain and bad for my eyes. Update: I got the Reader clip-on light off the Sony Style website. I love it; great flex neck and pretty bright. Very nice button placement and it doesn't turn itself on in my handbag. I don't know about the battery life yet, but mine came with spares (CR2032).
2. The software involves a lot of work. The interface is nice, and a bit reminiscent of iTunes in its syncing. You can get a pretty good guess at what it will look like on the Reader screen, but expect it to be smaller than it is on your computer. There is drag and drop for files, but it has to be over the Library or Reader sidebar buttons.
However, two things piss me off about the software. First of all, you can't change the author/title in the software, and I'm a huge stickler for electronic organization. However, in Word, you can change them. Since I use OpenOffice, I just went to the code for RTF files (just open an RTF in Notepad) and added a line of code after \info... {\author authornamehere}{\title titlehere}. So that wasn't too bad. For PDFs, you can download free software such as PDFInfo. But, PDFs are bad for the Sony Reader for the following reasons.
First of all, you only have the options of small and medium for PDFs. And PDFs tend to appear smaller anyways, so you typically need the large for them. You can just increase the font size on your computer, but I realized that makes the files huge and lags your Reader. The people that complain of ridiculous page turn times were probably using PDFs. I timed up to a 9 second lag before I realized that PDFs suck anyways.
You can convert from PDF to text easily in Adobe Reader. From there, you can open it with Word/OpenOffice and save it as an RTF. Use what I said above to get the title name right. It depends on the person, but I like my text to be giant. At Arial 20 point font, it's perfect, especially on Large. And I learned from another review that holding down the Size button turns everything sideways and makes it bigger.
Update: I found a fix to the annoying PDF formatting/paragraph wrapping issues! Selnick makes a free downloadable program called SmartWrap. It fixes all of your text so that there's no weird wrapping, and it's really easy to use. After a few uses of the trial version, you have to delete a pre-printed sentence at the top, but that's a non-issue.
Randomly, for some books, quotation marks and hyphens will be replaced with square boxes, and even if it's annoying, it's not that distracting. Too much dialog isn't a sign of a good book anyway. I'll update again if I figure out how to fix it. It can't be detected in the Preview screen of your eLibrary.
Long story short, I love it. Just download free eBook torrents, convert everything from PDF to txt, and then open your text in Word/OpenOffice and save it as an RTF. That should reduce any Sony-store-and-page-turn-lag-related stress. |
Great display - bit slow
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| Review Date: September 15, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Josue Antinous, London |
| This is a great piece of electronic equipment... the display is fantastic, totally lives up to what's advertised, however switching between menu screens and changing pages seems a bit slower than I would live. |
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