Sony Reader launches in UK | Video | Reuters.com For those unfamiliar, I've owned a Sony Reader, the same PRS-505 model now being sold in Waterstones, since my birthday hit a little over half a year ago. I've since collected 54 books on it, read most of them, and have restored something that I've lost since my high-school days, which I only *thought* I had during my uni time. Specifically, I recovered the ability to read anywhere, any time, and being able to find whatever it is I want to read in a matter of minutes, an hours at most. And have it. I lost that when I finished high-school, and the best library in the region was now too far away rather than simply being a detour on the way home. At the uni, I made use of the uni library, enjoying reading books that were often a great deal older than I am - and I mean the books themselves, rather than the age of the original text. But at the uni I found myself spending more and more time searching for books, and a lot less of it actually reading anything. When I finished my degree, and went on to enter my obligatory service period in the army... I pretty much lost what I had left of my reading routine. I now had to rely on sporadic orders from Amazon, this or that stop in a local book-store that was on my way... And more often than not, I had to wait for several weeks to read what I wanted. My tastes in literature had been pretty much shaped now. I knew what I wanted to read, and I knew how to find more. Give me access to the 'net, and I'd find whatever author of a certain genre piqued my interest. I'd read reviews. More reviews. And then some more. Then I'd probably check Amazon's reccomendation system to see what else might interest me... ...and then I'd die a little inside, knowing all too well that ordering books from abroad means paying double for the trouble, and that waiting for them to arrive in local stores might mean waiting too long... sometimes forever. Then I got the Sony Reader. I discussed the matter first with my father, as a friend of his was going to the US. I checked what was available, worldwide, in the market of electronic book readers. I smiled a little when reading about E-Ink technology - a screen with no back-light, and with each "page-turn" being the only consumption on the battery, as the electric charge that moved the ink capsules around stayed once applied? I was sold immediately, even when I saw the price tag. It was, after all, going to be a gift, though I knew all too well that Id've saved up for it all the same. I did some comparisons. It broke down to a choice between the Amazon Kindle and Sony's Reader... And Sony won, with simple ergonomics, with simplicity in design... and with doing away with what I saw as unrequired wireless access that required the proper cellular infrastrure, and deals with various providers here in Israel... I've enjoyed this device immensely since, and with the firmware update that came rather near the UK launch (no coincidence there, I'd say), I can read bought PDF and ePUB purchased ebooks with an ease that simply didn't exist before - Adobe are cooperating nicely with their Adobe Digital Editions DRM management system. I'm not limited to the Sony store anymore, or to digging up ebooks wherever I could find them. A whole world of online book-stores suddenly opened up to me... with books that cost me less than the list price, with no delivery overhead... just the books, whenever I wanted them. Books I could *afford*, and read with ease. My guess is that after the UK launch, these readers will sell a lot better worldwide. In fact, they'll actually be *available* worldwide, and not just in certain markets. I like that. And I'll enjoy the updates my own Reader will finally get, with the device having more than one market now. But please, if you *do* live in the UK and buy this device... Don't buy any ebooks from Waterstones. They're *much* too expensive there. And if anyone here does buy one... let me know. I have some advice, advice which will save you a couple of headaches and possibly some money as well.
So it reads pdf too? I took a good look at amazon kindle, but all the time I was asking myself: Can it deal with graphic novels, or illustrations? If it displays black and white, probably not. But I had no possibility to take an actual look at a proper reading device, so excuse the naive question. I like my books. But...we own almost a thousand by now, with both our small libraries joined, my daughters first meter of the shelf full, and the books I inherited when my grandparents died. And we really need to get rid of quite a few of them. (Which is going to be heartbreaking if it is going to be effective.) We move too often, and simply need the room they fill by now, and in several rows and in boxes and everything. What a reader would cost could almost be saved in rent after the next move. It would be nice to be able to just digitally store those my heart isn't too attached to, and I just still want to be able to read them. Or to be able to replace the uni literature that is still needed by pdfs. Or to make use of the market for non German books - originals in their language- even if amazon doesn't provide them. Or to be able to carry an English dictionary along when I read an English book, and throw my old dictionaries for several language s out entirely (yay - another free shelf meter!). Or to be able to carry 20 books with me to my parents... and so on, and so on. So, it's nothing I'd immediatly buy, as we're far to broke right now, but for the near future, it might be something to safe up for.
As far as I know, the Kindle doesn't do PDF files at all. Instead, it focuses on eating up the Mobipocket market - an ebook format originally designed for PDA's, as well as Amazon's own format for the Kindle. The Sony's PDF support was limited until fairly recently, but it can zoom in and reflow the text fairly well now. PDF files mean that it doesn't require native device support for the fonts, either - they're part and parcel of the PDF file, which does remove a rather annoying limitation of the reader that seems to exist for no other reason than an oversight on Sony's part - a unicode file for English only, which limits file names, and books in almost all formats, to English. That, I hope, will change as the market for the Reader grows. Limitations? It still doesn't like multiple columns, or Secured PDF files that were signed and passworded in plain Adobe Acrobat. If the writing direction happens to be right-to-left rather than left-to-right, it has some issues with reflowing the PDF file - the solution to that is just to prepare the file to size, mind. But keep in mind - this is no PDA. It's a book with a menu. It does eight shades of gray, so while it *can* read comics, it can't really read *color* comics or graphic novels. If an ebook was built with an index that had links, it can handle them - but not much else. You can change pages easily enough via the menu buttons, entering the desired page, so a dictionary could work out rather well... And most importantly - Any book that was *designed* as an ebook works like a charm on the Sony Reader. It's more a book-sized library, really... With the two expansion cards, I think it can support over 16GB storage now... and that's two to three books per megabyte, give or take, with some taking one.
I got that the amazon kindle couldn't read pdf, which seemed a big flaw to me. There just are a lot of PDF files available. Every device that is deviced to bind the user to a certain format -and thus, to certain products and programs - arouses my suspicion. (It is one of the reasons why I never bought iPods - if an mp3 player doesn't play normal mp3s and can be used by drag and drop, I don't want it.) But I'll have to wait, say, two years until I can buy something in that price region anyway... probably by then, it won't cost quite as much! :smile: Patience... it worked with DVD-players and mp3-players, too...
Well, Amazon's choice had a simple reason - Mobipocket was the most widely available format for ebooks, seeing as it saw at least *some* use in PDA's. But PDF files are winning out in this particular market, thanks to Adobe Digital Editions, which is far more suitable for this sort of business. Sony made a bet - correctly in my opinion - on PDF and ePUB files being the most suitable for ebooks, and which would see far more use in the future. So far, they've proven right, though Mobipocket and Microsoft Reader are still pretty standard as formats go. Native PDF support for homemade files is also a nice bonus, as is the ease with which one can convert and reflow files to suit the Sony Reader. I'm sure that ebook readers will cost less sooner or later. While this is the second generation for Sony's E-Ink device, other competing devices are still starting out, more or less... Amazon's Kindge, the HanLin Reader, the pretty expensive iRex iLiad, or the Cybook... There's a pretty nice comparison here: MobileRead Wiki - E-book Reader Matrix
Did you buy ebooks for your reader? Are they DRMed? Or to be more precise, did you actually buy the books, or are they effectively rentals? An easy way to check is to see if you can resell the ebook you've bought. Thats the main reason I am wary of ebook readers. I dislike the idea that my purchased books may not be available to me any longer just because the device couldn't check back with the company servers (this can happen - in fact, it has happened to me, but wrt to music, and not books).
*nod* I can't resell the ebooks I bought, and they are indeed DRM'd. I effectively just purchased a one-person exclusive license to use an electronic product - to whit, a book. Then again, Adobe Digital Editions works rather well for me. You associate devices (PC's, laptops, the Reader itself) to your Adobe user, and when you purchase a book from a store, it effectively gives you a small "token" file, with a format used by ADE. It contains the URL for the book, and the transaction information. The book is downloaded, and ADE verifies the transaction once. Once that one verification process is finished, that's that, and the file I now have on my computer is "signed" to my Adobe user. Which means I can transfer it to any Reader or computer that's registered with my user, and it will open there freely. The system is simple. You verify the reader to your user. And then verify the book to your user. Sure, I can't resell them as I would with physical books, but then again I have a counter-advantage. The ebook stores hold a virtual bookshelf for my user in the store, thus allowing me to download the transaction token again. If I ever happen to delete all copies of my ebook, I can always download it again from the store. Free of charge.
This part is neat. My experience with DRM was quite the opposite - I couldn't even burn my music afterwards (as a normal audio cd) - something the EULA had said I could do as often as I wanted. I supposed I should have argued the case, but I just let it pass as a lesson learned.
