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| Home >> Handheld & PDA Reviews: Sony PRS-505/LC Blue Digital Book Reader | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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User Submitted Sony PRS-505/LC Blue Digital Book Reader Reviews (cont...)Date: 2008-09-22 Great for a first generation, good overall The Sony Reader is great for a first-generation device. The cost of ownership is ludicrously high, but that's somewhat to be expected for the first generation. Its form factor is wonderful. The screen is highly readable. The support for PDF is outstanding and I find it extremely useful. There is software for it for OS X (Calibre) which works very very well, and Sony's horrid "Connect" software works fine under Parallels 3.0. The interface is very simple and intuitive, the battery life is astounding (very very good). I read two books on a nine hour flight, a few textbooks over the following days, and a couple more fiction books, and the battery only went down one pip (out of the four visible). This is after loading several pdfs and ebooks, paging through them, bookmarking, jumping to and from books and bookmarks, and not charging the device. The three negative factors are the lack of a search capability, lack of wireless access, and the inclusion of Sony's horrible "Connect" software. The Sony E-Book store has reasonable prices and a decent selection, but the interface is incredibly bad, and for windows only (even though it's clearly just a web services wrapper). Whoever was in charge of designing this system for purchasing E-Books should be fired. The Kindle has a huge advantage in its EVDO/wireless support and purchasing directly from Amazon. Amazon doesn't carry most of the titles I care about, though (mostly reference), and the EVDO doesn't work if you're traveling outside the US (which I do quite often). I have purchased books and select chapters from reference titles from O'Reilly and don't care to buy them a second time from Amazon, and in most cases don't have that option anyhow. So in this regard, the Reader wins. Its PDF support is excellent, and that is the main seller for me. I can also import ebooks from most any source, and the OS X software is free and works very well. With the Kindle, I have to either buy books again from Amazon, or send my PDFs in to be converted for a $1 fee, which I find ridiculous and insulting. This would be a four star review if the Reader simply had the ability to search an ebook/pdf, and easily a five star review if the Sony Connect software was portable (I'm a mac user) and usable. Overall I would recommend this, but if you're on the fence about buying one, I'd probably wait another year for these to mature and get the features they should really have at this stage (This applies to both the Kindle and Reader). Date: 2008-09-18 I love it! I absolutely love my Sony Reader. I chose the Sony Reader over Amazon's Kindle because of it's ease of use, appearance, and supported documents types. Primarily, I wanted a way to transport and have easy access to many of my reference files. With the Sony Reader, I simply load my documents from Word directly onto my reader and have instant access to them no matter where I am. I just don't think I've been this happy with a purchase in a long time! Date: 2008-09-17 Beware! I was really excited about the purchase of a Sony Digital Reader for my daughter's birthday and everything was just perfect... the ooh's and aah's until she turned around the box just to find out it is APPLE INCOMPATIBLE and she could not use it with her computer. We had to return it and can't begin to describe everybody's disappointment. The product is absolutely great,but there should be enough information at time of purchase through the internet to advise about this unsuspected limitation.The other option is not as elegant and sleek and easy to handle... so it's now returned to you and you were very efficient about credit and everything. THANKS!!! Date: 2008-09-17 GREAT reader! After having spent hours and weeks comparing different eBook readers, I knew everything that was expected of the Sony PRS-505 - and was blown away nonetheless. It's size is smaller than that of most paperback books, yet you can still potentially carry a public library. The screen is beautifully crafted, having every bit the appearance of the book (seriously, you have to see it with your own eyes to understand). The design is very unobtrusive to reading, much unlike the Kindle (where the buttons on the side knock you forward or back pages by accident). If you want a great e-reader, look no further. Date: 2008-09-15 Excellent product for viewing PDFs I waited a very long time before purchasing this product because I was skeptical about the quality and had heard that it was terrible for viewing PDFs, as it was unable to zoom them. I also read about the screen being too dark, making it illegible. I was pleasantly surprised when I received this sleek, well engineered product over a month ago. I have used it nearly every day since then and have only had to charge it about once every two weeks. The reader's second generation of e-ink technology is crisp, easy to read, and has a fairly fast refresh rate leaving little to no ghosting as seen in the original reader. Contrary to what others have said, the reader exceeded my expectations in file reading capabilities, easily taking RTFs, TXTs, and PDFs, in addition to Sony's proprietary format. These are the only filetypes I have tried so far, but so far I have been able to zoom and use bookmarks in all of them. The key to zooming with PDFs is to make sure the file is tagged. If you are concerned about this and wish to test your files for readability first, download Sony's eBook Library and load the file in preview mode. If it can zoom in the program, it will zoom in the PDF. As for purchasing books from Sony's store, I cannot testify, as I have only used personal PDFs and LRFs from ManyBooks.net and other public domain book sources. I have so far experienced no problems with my reader despite my frequent usage. I highly recommend this product to anybody who likes to read ebooks and is interested in doing it portably.
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