Live From CES: The Sony Reader January 5, 2006
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Who needs Blu-ray? This is the Sony reader that uses the display technology from E-Ink I’ve been hearing so much about. To give you an idea of just how good this display looks… I walked up to the counter, looked at the text on the screen and asked, “So when will you have working units to play with?” The reply: “This is a working reader.” I mistakenly though the text on the screen was some kind of plastic overlay—that’s how ink-like it looked. Then the PR rep increased the text size, searched through the table of contents and showed me some Manga comics. It is the first e-reader that seemed like I could sit down and spend hours on without experiencing eye strain. Part of the reason it works is that it does not have a backlight, so forget about reading in the dark. There is also zero flicker, as far as I could see. It’s small and lightweight too (.5 inches thick and smaller than a hardcover book). The reader accepts both Memory Stick and SD flash memory cards. It’s got a USB plug, and could be used to download and read websites, JPEGs or PDF docs. The battery life, as they are selling it, is equivalent to “7,500 page turns, avid readers can devour a dozen bestsellers plus War and Peace without ever having to recharge.”
The books will be available through the Connect Store, and there is some Connect software for managing your books (so far this is the only drawback). Random House, HarperCollins Publishers, Penguin-Putnam, Simon & Schuster and Time Warner Book Group are all on board with titles, along with Manga publisher Tokyopop. Sony is promising to deliver this reader by Spring.
Editor and Contributor | Martin Lynch
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I've been looking for one of these for ages - do you know if they will be released in the UK?
I'm more concerned about the DRM issues that killed the Libre. If this can't accept mobipocket & msreader formats then I've got 500 odd e-books that I would need to get again :(
The next chapter a long time coming? I gather Sony is delaying reader release until July. Meanwhile there's the Iliad and Jinke E-ink readers about to make appearances. But hard to find real facts about any of them
The Sony Reader should be extremely popular with people like myself who spend at least two hours every day commuting by train and also read a wide variety of publications. For example, I read books, magazines, techincal journals I've downloaded from the Internet, comic books even. Usually this means that I have to choose one or two items of reading material to carry with me and leave the rest behind. With a device like the Sony Reader, I would certainly relish the ability to carry around a wider choice of reading matter with me.
However, I still would not buy the Sony Reader in its current form for the following reasons;
1. High price. The Sony Reader is going to retail for around $300 to $400. This is on par with the cost of a low end laptop which is unforgivable (but expected since this is the first generation release of the product, hence purchase funds further R&D). I would only be willing to buy it when its price falls down to the $100 mark.
2. No colour. If reading novels were the only reason for buying a Sony Reader then colour would not be an issue. If however you envisage an expanded role for this device such as reading e-magazines, web-browsing (even off-line browsing) etc, then colour is essential. Fortunately, the e-ink technology used in the Sony Reader has now been improved to implement colour displays (see the following press release: http://www.eink.com/press/releases/pr86.html) hence it is a pretty good bet that version 2 of the Sony Reader will be a colour-capable device.
Those are my two main issues with the Sony Reader and I absolutely will not buy one until they are addressed. Other minor complaints that I can overlook are the lack of a search feature and wireless capability but some would argue that adding these features starts to make it look more like a tablet PC device than an e-book reader.
e-ink fantastic, concept great, implemetation prehistoric.
I bought the thing based on the published claims to be able to display .pdf files. Sony engineers (or marketers!) must have different optical equipment than most humans. The built in electronic magnifier will only do what SONY claims is Small and Medium - this should be interpreted to read smaller and small
A standard pdf file 8.5x11 inch page 12 point font is virtually impossible to read without a HIGH powered magnifier. Luckily most of the pdf files I want to put on the thing have MS Word source documents so I could reformat the page size to get some thing useable that could be redistilled with Acrobat. Its still a darn nuisance!!
Adobe had the right idea with the Pocket Reader program used with Windows CE machines and "tagged" pdf files. They even have a utility program that creates tagged files from standard pdf when they are exported to a PDA with Pocket Reader.
Another complaint is the lack of a directory structure for file management. When you have a few dozen (or more) documents stored in the device having a flat file system could be charitably described as trying. They made an attempt to create a container type system for similar files but it is only one layer deep and will only work with the abysmally small amount of internal memory (~90MB) it will not encompass documents stored on any external memory cards.
When "turning pages" the refresh rate is very slow and quite annoying
I bought the Sony Reader from Bestbuy for $279.99 + tax. It works fine for books formatted in native mode. But It is practically unusable for regular 8.5 x 11 PDF eBooks. I found a utility to crop the PDF margins and then used the Landscape (horizontal) mode of Sony Reader with size increase option. The text was still barely readable and looked like something printed on a printer low on toner/ink. So in my experience, it is not ready for primetime yet as my Sprint PPC-6700 Windows mobile phone renders PDF files (tagged with Adobe Pocker Reader 2.0) much much better than this expensive Sony Reader and it is in color while Sony Reader is low resolution greyscale!! So I promptly returned the Sony Reader back to BestBuy and I will wait for the next generation of this device or for UMPC.
I bought a Sony reader505 in Washington 2 weeks ago and was told by the Sony salesman that I would be able to download books from England. Sony Connect will not let me do this any ideas or have i just wasted £150 ?
I wish I'd seen this before.
I just bought the PRS-505.
An absolutely brilliant product... If only I could use the thing. There is only so many times in an 8 hour flight that I can read the excerpts given free...
"NO!" I don't have a US address or a US credit card. So what are Sony saying: you can buy it, but we won't say on the box that it isn't supported or worse, unusable, outside the US.