Sony PRS-505 Reader e-book
More popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than 53 More Things to do in Zero Gravity
Review Since words written on paper have kept civilised humans amused and off the streets for the best part of five-and-a-half thousand years, anything that hopes to replace it had better be good.
With this is mind, and in an effort to make the printing press obsolete, Sony has released the PRS-505 Reader - a book, Jim, but not as we know it.
Sony's PRS-505 Reader: stylish
To date, media reception of the Reader has been little less than hagiographic, though to be fair it is a little difficult not to gush when you get your paws on something that looks this, well, cool.
In essence, it's an aluminium slab weighing 260g and measuring 122 x 175 x 7.6mm, and fixed into a very nice tan mock-leather “book cover”, Sony has obviously spent a lot of time and effort making sure that 'book lovers' will be impressed by the Reader from the beginning.
While the front of the Reader is dominated by the screen and navigation controls, Sony has managed to cram a fair amount into its sub-8mm upper and lower surfaces: two memory expansion slots and the power on/off control up top, and a mini-USB port, 3.5mm headphones jack, 5.2V DC in jack and volume control down below.
The mains power supply is an optional extra, so out of the box you can only charge the Reader through the USB cable. The battery takes around two hours to go from flat to fully charged.
One thing the Reader has coming out of its ears is controls. It has more of them than you can, well, throw a book at, with many of them doubling up on each other.
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Got my mum one of these, she doesn't see the point of technology normally, but she absolutely loves her Sony E-book reader! She can also zoom in and out so she can read this without glasses. Only thing is there's no backlight to speak of, but the battery life makes up for it.
If you think the e-books are a rip off, this thing can understand PDF, RTF, Word documents and .lit files so just get your e-book from one of the free sites like Project Guttenberg and you're away, or are the classics and Steven King not your thing?
By my maths, I will have "broken even" in a few months!
what abt this?
http://www.iscriptum.eu/index.php?productID=1/ereader
But if the display is so good...
why do all these readers seem to display black-on-grey, like the cheaper 'pulp' style paperbacks you get the bargain bin at Booksale, rather than crisp white, like a quality hardback?
feed me books
Thanks for mentioning feedbooks. I hadn't heard of them before.
I just wish I had something nicer to read my downloaded book on than my big clunky thinkpad.
A non-Sony Sony product
I received mine last week and I have used it a least 3hrs a day.
I haven't even bothered to install the Sony software, so I've probably missed the worst part. If it is as bad as Sonic Stage then I can understand the dislike.
What has changed at Sony? You can copy a text file to the device through Windows explorer and it just works. I have played around with RTF, changed the font & size. Arial 14pt works well. I hope Sony does not decide to lock it down like the Kindle...only works with Amazon, or so I hear.
So what if a new model is released in the US next month, it will probably take a year for it to be released in the UK.
The black flash of the transition from one page to the next is to clear the page and prevent ghosting. I don't notice it anymore. This is a limitation of the technology, later versions will improve. Does anyone remember the first monochrome LCDs? Slow refresh, ghosting? I think these are at the same stage.
I used to use my HTC touch Dual for everything, Jack of all trade, master of none. I now have an iPod, a Tom Tom and now a Sony PRS-505.
The lanscape option is usefull if you load graphic novels (AKA Comics)
