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Sony revamps e-book Reader with reading lamp

Manuscripts illuminated

Having just released its second-generation e-book reader in the UK, Sony has now introduced the third version in the States.

Sony PRS-700 Reader

Sony PRS-700 Reader: it was a .doc and stormy night...

The PRS-700 won't go on sale until next month, but when it does it will sport a 6in E Ink display and enough memory for 350 e-books - up from the PRS-505's 160-book capacity.

But the PRS-700's key new feature is an integrated LED reading light - handy for all those folk who like to read in bed without disturbing their partner.

That's probably not what makes the 700 heavier than its predecessor - 280g to 260g - that'll be the expanded battery, which offers a life of "7500 page turns", up from the 505's 6800.

Sony PRS-700 Reader

Time to learn to read without using your finger as a guide?

The 700 can take MemoryStick Duo and SD memory cards, as before, and supports a range of e-book formats, including PDF, MS Word, BBeB, EPUB and text files. It's compatible with Adobe Digital Editions software, Sony said.

The new Reader will cost around $400 (£240/€290).

Sony PRS-505 Review

Sony PRS-700 Photo Gallery

Latest Comments

Calibre - 500 and 505 content converter

The best tool I've found for my Sony Reader is the free and open source Calibre app (http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/). It converts a whole bunch of formats and RSS feeds, newspapers, etc to your Sony. Does good PDF too. Really useful.

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PDF Support

These things need good PDF support. As soon as they have this I will get one.

I travel around the world a lot and often need to refer to technical manuals for various languages / operating systems. I can't take all of my books with me each time I go away and I hate reading from a downloaded pdf manual on my regular screen (even though I have dual screens in both of my offices), it just isn't the same as glancing at a book when doing something.

In time this will replace thumbing through tech manuals for me.

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Anonymous Coward

PDF Support

New firmware for the 505 allowed 3 levels of zoom on pdf instead of the original two , so you just have to update. The 700 lists as having 5 different zoom levels.

I will be updating my 505 to a 700 primarily for the new search ability as this is a lifesaver when going through my tech book archive.

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Screen flicker

Screen flicker put me off too, when I tested one out in Borders while in the US. If they can avoid that, the readability impressed me. I could see myself using one, if it was slim with a very minimal bezel and fast refresh rate.

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OK, NOW I'm tempted

If start saving my NZ "money" now, then thanks to the effects of compound interest, I should just about be able to buy one of these the day before Ragnarok. Does anybody know if it's Unicode-compatible? If I could load this up with Hindi tuition materials and reading practice, I'd sell a kidney now for one.

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