My first e-book reader
I now got an e-book reader since early october, i.e. a Sony PRS-600. I am fairly happy with it. I found that reading novels is more pleasant than I thought. Quality of the display is not great, but no more strain on the eyes than a badly printed pocket book. I set the display size to "M". Page flipping is fast enough for linear reading.
It has the following hardware and software features:
- 6" diagonal touch screen 167 ppi 800x600 (9cm x 12.2cm) 8 level grayscale screen
- Touchscreen (works both with fingers and stylus)
- Buttons for the most important functions (back, forward, home, zoom and options)
- File Types Supported: PDF, TXT, RTF, LRF, LRX, ePUB, MP3, AAC, JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP
- Built-in Oxford dictionary (double-click on a word with the style)
- Storage capacity: 420 MB internal user memory plus and SD and Sony card slot. The internal memory is good for about 300 typical books
- Battery capacity: According to other web sites, about 7500 page turns. I suspect less. Also, the device does consume some energy when it is on I believe.
- Annotation, highlighting, picture drawing, search and goto page capability
- Five font sizes.
The device's interface is really to understand. Also, it's fairly easy to understand what options are available. Click on the "More" icon on the "home" screen" for defining the settings. The option button will give an appropriate contextual menu. e.g. search/orientation for the home screen, sorting and viewing options in the books page, and navigation items when reading.
Sony's reader and synchronization program called eBook Library is fairly user friendly and easy to understand. However it's full of bugs, i.e. it stopped working about once/week since I bought the device. Most of the time it didn't want not synchronize anymore and once the program didn't want start to display (had to kill it with the windows process manager). Only fast solution to repair, was to remove the user library on the PC side and even to reinstall the reader. That's totally ridiculous and I hope that they get the act together within the next few upgrades. Reasons for hanging could be multiple: Badly coded EPub files or the fact that I move between two countries, i.e. incompatible upgrade procedures between Switzerland and France.
Tips:
- Fast forward/backward: hold the button down
- Charging with USB takes time. An AC adaptor can be bought extra (not included)
- The user reader library sits on VISTA in \Appdata\Local\Sony Corporation. Before you remove it (see problems mentioned above, save the books !)
- Instead of emptying the user reader libary on the PC side, you also can try XML surgery on the device.
- Finally, instead of using the Sony reader program on the PC, you just can manually upload files or use another program like Calibre (see the EPub article). But the three are not compatible, i.e. may lead Sony's reader program to hang up on the PC.
EduTechWiki links: e-book, e-book reader, EPub.
Best external source about ebook hardware and software: MobileRead Wiki
