Re: [tlug] [OT] eBooks

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On 2009-10-11 10:27 +0100 (Sun), Godwin Stewart wrote:

> Thanks to everyone for your feedback. It's given me a bit more info to go on
> before making a choice and I'm going to stick with the Sony PRS-505.

I did have time to do the write-up on this that I wanted to, but I
thought, having owned both a PR-505 and a PR-700 for quite some time
now, I'd make a few comments.

First, the 505 and 700 are now out of production; they've been replaced
by the 300 (with a smaller screen, though the same resolution, and no
card slots) and the 600 (which has a touch screen, but no side light).

The 505, because it doesn't have the touch screen/sidelight layer
between the screen and you, has significantly better contrast and much,
much less glare than the 700. (The 505 is beautiful; the 700 is livable,
but annoying in many situations.) The 600 improves things considerably,
mainly by removing the sidelight, but still isn't quite up to 505 (or
presumably 300) level. You can see a review of the 600 vs. the 505 here,
by the way:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWl60GNcQIw

I'll know a little more about the 600 soon, as my brother in NYC has
been using my 505 for a few months now, and he just got a 600. I'm
contemplating getting a 600 myself, at which point I may be selling
either my 505 or 700.

You may want to consider getting a newer model rather than an older one.
One noticable difference between the 505 and the 700 is the software and
speed. The ability to zoom and scroll across a page in PDF on the 700
can make the difference between being able to read an A4 PDF somewhat
painfully or not at all really. The 700 will also handle a large number
of books more quickly, though you're still limited in the number you
can useful have on the card before setting boookmarks, scanning the
cards after you've detached the USB connection or inserted a card, and
similar operations become painfully slow. With 400 books on my 700, it
still takes 1-2 minutes to re-scan after I've added one new book, and
an initial scan with hundreds of new books takes considerably longer.
Calibre may be able to do what the Sony software does and do the work
on the computer. With any model, you're not going to be keeping 8 GB of
Gutenberg Project stuff on the reader; I've tried and it was hopeless.

I use it strictly with Linux. I don't even use Calibre, I just copy the
LRF, EPUB and PDF files over to the thing via USB. (The internal memory
and cards come up as regular USB drives.) This means that I don't have
access to DRM stuff. (For the Sony DRM stuff, at least, you need to
use the Windows software; I think it's the same for DRM stuff in the
Adobe format.) I've lived reasonably happily with not buying DRM stuff
at the moment. Feedbooks.com does have a reasonable amount of non-DRM
commercial material, especially on the science fiction side.

Unfortunately, I'm out of time to say more at this point, but if anybody
wants to make arrangements to drop by my office in Shinjuku some day or
meet up at some TLUG event, I'd be happy to let you play with my 700 (or
the 505 and possibly 600, once it or they come back from NYC.)

Overall, I'm extremely happy with the Sony Readers; they're convenient
and fairly open. The most annoying thing has been the difficulty of
reading letter size PDFs in the standard scientific paper format, though
I've been delusitorially working on a tool to reformat those PDFs.

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson       <cjs@example.com>        +81 90 7737 2974
           Functional programming in all senses of the word:
                   http://www.starling-software.com