The Sony Reader

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Okay, so when it comes to technology gadgets that I think will improve my life or make things easier I have the willpower of a crack addict (luckily I have a very understanding wife). I broke down and purchased a Sony Reader after deciding that I would hold off on any electronic reader until the industry settled on a format. Well, it looks like if that was the case I would opening my first e-reader at a retirement gift.

The out of the box experience was pretty good. I charged the unit with the AC adapter (it can charge over USB as well) and it only took about an hour to be fully charged out of the box. I installed the provided Connect software (very Mac like interface) and hooked up the Reader with no problems.

So what do I use this for? Well, I’ve actually not purchased a book on the Connect site yet for download (they give you a few excerpts and full books already loaded on the device). I have put several articles and things I want to read on it though (converted from Word docs or pushed to the device in PDF format). I carry it around so that anytime I’ve got downtime while I’m waiting on something I pull it out and start reading. Sitting in the barber shop waiting, at the dentist, car mechanics, whatever. I used to only get magazine articles and stuff like this read at night since I didn’t carry them with me or they were online articles. Now I will just get the article into a digital format and then push it to the Reader to look through later.

Instead of describing the whole experience I’ll just list my likes and dislikes:

Dislikes

  • There is some slight ghosting between some of the screens. This is considered “normal” by Sony and not a defect. Understand that this is not a permanent ghosting by any means and looks like the last page shown just shows a little residue.
  • You can’t delete a book from the device unless you connect to the computer and do so from the connect system. This is annoying since I load it up with several articles and would like to just trash the article when I’m done reading it. Then again, I can’t add more books to the internal memory without connecting to the computer so I guess this is a minor gripe.
  • When viewing some of the pdf documents that were not scaled to the display you have to switch it to landscape mode to even begin to read them. This is perfectly acceptable to me; however, near the bottom or top (right and left side in landscape mode) the last or first few sentences are fuzzy. Since the page gets split and you read the top half followed by the bottom half the fuzzy part does get displayed again clearer when you page down.
  • Had to do a work around with one word doc that wouldn’t transfer. Published it to PDF from Word 2007 and then transferred it. This is better anyway because transferring word docs and RTD docs will strip images. Nice. That wasn’t in the brochure.
  • I will have to say that some of the text is really small when you are trying to read a PDF that isn’t sized for the device. This also wasn’t in the brochure, though I knew about it before purchasing the device.
  • The CONNECT software is not written by people who write windows applications, or it appears to cater more to MAC UI fans. Not a real problem, just a dislike from my point of view.
  • RSS support on CONNECT is a joke. You only have access to the feeds they allow. There is an application out there that will convert RSS feeds over to a format readable by the Reader. Here are my major grips about Connect’s RSS feature:
    • The RSS setup from CONNECT is not automatic. This is a big miss.
    • Some of the feeds they offer are excerpt feeds… that’s not very useful since you’re reading this on a non connected device that doesn’t understand HTML anyway. Wired news is one of these.
    • When reading the RSS feeds page by page it sometimes is hard to tell where a post ends.
    • Oh, and my biggest gripe about Connect and RSS…they don’t have one themselves to update you on changes to the CONNECT software or new books! That is a HUGE miss in my opinion.
  • Obviously the price is pretty steep, but it is a very nice device and still costs less than some of its competitors.  I got a really good deal on mine from Borders since I had a 20% off coupon and several gift certificates for the store.

So, enough griping…now on to the good stuff:

  • Size - almost the perfect size and weight. This device fits down in my bag and even in my jacket pocket (then again I’ve gotten two 20 oz. cokes into my jacket pocket before). But it’s an ideal size to carry just about anywhere I think I’m going to be waiting and want to read. The screen size is very good and much better than attempting to read an 80 page document on my PDA.
  • Good contrast on the screen (minus the slight ghosting).
  • Excellent viewing angles. It really does look just like paper.
  • When used with content sized to the device it is very readable, with clean fonts.
  • The cover has a slight texture to it on the inside cover so with it flipped back for reading it sticks well to where you put it. I rest it on my leg a lot and I’m not worried about it sliding right off.
  • The cover must have a slightly magnetic strip on the front so that when it closes it stays closed. It’s not hard to open so this isn’t a strong magnet. This was a nice touch.
  • Ability to load up all the articles I want to read that have been tied up in tasks in my TODO (Next Actions for you GTD types) list.
  • When I used the online chat support from SONY to discuss the one Word document that wouldn’t convert I was immediately talking to someone. Too bad they couldn’t really help. They did provide a phone number of the support group for me to call though. Glad I could have that little chat. Like all online chat type support….it takes forever for those people to type in responses. I think they are trying to talk to n number of people at the same time.
  • Price on the books from CONNECT is good. Of course, they need more selection especially around the tech field. I’d like to see books like Code Complete and titles from O’Reilly, MSPress, Wrox, etc.
  • RSS feeds (what little good there was in this feature):
    • Sized really well and all sizes work S, M & L
    • It does import images for posts.
    • It includes a Table of Contents that can take you straight to a particular post.
  • It takes an SD card and Memory stick. The good thing about this is the inclusion of the SD card. Sony is starting to realize that having stuff completely proprietary may not be a good thing.

I’d also like to throw in some things I’d like to see improved/implemented (read it doesn’t do this now):

  • Again, more selection in the book titles (see above).

  • RSS support for CONNECT site and Reader updates.

  • A utility that would take any PDF in, convert to RTF, resize and convert back to PDF to retain all images and yet make it more readable on the device.

  • Magazine support. Get magazine on board like CoDe (not likely) and MSDN (even more remote chance) to put content that you can purchase via the Connect site.

  • Newspaper support. Tap into the now growing wealth of online newspapers and get those delivered via Connect. This is highly unlikely though.

  • The device should get a firmware upgrade to support HTML.

  • Converting a Word Doc should NOT strip the images.

  • Be able to delete a book from the device.  

    [EDIT: 3/6/2007] Okay, two new gripes that I thought should be appended to this post.

    1. The Connect software will not allow you to get anything off the Sony Reader!  If you transfer a picture, mp3 or book to the Reader you better have a backup of it.  Once it’s on the reader all you can do is delete it from the Connect software.  This includes not having the capability of moving files from the internal memory to the SD card!  So, for example, if you have to send off your reader for service you will NOT be able to “backup” the contents.  Lesson number one….always have copies of what you put on the reader on your machine.  This is a good practice anyway, but the fact that I can’t even move data from the internal memory over to the SD card is just crap.

     

    1. The BookCreator program that was mentioned in the comments below happens to be a program published by Cannon….that’s in Japanese and no longer has an available demo.  Appearently people are hacking the eval version that is still floating around the internet, applying a translated exe (read hacked) and then hosting that app within a VPC so that the eval won’t expire.  Wow.  Someone somewhere has to be working on something better than this as a solution.  If you hear about it, let me know.  The tools for this thing that are out in the wild are nothing but scripts hacked together using dlls from other products (a usage probably not condoned by the EULA of the products being leached).  If only I had the time to learn the formats of these files.

     

    Oh, and after the firmware update the battery meter was all screwed up.  Had to do a soft reset to get it to register correctly.  I had called into Product Support to ask why the charging light would come on and then stop charging when I only had 1 bar on the battery meter.  The tech told me to attempt charging for six complete hours over USB and then if it still didn’t register correctly he’d have me send it in.  5 minutes of reading on MobileRead.com and someone had indicated that a soft reset fixes this issue.  Now, why do I get better support from the community forum (or should I say more accurate support) than from the product support people?