I wanted an eReader of some kind. I knew that. This is a cool technology. First off, no matter if you get an Amazon Kindle or a Sony eReader, then you are in for a definite treat. This is one cool gadget and if you like to read books or magazines or whatever, then you are going to love the portability in carrying an easy-to-read library with you in a nice convenient little package such as these gadgets offer.
For those that haven’t seen this in person, the big deal with this all is the piece of the gadget that neither Sony nor Amazon invented – the E Ink screen! You can read about E Ink here on Wikipedia. So with that bit of news, don’t be all amazed that Amazon or Sony invented something wonderful. They really haven’t – it is all about the screen. The only way in which Amazon or Sony then can make a difference in the product is how they go about letting you view items with the screen. It comes down to the device that they built around the screen and the software that they use to make it easy for you to view items on this wonderful screen. I don’t want to explain how the E Ink screens work in a lot of detail. For that you can read the information here (I suggest that you do as it is a cool thing).
Basically, the best part of the E Ink screen is that it is not like any display device you have ever seen. It is clear and easy to read things like text. It is not at all like a backlight display, but instead is more like an old Etch-a-Sketch. It draws a screen of images or words (you can view pictures) with wonderful detail and it looks to your eyes as if you were viewing a traditional light gray paper from a book. The other thing is that due to the technology of the screen, battery life basically lasts for a crazy long time (week-weeks). The only electricity used is when a new screen is redrawn. Redrawing screens is rather instantaneous as well. When you are viewing a screen of text, you are not consuming any battery power from the device. Amazing.
I got my first view of an eReader when my boss strolled into town carrying one and after I saw it – I was hooked. After quite a bit of research on which one I was going to get, I decided on the Sony PRS-505. There are a lot of reasons for this, so let me get into them for you.
Document Formats
The Sony PRS is more “open” allowing you to get more of your documents, ebooks, etc on the device. When it comes to formats, you are able to get on your documents quickly and fast. Though the Kindle touts a wireless capability to get your documents onto the device – this is somewhat limited when you actually get into it. Also – there is absolutely no issue in just plugging this device into a USB jack in your computer and transferring over the files that you need. All you are doing is doing a copy-and-paste. Also – you are going to need to do this every now and then to charge the device. Though Amazon touts this as a feature – it actually is somewhat limiting as there are only specific formats that you can grab wirelessly. If you dig down into it, some of the biggest reasons the wireless is there – is that it makes it easy for you to buy new books wirelessly without needing to connect to a computer. If this is a really important thing for you, as you might be always on the road or something, then this is something that you really might want to consider. If not, you won’t feel limited by not having wireless on your Sony.
The Sony PRS can deal with the following formats: BBeB (LRF), PDF, TXT, RTF, ePub, LRX, MP3, AAC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, RSS (sweet).
The Kindle supports the following formats: AZW, TXT, MOBI, PDF, DOC, PRC, HTM, LIT, LRF, PDB, RB, IMP, ePub.
Looking over these lists, you might think that some formats are really missing from this list. These are just the formats that the devices accept and there are tools out there that will convert all sorts of other formats to something that is good for your device. The best tool that I found out there so far is called calibre. This is a free download.
So this means that you are easily able to convert your .doc files to .rtf to be read just as well on the Sony PRS.
One of the better things is the RSS capabilities of the Sony PRS. Though the Kindle touts RSS capabilities as well – they only let you use the wireless to get to their few chosen RSS feeds. Using the Sony PRS, you are able to point to *any* RSS feed and then pull that content onto your device. With the program calibre, you are also able to pull nicely formatted magazines and newspapers to your device. You are also able to use navigation and get right to the story that you want to read.
The ability to work easily with PDFs was one of the features that I was looking for. With the Sony PRS, you are able to pull up a PDF and it will first be viewed as you would expect, by viewing the entire page. This is shown here:
Though, you can also use the zoom button and the Sony PRS will then reformat your PDF document and you will be able to see the text larger (it won’t be viewed basically as an image at this point). The text lines are somewhat cut off, but from this figure, you can see that it looks quite nice. Actually, the two figures here, show a PDF in the medium and large zoom sizes.
The other option is to change the view entirely by rotating the view. For this, simply press and hold the zoom button for a few seconds and then the PDF will be rotated and you will be able to read the top portion of the PDF and then when you press the next page, you will view the bottom portion of the PDF.
Organization
Obviously, when working with eReaders, you need to organize your library on the device as you will end up with a lot of material that you will need to wade through. As you can see from this screen, you are able to access content via a number of different means.
You are also able to bookmark items as much as you want using the bookmark features. It will remember where the last point you were in each book and when you go back to a book or document, you simply need to press ‘Continue Reading’ to start again.
The Sony PRS, when turned back on, will go directly to the last page of the last book that you were reading.
Navigation
This device provides a few ways to navigate your pages. It is built to suit both lefties and righties. Here are some navigation points:
Cover
The Sony PRS comes with a nice leather cover that is a little larger than the device and therefore protects it quite a bit. The cover is thick and feels good held in your hands. It also has some magnets built into the corners and stays conveniently closed when put away or thrown into your backpack or briefcase.
Price and Other Versions
You will find that the Sony PRS 505 is the cheapest one of quality out there. You will get this for around $270 USD, while the Kindle is running $359. There is a Sony PRS-700 out there that touts a touch screen – but the reviews that I have read is that the touch screen makes the text a little more blurry than the PRS-505. If Sony wants to send me a PRS-700 to review – I’ll do that for you though! :)
Print | posted on Saturday, February 14, 2009 5:32 PM