It looks like I may only be about 1 day away from getting my Sony Reader! I'm looking forward to it! But, as impatient as I can get--and it has been a week--I want to prepare as much as possible so I am ready to jump right into the goodness.

The best part is that I will be getting it basically the DAY AFTER my last day of school. Couldn't be any better because if it was on the last day, I would actually have it before school (evening classes)--not a good idea. And it's finals now.

1. What do you think of http://www.feedbooks.com ? It seems strange because the pdfs are thousands of pages, have huge text, and there is no margin!
a. Do most books for the Sony Reader average 2-5 times as many pages as the regular paperback version? So if the average 300 page book runs around 1000, then you can read maybe 5 books before recharging? I sincerely doubt I'll go more than a book between charges.

b. In a PDF, text can't really be resized can it? If it did, then it would have to process the entire PDF! Lots of work!

c. Why no margin? Why what appears to be no links to certain page sections?

2. What is the "BEST" way for storing eBooks for the Sony Reader? Does .txt seem to be the most efficient, accessible, and simplest way? It seems like the Sony format is only available from Sony Connect--which I will be buying from I think--but PDFs are common...but text files are very easy to create, too.

3. How do graphics in books work? Are they only available in PDFs or the Sony format? Probably not in a text file...?

4. Any ideas how long the battery lasts with audio playback? Anyone try audiobooks? Is there a good source for free audiobooks? I wish it worked with Audible. I am perfectly willing to pay a reasonable amount for good content but half the time, it has DRM so I can't even use it! I remember a site that had free audiobooks and it's in my bookmarks.

5. Any one or two good things to know? I am a big time techie and the first thing I usually do is explore every menu item.

6. How does the initial battery charge go? I hope it won't take forever!

1. What do you think of http://www.feedbooks.com ? It seems strange because the pdfs are thousands of pages, have huge text, and there is no margin!
a. Do most books for the Sony Reader average 2-5 times as many pages as the regular paperback version? So if the average 300 page book runs around 1000, then you can read maybe 5 books before recharging? I sincerely doubt I'll go more than a book between charges.

PDF is a HORRIBLE format for eBooks - avoid like the plague! Stick with LRF/RTF. The number of pages obviously depends on the size of the text. Take a look at the books I've produced (in the "Book Uploads" forum section) for examples of what I'd consider to be sensible text sizes.


b. In a PDF, text can't really be resized can it? If it did, then it would have to process the entire PDF! Lots of work!


Correct. I repeat - PDF is a dreadful format for eBooks.

c. Why no margin? Why what appears to be no links to certain page sections?

You don't really need a margin, because the Reader itself has a small margin around the edge of the screen. I generally add a SMALL additional margin- 10 pixels or so.



2. What is the "BEST" way for storing eBooks for the Sony Reader? Does .txt seem to be the most efficient, accessible, and simplest way? It seems like the Sony format is only available from Sony Connect--which I will be buying from I think--but PDFs are common...but text files are very easy to create, too.

Text files are definitely not the best format - the Reader displays them (IMHO) with too small a font, and very often they have hard line breaks in awkward places. Plus, of course, there's no formatting in text files.

A good format for "read once and throw it away" stuff is RTF. The best format is the native Sony format of LRF, which there are a number of excellent tools for producing - see the tutorial threads in the "Book Uploads" sub-forum.


3. How do graphics in books work? Are they only available in PDFs or the Sony format? Probably not in a text file...?

LRF and PDF support pictures. TXT and RTF don't. (Obviously RTF files SUPPORT pictures, but the Reader doesn't show them.)


4. Any ideas how long the battery lasts with audio playback? Anyone try audiobooks? Is there a good source for free audiobooks? I wish it worked with Audible. I am perfectly willing to pay a reasonable amount for good content but half the time, it has DRM so I can't even use it! I remember a site that had free audiobooks and it's in my bookmarks.

Don't use the Reader for audio. Its audio features are primitive, and dangerous - it's all to easy to drain the battery flat. Use the Reader for what it's best at - reading - and a decent MP3 player for audio.

I'd pick a (very) slight nit with your position, Harry, to the extent that PDF files that are formatted for the Reader work well enough, they're just less flexible than the LRF/RTF approach is all. If you can get the font size where you want it in the first place, not being able to change it later isn't all that huge a burden -- all that's my personal opinion of course, so salt to taste. :smile:

Either way, Hadrien's putting forth a yeoman's effort with FeedBooks, and I'm sure it's a perfectly suitable solution for some folks, and if others find they prefer something else, well then I'm glad that both options exist. :yes:


I think we had some reports of ~10 hours of battery life with MP3 use, but I'm digging way back in the old memory file for it. :shrug:

I agree, PDF's when well done can look nice. For me, I prefer the flexibility and speed of LRF. However, Feedbook certainly makes PDF look good for those that like the format.

I think that the comment about MP3's had less to do with their real impact on battery life than with the clumsy way in which they are played by the reader. It is easy to leave an mp3 playing without realizing it. This leads to a dead reader. Play MP3's at your own peril.

Sorry - I was in no way at all denigrating Hadrien's stirling work at "Feedbooks" - apologies if that's the way my message came across. Re-reading it I see that it could indeed be interpreted like that, which I certainly didn't intend.

The reason I dislike even "correctly sized" PDFs personally is that you're stuck with the font size that the creator of the PDF thinks is the right one to use. When I use the Reader with the LRF files I create myself, I read most of the time using the "small" font size, but when it's late at night and I'm tired, or I'm reading somewhere with poor light, I switch to "medium" because it's a lot easier on the eyes. I can't do that with PDF!

When I use the Reader with the LRF files I create myself, I read most of the time using the "small" font size, but when it's late at night and I'm tired, or I'm reading somewhere with poor light, I switch to "medium" because it's a lot easier on the eyes. I can't do that with PDF!... or with a paper book! ;-)

Score one for the e-book. :)

Following on on question 1c, the only links available in a PDF or LRF file are the ones the person that created the PDF or LRF put there at the time of creation. Most of us that create LRF files for the upload section will identify the chapter titles and then these are available in the Table of Contents. On Omnibus collections like Harry creates you can select both the book within the collection and the chapter.

Sorry - I was in no way at all denigrating Hadrien's stirling work at "Feedbooks" - apologies if that's the way my message came across.I knew that wasn't how you meant it, HarryT, I just wanted to point out that the FeedBooks approach is about the best PDF implementation I'm aware of for the Reader, that's all. :nice:

I miss the "I love the device and use it sometimes." :P

Anyway, I love it and money well spend. :D

I just wanted to point out that the FeedBooks approach is about the best PDF implementation I'm aware of for the Reader, that's all. :nice:

Yes, I agree with you 100%. I just feel, I guess, that PDF has "issues" that not even the best of implementations can overcome. That's a reflection of the format, not of Feedbooks, of course.

Oh, I agree, PDF just isn't suited to e-books. :no:

Abobe designed PDF to be a portable format for printing so you did not need to give out the original file or have the original application installed. Now Adobe has tried to use the PDF format for other things that it was never meant for and it doesn't really work well. Adobe needs to come up with a better format then PDF for things like ebooks. It's just rather poor.

I think they have Digital Editions in mind for that. :shrug:

Yeah! Digital editions is nice. I still use it. I wonder what device will make it theirs? Because Adobe wrote it for portable devices.

I should hope that any of them that currently handle PDFs would be crawling all over Adobe to switch over to Digital Editions. It handles regular PDF files anyway, doesn't it? If so, they wouldn't lose anything by going that direction. :shrug:

I thought I read somewhere that the Sony Reader used an early version of Digital Editions for the PDF part.

Hmm. I don't recall anything either way on that -- perhaps I need to have another look at the manual that came with it, I seem to remember it detailing what viewers were in the thing ....

Does anyone have a digital edition PDF so we can try it?

I have one from Adobe but it is restricted to the PC only. I cannot read it in Acrobat or even get it to come up on the Reader. It seems that they have increased the DRM beyond what it was before.

Here is the Adobe Digital Editions homepage http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/digitaleditions/ where you can get the software and download your own copies of the books.

I just tried one of them and no go. Would not even download to the reader when I changed the extension to PDF.

I am wondering why standard 8.5x11 PDFs don't display well (or so I've heard). I get my reader in around 15 hours from now, so I can figure it out then, too...but the question is that since the resolution is quite high, it seems like it could show a complete page, just without the sharpness and everything would be tiny.

I have the iPaq HX4700 and it has a 480x640 4" screen. It can display incredibly small text...almost enough to show an entire page. The reader has 600x800 resolution if I'm not mistaken. Oh well, I guess I'll see soon enough.

I think you'll find that they don't display at all well. Normal text, sized for an A4/Letter page just can't be read comfortably on the Reader's 6" screen, and you can't zoom in on it. There are some tools downloadable from this forum (which others can advise you on) which do things like chop each PDF page into multiple pages on the Reader, but PDF is best avoided if there are alternatives.

Sorry - I was in no way at all denigrating Hadrien's stirling work at "Feedbooks" - apologies if that's the way my message came across. Re-reading it I see that it could indeed be interpreted like that, which I certainly didn't intend.

The reason I dislike even "correctly sized" PDFs personally is that you're stuck with the font size that the creator of the PDF thinks is the right one to use. When I use the Reader with the LRF files I create myself, I read most of the time using the "small" font size, but when it's late at night and I'm tired, or I'm reading somewhere with poor light, I switch to "medium" because it's a lot easier on the eyes. I can't do that with PDF!

Wrong. On Feedbooks, you can easily generate PDF with both the font, and the size that you'd prefer. It only takes a few seconds to set your settings and once it's done, you can select "Custom PDF" on every book and also for the RSS/Sudokus/Newspapers.
It's true that you can't exactly resize PDFs on the fly, but there's good sides too: since you can't reflow the text, the flowing itself is much better with hyphenation support, kerning, better justification etc... and that's exactly what we're improving with our PDF right now: better typesetting.
Feedbooks will support reflowing format too in the future, but currently I'm a bit disappointed with the poor typesetting of such formats (seems like some folks feel the same way: http://forum.irexnet.com/viewtopic.php?t=1256 )

I am wondering why standard 8.5x11 PDFs don't display well (or so I've heard). I get my reader in around 15 hours from now, so I can figure it out then, too...but the question is that since the resolution is quite high, it seems like it could show a complete page, just without the sharpness and everything would be tiny.

I have the iPaq HX4700 and it has a 480x640 4" screen. It can display incredibly small text...almost enough to show an entire page. The reader has 600x800 resolution if I'm not mistaken. Oh well, I guess I'll see soon enough.

If you're comfortable reading PDF's on your PDA, then you shouldn't have a problem on the Reader once the PDF's are converted using one of the methods found in this forum; e.g., PDFRasterfarian or PDFRead. I've converted quite a few using the former, but have been too busy reading regular books to fiddle with PDF's of late. The programs tend to run several filters on the PDF's to make them more easily viewable on the Reader. You'll see when you get it, but might as well have a few test cases available so you can suit to your particular taste. It's the grey-scale thing that really mucks things up, your PDA does 64k color, where this does simple 4-shade greyscale (might not sound too impressive, but viewing photos on the Reader are sweet!).

If you haven't already, d/l BookDesigner and get familiar with it, that way you can format books to your taste and can convert from LIT, RTF, TXT, DOC, etc. to the more useful/native LRF format.

Edit: Forgot to mention about the page differences, the Reader screen is a tad smaller than a typical paperback, so even with margins shrunk, books tend to be 2-3x longer in length than their PB compatriates (most run over 1000 pages, where 300 pages are basically short-stories).

Yea, I realized that right away. I'm reading Moby Dick on medium and it's over 1800 pages! Talk about a long book! I'm also using the librivox audiobook and I must say it works GREAT! I have the Reader on my nightstand with the charger right there.

::I charged it and it still shows 2 bars. I heard Leo Laporte talking about his Reader only showing 1 bar all the time on a Security Now episode. Does it have to be powered on when charged to update the battery display?

But for the book, it's amazing! I start by turning it on at the music player with my current chapter paused. I then play it and in a few seconds can be back to my book. Then, when I'm done, I just flip back to the music player and stop it. It works so well I cannot believe with great sound quality.

Yes, it would be nice if there was a way to pause the audio from the book screen...how about pushing the directional pad--it could pause the audio. And there is a volume control! It couldn't be any better!

::I charged it and it still shows 2 bars. I heard Leo Laporte talking about his Reader only showing 1 bar all the time on a Security Now episode. Does it have to be powered on when charged to update the battery display?

It's a firmware bug.

All you have to do is, once it's finished charging (ie when the little light above the power switch goes off), turn the Reader on and, with it turned on, momentarily connect the cable from the wall charger. The battery meter will immediately jump to show 4 bars and will then read correctly (until next time you charge, at least).

I read about an hour a day and only need to recharge once every 3-4 weeks, so no big deal. Hopefully Sony will fix it at some point in a firmware update.

I am quite impressed with the audiobook capability and sincerely predict that they will start working with Audible in the near future. I wouldn't be hugely interested, though, because I already spent so much on the Reader and will work with free books for now.

I'm gonna start a thread about getting content with a poll. RIGHT NOW I am.

Audiobooks have been available for the hearing challenged since those old 78 records.

Have you tried podiobooks (http://www.podiobooks.com/index.php)? They're fantastic. I listen to them while working in the shop, of course not when the planer's roaring. :D

I'm a huge fan of audio books, but I use my iPod for that. Use the right tool for the right job. Read on the Reader, audio books on the iPod.

Agreed!

And I have to add that frankly the quality of sound from the reader really stinks. :(

My Rio Karma does sound better for sure.

lol. From the initial testing I've done it sounds pretty dang good with very little background fuzz, which is one of the biggest issues for me. Are you using decent headphones? I'll admit I haven't tried my expensive Etymotic's on it yet but the two or three headphones I've tried have sounded quite impressive, including with music. Again, though, I didn't really try to listen for quality...and I'm used to great sound since I use lossless encoding and have some high-end speakers.

I'm still deciding on the music-playing aspect of the Reader. I can understand the extra drain on the battery, but I am still intrigued by the thought of not needing to have two devices with me in order to listen to music while reading.

I have already decided not to use the memory card to hold books, since I have seen that reading from the memory card does drain the battery faster than storing the books on the reader itself.

So yesterday I filled my 2GB SD card with mp3 files and will see how that affects battery drain just having it in the reader, since most of the time I don't listen to music while reading. But I do appreciate the ability to do so and will continue my experiment.

I am aware that once listening to music starts, I can't put the reader down without actively turning it off since the auto-off function doesn't work if there's a music file playing.

All they would have to do is make the right directional pad push-in do is pause the music. Right now, that button doesn't seem to do anything...perfect! One button right from the reading screen.

Please post any results you get. I'm not really worried about the battery personally because I store it on my nightstand and the charger is right there. Basically, I just need to charge it every night like I do with my phone, iPaq, iPod, laptop, etc. Most people these days are used to charging devices every day...you just gotta do it if you use battery power. Just because the reader can have enough power to go for a long time ... well, just ignore that face and get in the habit of charging every day...or I suppose two days. Have your charger where you store it and don't forget USB charging so you can charge it by any computer with the standard USB peripheral cable.

Compare it with an iPod with the same pair of headphones and the quality difference jumps traight in your face. The music add on to the reader makes it seem like the whole marketing idea behind the device is to use it while in a waiting period; be it train, car, plane or plain waiting room. Quality is not the utmost prerequisite, just the number of functions using supported Sony media. It's not real bad, there's just better.

For 64Kb audiobooks, it's good enough even if it ain't great for music. I don't really intend on using it for music much so no worries there!

i use it all the time but in another way i wish i had never heard of it. takes up more time than my ex did.