So I had the 500 for 2 years before I bought a 505, in those 2 years, my 500 crashed _once_. battery life was excellent, and about the only thing that bothered me about it was significant ghosting.

Then I bought my 505. It crashes about once a week, just goes blank and reboots during a page change. This wouldn't be so bad if it didn't always forget which book I was reading and completely lose my place in it. Does anyone else have this problem? also, the battery life is significantly worse than my old 500. About half the life, in fact.

Ghosting is minor, and contrast is excellent. There's no way I could go back, but the constant crashing is pretty annoying.

I agree. My PRS500 is stabler than PRS505. I repeatedly experienced crashes, reboots and corrupted cache.xml on my PRS505. Oh well...

Are you reading books in epub format?? Only time I crashed the device was when I was reading an epub formatted ebook.

Then I bought my 505. It crashes about once a week, just goes blank and reboots during a page change. .

I've not had a crash yet, and I read on the 505 quite a bit. It might be worth considering your warranty possibilities. Some of the longer term people around here might be able to advise whether a reformat could be worth your while, but if getting close to the warranty period expiration I would log the fault with wherever you bought the 505 from.

In my case, sometime (but not very often) PRS-505 resets itself and forgets bookmarks. It seems that the problem occurs more frequently when files are deleted using PRS-505 menu (Utilities - Delete Book). This is just a guess but I suspect that the deleting function occasionally corrupts files such as 'cache.xml'.

Mine's hung once, but that was my fault.

I make my 505 crash all the time :), but it (almost) never loses history and bookmark information after a crash.

I've been reading on my 505 for nearly a year (Christmas will be the 1 year mark). On average, I read on it about 3.5 hours a day. I have not yet had a crash or any other problem (excluding problems caused by my own stupidity, of course).

In ten months of constant use, I've never had a single crash.

Mine crashes every once in a while. It does so either when I am reading a book from the SD card or one particular book that I downloaded from the Sony Bookstore. When it does crash I usually lose my latest (but not all) bookmarks. On the other hand, my battery life has been excellent. Even with both datacards in place, It's only gotten down to half charge once.

My 505 is very stable.

Mine crashes if I open too many LRF files within a short amount of time. I know it makes no sense but that's what happens. And I lose all my collections and bookmarks sometimes. :(

Well, the Caveat for me is that _all_ of my books are converted from LIT or MOBI. (I refuse to buy or use books that I cannot convert to another format if I decide to switch reader types, so no Sony store books). I use Calibre to do my conversions. The crashing happened a lot more often for me when I was using Calibre to transfer my books, but it seemed related to the requirement to paginate, as that was most often when it crashed. Now, however, I use the sony software for transferring, and the crashes happen on random page turns, although more often at a chapter break than not.

I read 2-3 hours a day (long commute), and in general I don't swap books a lot, or use bookmarks, or do anything much except page forward. Despite that, I have to charge my device about once a week or two weeks, and it crashes about once a week. Seems to me like the device has a memory leak, since one of the cases I had, it was refusing to show cover images, and photos, and then crashed a few minutes after that (I was trying to show it to a friend, kinda embarrasing).

For the folks who say they've never had problems, do you shut down your reader fully, or just use the top on/off button?

I've been using my 505 for about 3 months. Frankly speaking, I don't read much. So far I did about 3,000 pages on it and only had one crash - after uploading a book using Adobe Digital Edition.

I don't even use the on/off switch at the top unless I need to put it into my bag.

I've had my 505 for 12 months now. I use it every day and no crashes so far.

Never had a crash yet (fingers crossing) in the 5 months since purchase. I use it most every day, at least 5 days a week. Bounce around between different books all the time. Battery life is good. I charge every couple weeks.

I would say I don't keep it very loaded. I keep the ebooks in it under 25 or 20. When I'm done with things, I delete them off the reader, so maybe problems arise when it gets really full of data. ????

Or maybe you just got a bit of a dud from the factory. It happens.

I got my Reader just after they became available in the Uk, and use it daily. I keep about 40/50 books on it, deleting as I read. So far I have it has never crashed at all.

Mine didn't used to and it does now.

I was trying to reorganize it and fix stuff, since it had become a jumbled mess, so I took all the books off and then put them back on. Since then, when I go to a book I haven't opened yet or resize one that hasn't been resized yet (pretty much when it would give me the nice twirling arrows), it occasionally will reboot itself and then go back to wherever it had been when I first turned it on, like what I had done since had never happened.

Not sure why though, since it never crashed before that. Was it from putting the books on? Adding collections? Having the memory almost completely full now? It's completely linked to when I did that, or a huge coincidence, so I wish I could figure out how to fix it.

mine does the same. Was fine for a few months, even when adding new books, had about 300 on there with no formatting/rebooting etc. All of a sudden it just formats everything on first opening, still the same amount of books, tried taking some off dropped from 300 to around 200 books still formats them all, occasionally reboots and looses bookmarks and collections. I have learnt to live with it. I am getting the red one at Xmas so will see if that behaves the same, but I am guessing its just a quirk the reader has, especially when almost full, though the first one was fine for around 2 months when full.

Still adore it though, quirks and all

I've had mine since April and use it daily. It's crashed a couple of times on me, but for the most part is pretty solid. I do carry a lot of books on it--about 225 or so. Most are in LRF format, with a few in PDF format. I have a 2gb SD card installed, but only have a few files on it.

dordale :)

Mine never crashes. My 500 crashed a few times, but not had my 505 crqsh on me.

i have mine since november 2007 no problem here.

I have had it for 3 months now and it crashed only when opening .rtf with pictures in the file - but in this case it crashed always. When I removed the pictures, all the files opened nicely. I read .rtf and .txt stored on the built-in memory (no need for memory cards for me as I use less than 100 megs of storage), so far I have finished cca. 50 books and no other crashes ever happened. I use bookmarks quite often. I found the PRS-505 to be pretty reliable.

I've been using my 505 for about 3 months. Frankly speaking, I don't read much. So far I did about 3,000 pages on it and only had one crash - after uploading a book using Adobe Digital Edition.

I don't even use the on/off switch at the top unless I need to put it into my bag.

BTW, I have ~150 books on it - 1/3 in SONY format, 1/3 in RTF and the rest in PDF.

A lot of my RTF books have the first page as a scanned picture (book cover). I've never had any problem opening it (the picture does not display of course).

I have had it for 3 months now and it crashed only when opening .rtf with pictures in the file - but in this case it crashed always. When I removed the pictures, all the files opened nicely. I read .rtf and .txt stored on the built-in memory (no need for memory cards for me as I use less than 100 megs of storage), so far I have finished cca. 50 books and no other crashes ever happened. I use bookmarks quite often. I found the PRS-505 to be pretty reliable.

Strange, I never had problem opening RTF with pictures. Only that the embedded pictures won't show up. But the text is fine and no crash.

My 500 used to crash from time to time when I tried to upload an iffy RTF file on it until the latest firmware update which cured the problem. Since then 500 crashed only once when my wife let the battery go absolutely flat.
I use 505 for 11 months now. I read every day. Not a single crash so far (finger's crossed). I read LRF books only. But I have tested pdf and rtf files too. I have loaded 2 epubs. Found them slow and awkward, don't use them anymore.

Never had a crash yet (fingers crossing) in the 5 months since purchase. I use it most every day, at least 5 days a week. Bounce around between different books all the time. Battery life is good. I charge every couple weeks.

I would say I don't keep it very loaded. I keep the ebooks in it under 25 or 20. When I'm done with things, I delete them off the reader, so maybe problems arise when it gets really full of data. ????

Or maybe you just got a bit of a dud from the factory. It happens.

I have 35Mb of free space left. No crashes here. I brick it all the time, but that's my fault.

Mine has never crashed either. I only have about 30-40 books at most on it at any given time, and only one PDF (5 page knitting pattern). Sometimes the screen acts funny when it is cold or sun is on it, and then occasionally it freezes when it is plugged in to my computer, but usually it only lasts a minute.

I don't think mine's ever "crashed." It has lost its collections and bookmarks once, but only for the internal books. I read locked and unlocked Sony books and locked and unlocked pdf's. I've typically got about a dozen books "open" with bookmarks. I do a complete shutdown at night and just hit the power slider or let it go to sleep in the day.

I've had mine for just over a year and have just recently had the reboot problem happen when changing pages. It has happened twice so far and both time I lost the bookmarks. This includes where I am in my current book as well as finished books. I think there is some corruption occurring in whatever file/db they store the bookmark info in that is triggering a reboot/wipe of that data when the machine tries to store the new page when I change pages.

Anyway, I'm sure glad that I can go directly to a specific page now!

I still love the reader and am hoping that this problem does not get worse.

-Greg

I've had my 505 since mid July, and read a minimum of two hours every day. All of my books have been converted with Calibre and transferred to the 505 with the Sony software. I have experienced no crashes in that time. Battery life has been excellent.

I've had mine for somewhere about a year now, and have only had one crash, this is with >360 books, all in LRF format.

I've also had it lose my collection info once but that was my fault.

Just to add to my first post, after 3 months of being fine, mine started formatting all books on opening, even though they are transferred by eLibrary, sometimes while formatting it will reboot and lose bookmarks/collections, quick resync gets it all back.......
However, I decided to remove all 5 of the epubs I bought from Waterstones as I don't read them much and will not be buying more (hate the layout and they are slow).....did a quick resync and once I did this all my remaining books magically opened without formatting as they did in the first few months. Might be a coincidence but I'm leaving the epubs off for now.

Mine crashes if I open too many LRF files within a short amount of time. I know it makes no sense but that's what happens. And I lose all my collections and bookmarks sometimes. :(
Mine does the same.