There's quite a buzz about the new generation of E Ink devices coming to market. This is especially true for the Sony Reader PRS-500 (http://products.sel.sony.com/pa/PRS/index.html?DCMP=reader&HQS=showcase_reader) which made its full debut at the CES show in Las Vegas earlier this year and was originally scheduled to be rolled-out in Borders and SonyStyle stores for spring. Being the geeks that we are, we continue to gather here at MobileRead looking for the latest information and rumors as the excitement grows.

Now is your chance to cut right past the rumors and speculation and get some straight answers from the Sony Reader team. They were particularly kind to contact us with an offer to answer questions from the MobileRead community.

This is your big chance to hear what you want to know, right from the source. To participate, please post your burning questions about the Sony Reader in this thread and we will route the best of them to the Sony folks next week.

PS: If you are looking for some base information about the reader, be sure to check out our Sony Reader forum (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=100).

Q: When will the Sony Reader become available in other countries? Europe? Asia?

I guess I'll start with the obvious question: has this thing gone through a beta test stage? A few minutes reading through the Iliad forum topics on this very web site demonstrates the importance of polishing the software.

Has Sony tested firmware updates, and how are they delivered to the end user?

Has Sony experienced any issues with 'ghosting'?

Has Sony stress-tested battery life under a variety of conditions?

Is the Sony Reader's battery user replacable?

Exactly which file formats are supported natively (ie, copy file to memory stick, insert memory stick, file works?) and which file formats require conversion?

If the Reader supports PDF natively, can it handle PDF files with lots of graphics? Can it zoom or rotate the page?

Will the Sony Reader or the Connect Store support subscription content (such as magazines and newspapers?)

What will the warranty cover? Can customers buy extra warranty coverage for things like cracked screens (as you can with laptops)?

If the Sony Reader breaks, what will it take to move DRMd content to a replacement machine? Or, what if Sony introduces a new improved Reader a few years later - same question!

What is Sony's exit strategy? If Sony decides to leave the eBook market or abandon the Reader, what options will customers have to retain access to the content they've paid for?

Will Sony provide software and support for customers using Mac OS X?

For those of us who purchase exclusively content with NO DRM(!)... How will the Sony Reader support files with no DRM? For example, I purchase lots of e-books from Baen Books -- lots of formats, good prices, NEVER any DRM! How will I be able to use such content on the Sony Reader?

Secondly, will I be able to put non-DRM content on a flash memory card of some sort, and then use it on the Sony Reader?

I'd also like to second the question about Mac OS X support. Note that answers like "Windows only" or "just use BootCamp to run Windows on your Mac Hardware" would guarantee that I will never purchase your product, or any content for it.

Lastly, will Sony's online store support non-DRM content if that's what the publisher wants? There are certainly some publishers who take that position (Baen, O'Reilly, and the National Academies Press, among others). Will I be able to purchase such content through Sony?

Man! you guys asked already the most questions that I wanted to ask. :P

What I want to know is when the Reader will be released for sure.

Some general reading-related questions:

1) Can I listen to songs while reading?
2) Can I bookmark a location in a book and return to it later?
3) Can I "jump" forward/backward while reading by something other than 1 page (chapter, 10 page jumps, etc)?
4) What is the display's expected lifetime?
5) Can I create "folders" and generally configure/manage the organization of content? (ie: through the included PC software).

I second the question on native formats, and on release date (both for US and other areas -especially Europe).

I find it very positive for Sony to be willing to face the fans. It is something I really did not expect from such a large company.

It is something I really did not expect from such a large company.
Agreed. I think they are doing an excellent PR job here.

Many thanks for answering people's questions. I'm curious if Sony's fully considering the publishers' side. Someone with a huge publishing conglomerate tells me that there are already too many formats to support for the amount of resources this giant company has available. Now, think about the smaller publishers. And of course the rumored Apple machine might just add to the Tower of eBabel (http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=5072). What's more, an Adobe executive has said that BBeB will not be eternal (http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=4207). Meanwhile, as you can tell from other questions, format/DRM issues are very important to readers. Even now it would appear that the Sony Reader can't even handle DRMed PDF, the kind that big publishers prefer, especially for best-sellers.

Bottom line: Could it be that Sony would be better off going for a common format rather than paying--yes, paying--for books to be converted to the BBeB format? Can you really keep paying forever? And mightn't a common format might be one way to distinguish yourself from Apple, which probably will go for a proprietary approach? What do you think? Many thanks, and good luck with the Reader.

- David Rothman (http://www.teleread.org/blog) (wearing his OpenReader (http://www.openreader.org) hat).

In other devices you can use a dictionary selecting text with the stylus on the screen... is there any similar functionality in the Sony Reader?

Cheers,

L.

What is the maximum sized flash card that the Reader can handle?

Are access and screen refresh rates slower on media that is saved on a flash card then on the device?

Can the Reader read archived .Jpeg’s such as in .Zip or .Rar files?

Is there any planned support for Microsoft’s .Lit format?

How does audio file navigation work when you’re reading a book? (can you change a track without having to exit the book you’re reading to go to another menu?)

Do PDF’s need to be formatted in some way to make sure the text flows properly on the Readers screen?

Here is one that I think a few of us would like to know:

Is Sony already working on a successor of the Sony Reader? E Ink technology is already a step ahead with 1024x768 display kits as used for the iRex iLiad. I would want to see the Reader with this bigger resolution (and diagonal).

Also, does Sony have any guidelines from E Ink when we can expect the first E Ink devices with color displays?

With and to all of the above I would add:

Can we have numerous books open at the same time ie. dictionnaries of different languages with the current book read.

Can we transfer notes as in post-its and attach them to the page read.

If the document read is PDF is Acrobat installed on board.

Does one have to reformat existing books that one previously owns.

Is it still possible to change the refresh "flashto black" before redisplay to a "flash to white ".

Is the ghosting effect that is corrected by refreshing due to the little colored cells not being quite correctly at the right optimal vertical position. If this is so could it be corrected by a longer grid charge.

Can a magnet applied to the e-ink sceen modify the display.

Would it be possible to arrange for the connection of a small foldable keyboard like the ones on PDAs.


I'd like to thank Alexander for giving us the opportunity to have a say at Sony's ear, and Sony Itself for listening.

If I download an RSS feed, can I keep the content on the reader? Or will it be automatically deleted after a certain period of time?

Does it have a maximum size or number of posts for each individual RSS feed?

Obviously, I'd like the power to decide how long a particular feed stays on my machine, and how big it is allowed to get.

Will you sell server-side conversion tools?

If yes, how much will they cost?

How much will the ebook creation tool cost? Or is it free?

Great Questions! I am anxious to see the answers.
My principal questions were already asked.

I would like to know just what form the Sony connect DRM will take.
How many copies, to how many devices, what devices, any time restrictions, etc.?

And, of course, it is essential that we have the exact date and time (Universal Time, preferably to the second) that we can buy one. <G>

I already have a long list of both DRM and non-DRM books that I plan to put on the reader. I would hate to have to buy those on paper!

I'm more interested in E Ink for web content than books, per se. Will the Sony Reader support HTML natively, or only through conversion?

Is Sony indeed planning on providing the file format on their ebooks to let users make their own tools for converting books?

(and thus create infinite life for the reader instead of being dependant.)

Sony mentions conversion of some file formats to BBeB using supplied software will their suppllied software be compatiable with Mac systems and will downloads in general be Mac compatable?

Is it true that the use of Kinoma technology was the reason for the major delay - like it was for the Connect software?

The existing BBeBook format does not support the font magnifier feature very well. The pages in a BBeBook need to be paginated in the file but when the font magnifier is used the pagination is not corrected by the book reader, magnified pages break in unexpected places.

Also, the existing format causes a constant struggle between compression efficiency and battery life on the Librie. The file format only allows compression at the text string level, which often means paragraph by paragraph level compression. This results in low compression efficiency for the eBook. But if one sacrifices page layout and uses large runs of text (and depends upon the Librie to paginate the text onto the display) to gain compression efficiency the battery life is negatively impacted to a serious extent.

Will the new Sony Reader and BBeB format support extensions to address these two issues?

Will the new Sony Reader have a more durable case? My existing Librie has ceased to function at 15 months as the pearlescent plastic has chipped out to the point that the main circuit board has failed (case became too flexible.)

Will the new Sony Reader support the enhanced charger specification supported by Motorola and Blackberry that allows supplying up to 1.5A of power through the USB cable? Since the battery is not swappable, the ability to rapidly recharge it would be a key feature.

Will the Sony Reader be more supportive of the monochromatic fast redraw mode? I've tried many times to use this feature on the Librie but found it nearly impossible to stay in this mode since so many areas in the Librie forced me back into 4 level mode in order to display content.

Will the Sony Reader have an accelerometer to allow flipping the device to turn pages? This would be a huge improvement in the ergonomics of page turning since there would no longer be any requirement to hold the unit in any particular way to allow users to press buttons.

So far Sony has only announced an economic incentive of 20% discount off list for content. What further incentives is Sony planning on introducing to offset the expense of the Reader device? A user would need to purchase roughly 130 titles with a list price of $15 in order to "break even" on the Reader expense at the 20% discount. Doesn't Sony Marketing see this as an issue for uptake of this product into the market?

Will the Sony Reader come with some form of strategy games or will these be offered via the Connect store at a later date? The eInk panel won't support action games but solitare/Go/Backgammon/Checkers/Chess/Risk et al would work quite well.

Will the Sony Reader continue to use the reset button of the Librie or will it employ the slide-and-hoid-the-power-switch-for-five-seconds most Notebooks utilize? I can't recount the number of times my Librie was useless because it froze and no piece of steel small enough to fit in the reset hole left me with out its services. Whereas in all cases (until it finally died) it would have responded to holding the power switch and been back up and running.

Will the Sony Reader support a PIN or some other means of securing confidential content on a per-title basis? I've used my Librie to carry around sensitive material but I've always needed to carefully monitor the location of the Librie during periods where it held such content. It would be very useful if the device could treat sensitive material with a PIN and auto-time out visibility of said content e.g. if forgotten screen would blank.

Will the Sony Reader BBeB format support a true italic font (rather than simply a slanted version of the existing font) in response to the embedded italic command?

Will the Sony Reader have support for GIS data? It would be very nice if the Sony Reader had a GIS viewer so maps could be loaded into it. Extra credit if the GIS viewer allowed Map data to be overlaid with GIS sets via standard XML files.

Will the Sony Reader have support for tabular data? It would be very nice if the Sony Reader had a tabular data viewer so XLS/CSV/TSV data could be loaded and viewed. In a meeting not everyone can hand you an SD card with a PDF of the data...

When are all of our questions going to be sent out?

When will the BBeB specs be published?

So many questions to ask! It's so exciting to think about this coming on the market soon!

> What is the target market for the Sony Reader, and why is this device going to be desired by consumers?

> Will the platform and api be open for other developers to write different reader software?

> What led to the decision to support SD cards rather than creating a "memory stick only" device? In the past, Sony has been pretty dogmatic about forcing use of their proprietary media.

> Background activity and power consumption on devices can be significant so page turns doesn't seem to be the best real life estimate of battery life. Approximately, what sort of real-life battery life should be expected in terms of hours spent reading?

> How long does it take to recharge the battery?

> What will come "in the box" with it?

> What formats will be supported natively and what formats will require conversion? What would be the natural steps to take a text or html or pdf document and make it "pleasant" on the reader? (Not perfect layout, but at least reasonable text flow and good margins and nice reading font.)

> What sorts of purchase points will there be? Borders has been publicized as one major reseller. Will they be part of the rollout?

> When can we buy on in the US?!!! Elsewhere?

> There had been previous estimates of an earlier release date... what are the remaining hurdles to make it available? What's the hold up?

> What kind of DRM will the Sony store use, and can we change devices in the future and still read the purchased material? It doesn't seem that very many ebook sellers are here very long despite high hopes. Are there any guarantees to consumers about the books being some way accessible or convertible if the format becomes unsupported? (Sony has pretty much abandoned previous customers in the case of Clie, for example. Seems like the company just turned and ran and never looked back. It's a little frightening to think the same thing might happen for the Sony Reader after buying a boatload of books.)

> What are some of the challenges in adding content to the Connect store? Is it mostly a matter of contract negotiations, or is it an expensive and difficult technical proposition to prepare a book for the Sony Reader?

> The page turn buttons seem backwards.. at least in comparison to what we are used to with a pda. Is it possible to change the settings and reverse the direction, so that the lower button moves to the next page and the upper button moves back a page?

> Is the battery user-replaceable?

> How do bookmarks work? For text documents are there any thoughts of making synchronization available with any Windows ebook readers or Palm/PocketPC readers so the book can be read on multiple platforms at the same time without having to search for you place over and over?

> Does the device work as a USB host so USB storage devices can be attached?

> How long does it take to boot up when turned on, or turn a page or find text or load a book?

> Can it be reset if the device hangs? How?

> Can pages be turned remotely, say with a standard foot pedal switch? (That would allow it to be a sheet music reader for musicians!)

> Can any public RSS feed be read, or just certain formats? How about Atom feeds, RSS2, etc? Or is it only feeds from a Sony provided list of prepared feeds?

> What sort of tradeoffs were made in the design of this product? These things are always hard to resolve because you want to include everything nice, but it's just not practical. Can you give us an idea of some of the thinking that went into making it turn out the way it did?

> Any stories you can share about decisions that were made, or human interest stories about the team members while the development work was being done?

> Where does the team exist? One building? Distributed? How many people work on it? Any team members already at work on designing a new and improved model that we can upgrade to in the future!?

Thanks so much for considering our questions. We are very hungry for more info about it!

Wonderful participation, everyone!

I am going to collect the questions now, sort them out, and then send them over to the Sony folks.

Did they mention when they would get back to us?

They told us yesterday they'd get in touch with us shortly with as many answers as possible.

fantastic. I look forward to the results.

.....with as many answers as possible.

I seriously hope these are honest answers to these honest questions and not
the all-too-common-these-days marketing department BS.
They should realize that superficial answers will not play well with this crowd.....

We shall see......

Hmmm ... It's been a week since the start of the thread ... and still no replies. Hope they answer the questions promptly and not let them pile up. :)

well all replies will have DRM and will autodelete before you get to finish reading them :P

Hmmm ... It's been a week since the start of the thread ... and still no replies. Hope they answer the questions promptly and not let them pile up. :)Actually, the idea was to let them pile up. Alex has compiled them and sent them forward a few days ago. Over at Sony, they are most certainly a very busy product team right now, and our questions may even take some thinking to answer (they probably want to give good info, but will have to balance with some corporate discretion, just like any company with a major initiative not yet released.) Like many of us, I'm very excited to think about hearing back from them soon. It's always hard to wait!

Hmmm ... It's been a week since the start of the thread ... and still no replies. Hope they answer the questions promptly and not let them pile up. :)
That's OK. The idea was to collect all important questions and then forward them to Sony -- which they received three days ago. The question catalogue isn't trivial, so I'd give them a bit more time ;) Once they answered all or most questions, they will get back in contact with us and we'll post them here. Promised!

I still find it funny that Sony would listen to someone. I can't let go of that thought.
Must be some overzealous young exec like those former Apple evangelists.

Everyone deserves a second chance, right? :cool:

I seriously hope these are honest answers to these honest questions and not
the all-too-common-these-days marketing department BS.
They should realize that superficial answers will not play well with this crowd.....

We shall see......


Well, Mark Frauenfelder over at BoingBoing got the same opportunity, and from his posting it seemed that it was not Sony per se answering the questions, but Sony's PR firm - or, at least, the QA session was coordinated by the PR firm. They may pass some on to the technical people, and some may be answered by marketing, or they could just spin a web of lies ;-) I think something in between total honesty and PR spin is what we'll see - I hope so, anyway.

Well, Mark Frauenfelder over at BoingBoing got the same opportunity, and from his posting it seemed that it was not Sony per se answering the questions, but Sony's PR firm - or, at least, the QA session was coordinated by the PR firm.
Oh, it's definitely being coordinated via Sony's PR firm -- they hit Make's forums as well (as BoingBoing and here) and if I remember correctly, their notice was pretty clear on that, and this is clearly more of a PR function than engineering/marketing function anyway.

Keep in mind that Sony is a big company (which means they often don't do things what we might call 'quickly'), and the PR firm (not actually part of Sony) is coordinating the questions. Then it'll probably have to go through Marketing, Techies and (the biggest slow-down of all) Corporate HQ in Tokyo. After that, back to the PR guys, for further folding, spindling and mutilating, then it'll come back here. So I counsel patience -- maybe a "Sony Reader" Meditation Thread is in order? :shy:

I'm confident that they'll send the same set of answers to all three forums, so the BoingBoing and Make folks will get better answers than they knew to ask for (due to MobileReader questions being better informed and more considered). :scholar:

On the other hand, does anyone really think they'd ask for questions and not monitor the forum(s) to see what comes in? I'd expect them to maybe be further along on answering them than we might expect. Of course that also means they might not answer exactly what Alexander sent them....

Anyway, my point is that they're still a big company, which means they move slowly, so patience is in order. Alexander said they told him "a few days" ("few" is such a subjective term), personally, I wouldn't look for anything before the middle of next week, which would still be pretty quick turn-around.

I do want to say that I've been a bit (pleasantly) surprised to see such a general attitude of patience on this forum so far -- very good form, y'all! Hat's off! :happy2:

I really shouldn't be surprised, I suppose, I've been around the forum long enough to see that this is a bunch of folks who (occasional, understandable moments of extreme frustration aside) generally conduct themselves in quite a mature, thoughtful manner. I suppose that's one of the reasons I've continued to hang around. :rolleyes2

Can you post up the list of questions ya'll did submit to Sony?

How fast does Sony Reader open a native PDF and page it? >1 sec or <1 sec?
Will Sony Reader support PDF/BBeB with Asian fonts, such as Japanese,
tranditional/simplified Chinese...?

Will Sony Reade compatible to contents of Librie?
Can user edit the TOC into the books printed by virtual printer (such as Printer for Librie)?
Will Sony Reader provide free BBeB converter program to user?
Will the program provide table of content edition function?

What will the Connect service be?

Well, Mark Frauenfelder over at BoingBoing got the same opportunity, and from his posting it seemed that it was not Sony per se answering the questions, but Sony's PR firm - or, at least, the QA session was coordinated by the PR firm. They may pass some on to the technical people, and some may be answered by marketing, or they could just spin a web of lies ;-) I think something in between total honesty and PR spin is what we'll see - I hope so, anyway.

According to their PR guy I have been in contact with, he'll forward our questions to a product manager from the Sony Reader team.

Can you post up the list of questions ya'll did submit to Sony?
I'll post them next week when we hopefully get the answers to them. Almost all questions were taken from this thread.

Hi: Where were the answers posted? I don't see them and a lot of time has passed. Ed

Heh, they were in a separate thread, ecmartinjr. But you can find them more easily in the wiki: here (http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Sony_Reader_FAQ).

Note that they apply to the PRS500, many things have changed on the PRS505.