So it sounds like they played with it for half an hour & decided to write a review.
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Disconcerting delay. When you move from one page to another, the screen doesn’t refresh instantly. Instead, the old page disappears and is momentarily, and distractingly, replaced by a negative image of the next page (that is, white print on a black background) before the new page settles in. The process takes about a second—not fatally long, but hardly ideal.
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It took me about 30 pages of the first book I read on my Reader to get used to the page flash. Maybe it really bothers some of you?
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Display quirks. While you can view PDF files, you can’t zoom in on them, so the contents of the page are virtually unreadable. The display can show only a few shades of gray, so photos have a grainy, dithered look, albeit a better one than on the first-generation Reader.
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Guess I didn't buy mine to display photos on, but I didn't think they looked to bad when I looked at the sample images. It displays PDF just fine if it's a 3.54" x 4.72" PDF and not an A4/Letter size one. A zoom & scroll feature would make some sense for viewing larger PDFs
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Missing features. There’s no built-in light, which could come in handy when there’s not much ambient light. We didn’t have enough light to read in a dimly lighted commuter van, for example. A search function to enable you to find a specific passage or phrase would be useful as well.
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A light wouldn't be a bad thing, but so far (about 60 books) I haven't missed one. A search function might be useful, although I'm not sure how useful. I see all these 6" readers as fiction readers & I don't see needing to search a fiction book. For reference material it would be useful, but these readers aren't really ideal for anything but fiction IMO.
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Minimal Mac compatibility. Downloading purchased books to the reader still requires Sony’s software, which only works in Windows. The reader’s storage system shows up as a USB memory device on whatever computer you plug it into, so Mac users might be able to transfer unprotected files (such as PDF and Word documents) to their Reader.
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This is one area I think all of the readers could be better. I don't see what's so hard about making their software cross platform.
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And while you can only buys books for the Reader, the Kindle allows you to subscribe to newspapers and magazines, which download wirelessly to the device
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You can get magazines for the Reader, just look at Fictionwise. Newpapers? I guess, in the sense that you can't buy a subscription. libprs500 does a nice job with the NY Times (only one I tried) IMO. For daily news I can see the wireless feature of the Kindle being nice.