Well I finally received my reader yesterday. Yay! and now I have actually touched one in the flesh so to speak.
to all the MR contributors that helped me make my decision.
Here are my observations from the Australian point of view of the purchasing process and first day.
Decision is the hardest part, but MR has provided pretty much all the information I have about readers given that there are hardly any in Oz. Although I did see a Kindle at a coffee shop once.
Given that I missed out on a PRS-505 on ebay, I went ahead and purchased a PRS-900 also on ebay. Ozzies, please take care with ebay prices as they are often more expensive than B&H (an alternative that will ship to OZ)
It finally arrives and yippee I am excited. The man of the house thoughtfully goes to his shed to retrieve an Aussie plug to attach to the charger and I am away.
Connecting the reader to the computer installs the sony software automatically. I put Calibre on the other day as I was informed by MR members that it would be superior to Sony. Now to open Calibre I have to shut the Sony software down as it automatically opens when I connect the reader.(I am worried about conflict)
During the set up (reader only) I inadvertantly tell the reader I am in the UK. There is no choice for Australia anyway. It wants to calibrate the touch screen several times, but eventually lets me continue putting the date/time etc. Later it wants to calibrate again and I have awful trouble getting it to work, but I have to tap harder and more accurately.
Then in the Sony reader library I see I can get 100 free books but I have to register first. The link takes me to a registration page where I am apparently in the UK. Should I lie about this just to get free books? I have not registered it yet as I am unsure about it and there is no choice for Australia.
Anyway, I manage to put 2 books on the reader using Calibre and I am currently reading one. "The life and adventures of William Buckley". It is a free google book from 1852.
Some letters in the book are wrong, but I guess this is because Google has scanned it to OCR and errors occur. I don't know if this is common with ebooks.
I have noticed the glare that people talk about, although it is not enough to stop my enjoyment. I guess if you are used to a less glary screen it would bother you.
So far so good. I am getting the hang of page turning with touch swipe (which intuitively seems to go the wrong way).
The MR forums and all the wonderful help from members has made what would be a real struggle a lot easier.
Cheers