So where the heck is the Sony Reader's new firmware?!?

[shousa]

Originally Posted by kacir

I suspect that It did not occur to anybody at Sony to put "being able to index 10 000 books database" into the software specification.
If they anticipated that a typical user might want to carry around more than a few dozens of books they would have to provide some kind of directory functionality. When you load a few thousand books on the reader it means you have to browse through a few hundred of pages of book list. That is INSANE.

Please notice that they advertise 60 or so books you can save in the built-in memory as large number. I am afraid that the envisaged the average-end-user usage scenario was something like
- buy Reader (Profit!)
- buy a book or two at Connect store (Profit again!)
- read the book(s)
- buy another book (Profit yet again!)
- read the book
- (in the meanwhile) look at some of the 10 stored photos (boyfriend, grandchildren, spouse, ...) or perhaps read a shopping list
- ... repeat many times ...

Yes, I agree with you. There is quite a few things that would improve the functionality for us - geeks, gadet lowers, power users, text hoarders. I personally dislike the way PRS500 handles hefty bunch of rtf files placed on the memory card.
I was just pointing out in my previous rant why I think that a firmware update is quite unlikely from the Sony point of view.

Again I 100% agree - are you my biological twin?

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by dhill

The February '08 time frame came from this long post from earlier this year.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19023

Yes, I see. Thank you for that correction, dhill!

[eppythacher]

Originally Posted by AprilHare

I tend to suspect the Sony firmware, not the Sony software nor hardware, with respect to the crashes associated with large eBook collections. I use a 8 GB memory stick* (which indeed supports quite a large collection of eBooks) and it is, as you say, very buggy after disconnection. My routine comes down to:
1) Download the eBooks to the Sony Reader.
2) Discover the 'non-circling spinning arrows', followed by endless reboots and more 'non-circling spinning arrows'.
2a) Panic.
3) Remove the memory stick during a reboot. If no reboot, madly press the Reset button (which seems more like a 'Free Beer' button sometimes) and hopefully induce one.
4) Reinsert the Memory Stick and quickly reconnect the Reader to the PC running the Sony software.
5) Disconnect the Reader, then hopefully the Reader starts again recompiling the contents of the memory stick..
6) Wait 20 minutes or so, keeping an eagle eye on the Reader just in case it jams again.
7) Hopefully it finishes, showing that new book goodness. If not, go back to 2a.
8) Get used to waiting longer and longer for menus to load, saving bookmarks and getting used to scrolling hundreds of pages of books one slow click at a time...

Yes, a new firmware revision is needed.

*Yes, the 8 GB memory stick is supported by the Sony Reader (despite what the Sony Reader packaging said, greater than 4 GB indeed works).

Ya, i have the same issue on my 2 gig mem stick. Sony uses a Linux? os so I don't know why it's not more stable? They need to open source it since they don't really update it.

[pettitoes]

This is a problem for me and eager to using new firmware. My reader shows " Firmware update did not complete successfully. Please try again" and I don't know what to do with it if I can't get the new firmware.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by pettitoes

This is a problem for me and eager to using new firmware. My reader shows " Firmware update did not complete successfully. Please try again" and I don't know what to do with it if I can't get the new firmware.

Did you try contacting Sony to get a copy of the present firmware to overwrite your current copy? I'd think there support folks could send it via email easily.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Did you try contacting Sony to get a copy of the present firmware to overwrite your current copy? I'd think there support folks could send it via email easily.

Not necessarily. The fact that the current firmware is installed on new 505s doesn't mean that it's also available as a "reflash package".

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Not necessarily. The fact that the current firmware is installed on new 505s doesn't mean that it's also available as a "reflash package".

Well from a support perspective it's one of the first things they should have created for their own repair folks to have in their tool kit.

[AprilHare]

It works... Sony told me so. I submit proof: http://esupport.sony.com/perl/suppor...324&mdl=PRS500
The wise only speak of what they know to be true.

Originally Posted by NatCh

This may appear to be the case without really being so. (I'm not saying it ain't so, just that it may look like it is but not be -- though I'm suspicious that the latter is indeed the case)

It may be that the Reader is only showing you the contents of the first 4GB of the card. The only way to check this is to fill the thing with more than 4GB worth of files and see if they all show up in the Reader's index. You don't have to look at all the pages to do that, by the way, if you put 400* files on it, and it only admits to having say 350* then you know it's not seeing the whole card.

We know that's the way it behaves with SD cards over 2GB, but I don't know if anyone's actually tested a Memory Stick this way or not.


*NOTE: numbers colonically generated for example purposes, and may have no bearing on reality.

[AprilHare]

I'm sure Sony should be made aware that some people really do have an unquenchable thirst for books and as such should at least have had an inkling they would upload a lot of books to their Sony Reader. Maybe they should have planned ahead a little. I disagree, it is not insanity to want to have a lot of books handy and hence have the need to navigate a lot of books. I submit Project Gutenberg DVDs for evidence of this.
Maybe a simple addition to the firmware might be to interpret holding down a number for a few seconds to indicate moving 10%, 20%, etc. through the book list - in a fashion that is very much like navigating the eBooks themselves.
That, and get rid of those nasty crashes and slowdowns. It's just a matter of some code tidying up, presumably.

Originally Posted by kacir

I suspect that It did not occur to anybody at Sony to put "being able to index 10 000 books database" into the software specification.
If they anticipated that a typical user might want to carry around more than a few dozens of books they would have to provide some kind of directory functionality. When you load a few thousand books on the reader it means you have to browse through a few hundred of pages of book list. That is INSANE.

Please notice that they advertise 60 or so books you can save in the built-in memory as large number. I am afraid that the envisaged the average-end-user usage scenario was something like
- buy Reader (Profit!)
- buy a book or two at Connect store (Profit again!)
- read the book(s)
- buy another book (Profit yet again!)
- read the book
- (in the meanwhile) look at some of the 10 stored photos (boyfriend, grandchildren, spouse, ...) or perhaps read a shopping list
- ... repeat many times ...

Yes, I agree with you. There is quite a few things that would improve the functionality for us - geeks, gadet lowers, power users, text hoarders. I personally dislike the way PRS500 handles hefty bunch of rtf files placed on the memory card.
I was just pointing out in my previous rant why I think that a firmware update is quite unlikely from the Sony point of view.

[AprilHare]

Originally Posted by eppythacher

Ya, i have the same issue on my 2 gig mem stick. Sony uses a Linux? os so I don't know why it's not more stable? They need to open source it since they don't really update it.

Sony uses Linux, it's true. However, the application it runs is their own creation. The Linux portion is already open sourced. Download it here: http://www.sony.net/Products/Linux/D.../PRS-500U.html

[cmacnaug]

Originally Posted by kacir

Regular visitors on this forum know that I do not like the Sony Company.

Yet, after months of careful reading of this forum and months of deliberation I have decided to buy (and import) Sony reader PRS500. That was almost a year ago. And I am a very, very happy owner.

I tell you why there are no firmware updates. The reason is simple. Very simple. The Reader JUST WORKS (Tm).

Not sure I'd agree that "the Reader JUST WORKS". I love my reader and find it to be very usable in most cases, but there are some not so 'fringe' usecases where I'm not too pleased:

Perhaps it's just my model, but the first two books I read after purchasing my 505 were Anna Karenina and War and Peace. Both of these books were quite large. Opening War and Peace takes about a minute. Changing zoom level takes about a minute. I suppose you can argue that this isn't a bug but, I wouldn't mind some performance improvements. That said once the book is open it works quite well. In general I'm a big fan of the reader, I just wish that Anna Karenina wasn't the first title in the list since when I show it to someone they almost always attempt to open it ... and they immediately get a really bad impression of the reader.

I've also found that using an SD card tanks battery life. If I leave the reader in standby with an SD card inserted battery will run out in about 3 days (even if I don't use the book) instead of about 2 weeks sans SD. I'd say in general power consumption in standby could use some work ... I'm nowhere near 8000 page turns. I think I probably get more like 500 page turns.

I'd also point out that RTF support is pretty buggy. I've only been successful with the most basic RTF documents. Many RTF docs that I've tried simply won't display in the reader which is a shame because I'd love to be able to store work documents (e.g. MS Word as RTF) on the device as well.

Beyond that PDF support isn't too hot either. Reading a page in portrait mode is pretty uncomfortable since the text comes out too small, and switching to landscape mode everytime I want to read a PDF is a bit cumbersome. Again user friendly PDF support would be a big plus for storing work documents.

I'd also agree with other users' comments that the flat directory system is a little bit weak. Either a hierarchical system, or some sort of support for categorized library access (e.g. fiction, non-fiction, reference, recipes, work, school etc...) would be more useful.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by cmacnaug

I just with that Anna Karenina wasn't the first title in the list since when I show it to someone they almost always attempt to open it ... and they immediately get a really bad impression of the reader.

Perhaps you could rename books that you've read by putting a zzz in front of them, which would sort them to the bottom of the alpa list.

BOb

[astra]

Re: cmacnaug

Why do you need a card? Is not it enough 190M of internal memory to store a number of books that would keep you busy for 1 year at least? But I understand it is a personal thing.

Anyway, you say that it takes 1 minute to open some books. You probably didn't use eBook Library to import the books onto your reader. I always use the software and doesn't matter how big is the book they open in a few seconds. Also, you probably open them from card, that might slow the reader as well.

Buggy RTF:
Did you create the RTF properly? with a Western Font Script?

PDF sucks on the reader but so it does on any other 6" reader. Nothing can be done with current A4 PDFs to make them readable on 6" screen, well besides pdflrf that works only for Sony Reader, other readers do not have even this helper.

8000 page turns - if you charge the reader, open a book from internal memory and turn pages non stop, probably you will be able to reach close to 7500 as promised. Otherwise tough. It is a price for an ability of Sony Reader to turn on within 2 seconds after you press power button. Just as a side note, other readers claim the same or even bigger number of pages while they last even less than Sony Reader.

I still insist that the reader just works. Some problems that you describe are not something that was promised to you when you were buying the reader but doesn't function for some reason and you need a firmware upgrade in order to rectify the problem. They might add new features but they don't have to and it is not absolutely neccessary.

The reader does what is was supposed to do (with one exception - PDF).

[MerLock]

I think like anything else out there, the sony reader and the website can both be improved.

I've heard a lot about using SD cards and having it drain the battery life. I'm not sure that is what it's "suppose" to be doing. And I'm guessing Sony anticipated there would be users who would like to use SD cards since they do support them on the reader.

[macgeek21]

when did Sony say they would be issuing a new version of the firmware?