PRS505 Firmware update: epub, DE, and reflow -- oh my!

[athlonkmf]

Originally Posted by Stingo

Any sign of the firmware? We already had a 50 page thread from the earlier announcement.

Stingo

No. we're still reading and absolutely not playing with the new features on our PRS505.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by holden1

I haveupdated to the new firmware. I downloaded a couple of pdf. files from Tor.com, loaded them up and gave them a try. To my dissapointment the files are a mess. As soon as I enlarge the text the words, paragraphs and chapters are broken up. What gives?

You may not have the latest version of DE, it should be 1.5 -- there's a link to it in the original post. Hope that helps.

Originally Posted by Stingo

Any sign of the firmware? We already had a 50 page thread from the earlier announcement.

Hey, Stingo, long time, no see. It's been out about an hour and a half, anyway, have a look here.

[reeder]

Originally Posted by dborja

No. I just installed from my work computer and it worked. I had activated my Sony account on my iMac (WinXP under VMFusion) at home. The updater is a standalone program...

That is a major relief! Thanks, DBORJA! I was worried i might have to go through the pain of dealing w/ sony customer service again... we all know how that tends to go

Thanks for the information re: this!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by kacir

You CAN delete files directly from PRS 500.
try looking for HackBuilder on this site.
One of the hacks is deleting files and copying files from memory to card and vice versa.

But that hack does not work if you have eBooks inside a collection. So basically, that hack is useless.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ambertape

To me it is sad to note that the upcoming PRS-505 upgrade is for the 505 and not the PRS-500 . It seems to me that SONY should consider the pioneers of the PRS-500 and bring them into the PRS-505 world or give us an incentive to trade in the PRS500 for a PRS-505 and then they will not have to develop a upgrade to the owners of the PRS-500. If SONY does nothing for owners of PRS-500 then it might be an idea to sell my unit, and buy another manufacturer product. It is very important for a manufacturer like SONY to get good publicity and not bad publicity. Why should I show this product to my friends ?

The new upgrade needs more memory then is available in the 500. Sorry, but you cannot blame Sony for not seeing the future before the future existed enough to actually see.

[fi79]

Ok - I think I'm being REALLY dense now. Further to me digital editions problem (see earlier post) I just downloaded an epub book and it won't go into my library either. When I try to open the DE file it comes up and says "operation failed due to error" with the epub file it just does nothing at all.

What the heck am I doing wrong!!!???

[athlonkmf]

OK. first test with SDHC card does not look good.

I've thrown 10GB worth of LRF-files on a 16GB card, totalling of 192 books. But the reader only sees 59.

[Minda]

Originally Posted by fi79

Ok - I think I'm being REALLY dense now. Further to me digital editions problem (see earlier post) I just downloaded an epub book and it won't go into my library either. When I try to open the DE file it comes up and says "operation failed due to error" with the epub file it just does nothing at all.

What the heck am I doing wrong!!!???

I was having that same problem. I followed the instructions in the DE help for the PRS-505:
http://www.adobe.com/products/digita...er_sony_reader
I had to connect the Reader, open DE, use my adobe login to authorize the reader with Adobe. To get my DE book to work on the Reader I had to make DE show my books in a list by using the list icon on the top right, and then dragged the book to the icon for the PRS-505 on the left.
Once I disconnected the reader from the computer it took it about 5 minutes of showing the arrows chasing each other in a circle before it let me see the DE book! Frustrating! I could cry all over again, but it worked. I hope you can get yours to work too!

[smaulz]

Originally Posted by Minda

Once I disconnected the reader from the computer it took it about 5 minutes of showing the arrows chasing each other in a circle before it let me see the DE book! Frustrating! I could cry all over again, but it worked. I hope you can get yours to work too!

Had the same problem, thought it had locked up. So far, I'm not overly impressed with the update. PDFs still look like garbage unless they're strictly text (with no hard line breaks). I know I was probably expecting too much, but I really thought this would work better than it has. I guess I'll get back to manually reformatting my ridiculous collection of PDFs.

[RWJ]

I bought one! I was planning to look at it in the store, and then check back here for reports of how well the PDFs worked, but the guy persuaded me that with the 30-day return policy I should buy it and try it out. I'm very very very happy right now.

It's taking me a while to get my bearings, but I've tried out two PDFs and like it so far.

Thanks again to all for the endless question answering!

[canicula]

Just updated my PRS-505 on a MacBook Pro running XP in a Parallels VM. Not problems at all. Update for Library software okay as well. Now for DE...

[athlonkmf]

OK. SDHC does not work well with this firmware... I've tried 2 SDHC cards. Resp. 8 and 16GB.

I can transfer all the files to both cards, but the reader can't read them fully. And I can figure out what the limit is. Even throwing only 1.5GB on the card, the reader could only see 27 out of 60+ books.

[athlonkmf]

and.... found some bugs.... when transferring books through the ebooksoftware, the newly added books can't be seen. It will only show 1 page. Trying to open it will say "invalid page".

Only solution... resetting the reader...

[junkml]

Originally Posted by ambertape

To me it is sad to note that the upcoming PRS-505 upgrade is for the 505 and not the PRS-500 . It seems to me that SONY should consider the pioneers of the PRS-500 and bring them into the PRS-505 world or give us an incentive to trade in the PRS500 for a PRS-505 and then they will not have to develop a upgrade to the owners of the PRS-500. If SONY does nothing for owners of PRS-500 then it might be an idea to sell my unit, and buy another manufacturer product. It is very important for a manufacturer like SONY to get good publicity and not bad publicity. Why should I show this product to my friends ?

Yep, it's kind of sad that companies try this kind of "forced upgrade". Unfortunately, it's not just Sony, although they've definitely made me question whether I would bother with a Sony device when I'm ready to give up my 500. What they've shown is that even if I bought a 505 right now, I can pretty much only expect upgrades for another 6 months, 12 at the most. Doesn't sound like a very good deal to me. Especially considering how much they charge for the device.

[BobVA]

Originally Posted by NatCh

... As for a trade in scheme, yeah, it would be nice (speaking as a 500 owner myself), but I don't see how a vendor is under any obligation to upgrade hardware that was sold in good faith.

...I can't think of too many things that would more greatly encourage them to exit the e-book hardware business than this sort of expectation from their customers.

and vice versa - i.e. the appearance shifting formats and and lack of an upgrade path may encourage tepid ebook adopters to leave the market.

I agree with you that Sony is certainly certainly under no legal or moral obligation to help out 500 owners; if we were talking about a 1080p HDTV I'd be with you 100%, but I think this case may be a little different.

Given that Sony is trying to create a new market and product area, and that the initial buyers of the 500 could be considered "evangelists", or "opinion shapers" or whatever, there may be some logic in tossing us a bone to keep up positive buzz about a still fragile market.

I think a huge variable is whether this is a simple software port or not. Maybe Jim Lester can discuss the hardware requirements?

If the hardware is a limitation (or the software would require a major rewrite), I could see Sony doing something like offering $150 credit on a 500 towards a 505. That would keep the cost high enough that someone wouldn't take advantage of the offer just to get a fresh battery, but low enough (for me, anyway) to keep the early adopters talking up the product.

Regards,
Bob