First Sony Reader Update Available!

[ultim8fury]

Originally Posted by mikem

I'd love to except thats a whole world of pain. As soon as bootcamp was supported by Parallel's I bought it and installed beta 1. After attempting to upgrade to beta 2 I managed to get my system into a position where I can no longer boot directly into Windows XP (without Parallels). Unfortunately I've got to boot directly into Windows XP to remove the Parallels tools before upgrading to RC1. The reason I cannot boot directly into XP is product activation is required as soon as XP is loaded BUT XP won't recognise my Mac keyboard or mouse (nor will it recognise USB ones) so I cannot activate it. Aaarrrgh. The bootcamp partition does work in Parallels (product activation is fine there - its a separate hardware profile).

I've got to re-install XP in bootcamp...not sure if its worth it as Parallels does everything I want (C# and cygwin dev) except let me play an odd game or two.

Yeah that first release did bad things to my install as well. Not as bad as what has happened to yours though.

I do agree that I rarely use the bootcamp partition mainly because I hate to shut down OS X.

[mikem]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'm certainly not doubting that it is for you, Mike, but for what percentage of the Reader's potential audience do you think that is true for?

I don't know but it'd be interesting to find out. Different ebook sellers, from whom I've already bought some books, provide the content in PDF format which the reader isn't capable of displaying adequately.

Originally Posted by HarryT

There may well be a market for A4-sized devices for people such as yourself, but I honestly can't see how you could ever do it well on a screen as small as the Reader. To my mind, the Reader is the "paperback book killer", not the "Magazine/Textbook/Newspaper killer".

I don't see why I require an A4 sized device. When I'm reading I'm not "reading" the whole page. I only need to see a sub-part of the page laid out properly. I'm perfectly happy switching back and forth between pages.

There's no reason the reader cannot be a general purpose reading device. Do people buy newspapers and magazines because they want the content laid out in a specific manner or do they buy them because they want the content?

I think the reader is a very nice piece of kit full of unrealised potential. Unfortunately I'm not convinced that Sony are the people who will realise that potential. I'm by no means a Mac fanboy but if Apple were to release an iReader tomorrow it'd be (interaction) designed properly and would probably launch ebooks into the main steam.

[HarryT]

Thanks. So it has 75% more screen "real estate" than the Reader. Is that enough to make A4/US Letter PDFs "readable" on it?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by mikem

I don't see why I require an A4 sized device. When I'm reading I'm not "reading" the whole page. I only need to see a sub-part of the page laid out properly. I'm perfectly happy switching back and forth between pages.

As I understand it, though (and please correct me if I'm wrong), the fundamental problem with PDF files is that they basically consist of a series of page "images"; the pages can't be "re-flowed" as you can do with RTF or text files. Surely in that case, the best you could achieve would be to have the Reader provide a "viewport" that you could "scroll around" over the page. Do you think that would provide a satisfactory reading experience?

[astra]

Originally Posted by TadW

resolution: 8.1-inch XGA 1024x768
physical dim: 216mm by 155mm by 16mm (8.5" by 6.1" by .6")

--> https://www.mobileread.com/eink/

Thanks for the link. Very nice table.

This one looks the best for me, I wonder whether it is possible to buy it somewhere: Jinke Electronics, HanLin eBook V2. Such an amazing array of supported formats!
PDF, DOC, JPG, HTML, TXT, WOLF, CHM, RAR, ZIP, MP3
10'000 pages
the same 6" eInk screen as sony.

Very impressive! It beats sony in every asspect.

[UncleDuke]

The Reader was marketed ONLY in the US and has rights to sell ebooks only in the US.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by negorv

Sony reader doesn't met my needs cause:

The Reader doesn't meet your needs because it was designed to meet a different set of needs than the ones you have. Kind of the same way a toaster doesn't meet my needs when I need to iron a shirt: no single tool can do every job.

It's not anything personal, and it's not because your needs are "wrong," or that you're too picky. It's not because your expectations are too high, or that you have a lot of material you need access to.The lack of international support is primarily a consequence of the fact that Sony doesn't have distribution rights for their books internationally. As big a target as they are, they have to show a pretty good measure of due diligence. It's not because they think everyone outside the U.S. is an intellectual property thief -- this is Sony we're talking about: their HQ is in Tokyo, and their CEO is a Welshman, they are the definition of a multinational corporation, and not even one that started in the U.S.!

Are they hoping to sell ConnBooks? Absolutely! They are in business to make money (just like everybody else), after all. Most of the books I'm reading on my Reader do not come from the ConnStore, but they're also not in PDF format, let alone A4 sized PDF format. It's certainly not Sony's fault that there is no standard format for electronic books -- there is no such format. If such a format existed and they were still selling their LRF books, then they ought to be scourged and hung out to dry, but that's not what they're doing. And no, I don't consider PDF to be a standard format for e-books. It's a standard format for distributing documents electronically while preserving their page layouts. For it to be any kind of e-book format, it would need to support text re-flow without a bunch of acrobatics (you should pardon the pun), so that the files could be read on screens that are not, themselves, A4 in size. Of course, if it did that, it wouldn't be preserving the page layout, so it wouldn't be what PDF is meant to be.

Looking at it from a consumer perspective, their selling books increases consumer interest in a reading device -- they've decided to take on both of the twin pillars of resistance to e-books: lack of devices and lack of content. People won't buy devices until there's content, and they won't buy content until there're devices to read it on, further, devices that they want to read that content on. Nobody has really made a substantial go at investing in creating both content and devices, and until e-ink, truly readable devices just weren't possible.

Is it any wonder that Sony didn't start with a "Cray in a matchbox" type of approach for the device? They looked at it from a perspective of "what do we need for reading a book, page by page, cover to cover?" And that is precisely what it does, and does very well. They never tried to make it out to be anything else, and pretty much all the reviews that spend most of their bashing the Reader for what it isn't meant to be, have to admit in the end that it does what it is meant to do quite well.

I'm genuinely sorry, negorv, that you didn't learn that until after the fact. But I'm also guessing that you gave the Reader a try because you couldn't find anything else that came close to doing what you needed either. It sounds like what you need is nekokami's notional info pad -- I'd like one myself, actually -- but, sadly, it just doesn't exist yet.

Many of us here share your frustration on that point, we've just been living with that frustration long enough to recognize that we can't make over the existing device into what it isn't (it just doesn't have the input flexibility needed, frankly). While the Reader will never be the device you're after, a later version very well might. All we can do at this point is wait and see. Oh, yeah: and keep clamoring for the features we need in a Version Next.

[mikem]

Originally Posted by HarryT

As I understand it, though (and please correct me if I'm wrong), the fundamental problem with PDF files is that they basically consist of a series of page "images"; the pages can't be "re-flowed" as you can do with RTF or text files. Surely in that case, the best you could achieve would be to have the Reader provide a "viewport" that you could "scroll around" over the page. Do you think that would provide a satisfactory reading experience?

I know nothing about to internals of the PDF format (its made of bits right ) - I thought there was some separation between layout and content? There must be a way of re-flowing that'd work with a fair amount of layouts. Maybe perform OCR on the PDF pages and convert to text (horrible horrible)? I've played around with PDFRastafarian and it did end up turning a PDF into a series of images. Is RTF with embedded images a re-flow friendly format?

Scrolling around is definitely pain inducing - it brings back traumatic memories of trying to read on PDAs.

We need to move everything to Latex

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by mikem

Is RTF with embedded images a re-flow friendly format?

That format is extremely re-flow friendly. But the Reader doesn't support images in RTF files.

It's something I devoutly hope is on the list for the next update.

[igorsk]

Summary of changed files in the new update.

Rootfs: 1 (one) file: usbtg_core.o
I assume it's the change made in the updated source files on Sony's site, something to do with the usb and power. Maybe now recharging over USB doesn't require a host connection?
Also, some empty directories and unnecessary devices were removed.

Fsk: 13 files:
ebook.so (HW interface to Reader for Fsk)
FskDocumentViewer.so (viewers core and TXT viewer)
FskBBeBViewer.xso (BBeB viewer)
FskDocumentViewerRTF.so (RTF viewer)
FskFhGAACIntDec.so (AAC decoder)
FskFhGMP3IntDec.so (MP3 decoder)
kbook.so (Reader UI logic)
kconfig.xml (config file; only version number is changed)
libuss.so (sockets and serial library)
switcher.so (Reader<->host USB protocol handler)
UsbUpdater (Main firmware update program)

[NatCh]

Nice summary, igorsk, thanks for putting it together. Can you offer any insight as to what the changes might mean? (don't ask for much, do I?)

[igorsk]

I will investigate further and report later.

[diabloNL]

Charging still only work through my PC with Connect software.

[RWood]

Originally Posted by mikem

I know nothing about to internals of the PDF format (its made of bits right ) - I thought there was some separation between layout and content? There must be a way of re-flowing that'd work with a fair amount of layouts. Maybe perform OCR on the PDF pages and convert to text (horrible horrible)?

Some PDFs, like those created by MS Word and OpenOffice, do contain parts that are text and parts that are the formatting instructions. Other PDFs, like those created by scanning programs, are simply a wrapper around a BMP, JPG, TIFF, or other graphic format. The first can be extracted to a text file by using one of many converters available such as ABC Amber PDF Converter The other form (also one that generally has much larger file sizes for the same number of pages) could not be reflowed but may be converted via an OCR program assuming that the graphic image is of such quality as to support the operation.

[BobVA]

Originally Posted by igorsk

Summary of changed files in the new update.

Rootfs: 1 (one) file: usbtg_core.o
I assume it's the change made in the updated source files on Sony's site, something to do with the usb and power. Maybe now recharging over USB doesn't require a host connection?

Doesn't work with either of my USB chargers, one of which will successfully charge my power-fussy iPod.

Maybe they are implementing better/different power management of the USB port to extend battery life?

Cheers,
Bob