So how does everyone feel about SONY now?

[CommonReader]

I only have the PRS650 and I had previously the PRS300 until my wife nicked that one for her reading. Unfortunately I haven't been able to handle a T1 yet, my opinion is therefore based on what i read about the device. I have loads of other stuff from Sony, ranging from digital cameras via Sony Vaio computers, a StNav to the PS3. As a rule I have been quite happy with the quality of their products. As a former Minolta owner I love what they have done with the Minolta DSLR business after they have bought it. Very bold and innovative products, great value and very good support via firmware update with additional functionalities.
I am much less happy with the T1, both for ditching the aluminium casing and discontinued support for the BBeB and RTF formats. I have many BBeB books and conversions into Epub often don't work very well.
I have just bought a Cybook Opus as a present for the kids and it is a very neat little thing. I hope that I don't have to replace my 650 in the foreseeable future but the new Cybook that has just been announced also looks like an interesting contender.
Looking at many posts in this forum in the past months I have to admit that Sony seems to have followed the advise of many readers by going downmarket.

[jbuk]

"But I fear (knowing Sony's average behavior) they possibly will not fix the PDF-slowdown in near future."

PDF reflow is a unique feature of Sony's, though, is it not? I think of it as an extra- sometimes it will work, sometimes not. If it doesn't there's usually some other way of reading a relatively simple (text-based) pdf. And with the device rooted we're hopefully going to get a couple more options.

On the more general topic, personally I welcome the cost-savings. $200+ was too much for a 6" reader, if only because of the care which you'd need to take of it. I've also used a previous generation PRS device (the 350, I think), and the progress from there to here is extraordinary. Good touch screen, responsive, lighter, lots of viewing options etc, and $100 cheaper. And sony is one of the few companies which doesn't try too hard to lock you into a walled garden.

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by jbuk

And sony is one of the few companies which doesn't try too hard to lock you into a walled garden.

One of the main reasons I wanted a Sony eReader and not one of many other brands. And also why I'm willing to cut them a lot of slack on other points, where they might have a few glitches and bugs.

[khalleron]

Originally Posted by jbuk

And sony is one of the few companies which doesn't try too hard to lock you into a walled garden.

Even more than that, they're the one ereader manufacturer to actively pursue openness.

- ditching their own proprietary format for the more open format ePub (yeah, I know lrf lovers are still b****ing about this, but it's for the good, really it is!)

- being the first to offer Google Books support

- being the first to actively support and promote library borrowing, and now with the T1 being the first to actually integrate it into the reader

You can't get much more open than that.

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by khalleron

Even more than that, they're the one ereader manufacturer to actively pursue openness.

And they're Sony!

I'm still not sure I've been able to wrap my mind around that part. They're so proprietary in everything else (Memory Stick Pro Duo for camera, BluRay for movies, etc) that it's almost against their nature to be as open as they've been on eBooks.

[David58117]

Count me in as another happy t1 owner. I've come to notice that yes there are a few people who own the device and had crashes or freezes and report them here - and about for each single complaint a few who don't own it pick up on it and start shouting and yelling about "the problem."

This past week or so I've tried only using swipe to turn pages (as opposed to my preferred buttons), the idea being the touchscreen is buggy and causing crashes - but I haven't had any crashing from this method. The only time I've had issues was when I loaded a huge amount of books via microsd card and didn't wait for them to load before browsing through them (and bogging down the system) - I had a brief freeze until the dialog box came up, pressed the force close button, it went back to the homescreen and that was it. Eventually the books loaded and I went through the my books section page by page letting all the covers load.

I think the negative reaction is greatly disproportional to the actual issue.

Ill agree PDF support with reflow etc enabled is slow and you'll spend more time with "loading..." than text - but its a 6" eink ereader! Expecting flawless support of the format is like expecting a full webbrowser in the reader, and then being disappointed.

[Dusty]

Like I stated earlier I've read 100's of books on the 300 and loved it. I'm now on my second book with the T1, I also loaded it on the 300 to compare...ACKK!! No going back, no way.
If you look on it as a reader pure and simple it's a winner, hands down.

P.S.

Are we sure the problems are SONY's fault and not the Android OS ??

[Kolenka]

Originally Posted by Dusty

Like I stated earlier I've read 100's of books on the 300 and loved it. I'm now on my second book with the T1, I also loaded it on the 300 to compare...ACKK!! No going back, no way.
If you look on it as a reader pure and simple it's a winner, hands down.

P.S.

Are we sure the problems are SONY's fault and not the Android OS ??

Sony at some level must be responsible for the stability of their device. That includes picking the right tool for the job. The version of Android they use has source available.

That said, I haven't found huge instability other than their app itself. At that point it's hard to tell where the bug may be, but even app developers are expected to work around platform bugs from time to time.

Although in my mind, really the only major alternative to the Sony readers is the Kindle. The Nook software was incomplete and crashed more than my T1. The Kobo was simply woefully incomplete and treated side loaded books as second class citizens. And the Kindle is wrapped up in proprietary formats that Amazon doesn't want to share with the other children. It's really about picking the poison you can live with right now, and not so much about devices with rock-solid experiences right now (although the x50s were very close).

[ring0_event]

Originally Posted by David58117

Ill agree PDF support with reflow etc enabled is slow and you'll spend more time with "loading..." than text - but its a 6" eink ereader! Expecting flawless support of the format is like expecting a full webbrowser in the reader, and then being disappointed.

It's great that you're happy with your T1, and maybe I'm very wrong here, but didn't the 350 have excellent (as good as the 950) PDF reflow support? I've only used a 950 and T1, I must admit, so I am extrapolating, but then I've never seen 350 complaints of PDF reflow slowdowns. Sometimes reflow went wrong on the 950 too (poor formatting, NO slowdowns), but it seems that it's almost always very slow on my T1 (and no better at formatting), at least with the PDFs that I've tried.
I've been reading some EPUBs on my T1 too, but I don't see a great difference between the EPUB reading experience on the T1 vs the 950 (or, by extension, the 650/350). I'm curious as to why T1 owners feel the T1 is a leap forward. But then it's so new for me that I could easily be missing something, I do admit.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by ring0_event

I'm curious as to why T1 owners feel the T1 is a leap forward. But then it's so new for me that I could easily be missing something, I do admit.

Possibly because the T1 is the first Sony model, for sale outside the US, with internet access.

[ring0_event]

Originally Posted by SeaBookGuy

I was hoping to use a T1 specifically for books that were only available in PDF format, no Epub possible. I assumed it would be possible to pinch and zoom the small size to make it larger, for instance? Or crop those gray side margins altogether?

Hmm, as promised I'm giving it a go tonight. Unfortunately, it is not very usable (IMHO) using pinch and zoom. If I pinch and zoom in portrait and fit to width, it's still too small. If I zoom in closer it's still not very usable due to the frequent flashing which results when moving the page about. In landscape mode, pinch and zoom is possible, but again, it's really not IMHO very easy to use. Even with cropping, reflow is required for easy reading, at least with my eyes.

[SeaBookGuy]

Thank you for testing that out for me! Honestly, there aren't that many PDF format books these days for me to obsess further about it.

[FizzyWater]

My experience so far has been I like their readers every other year. I loved my 500 (for what it was), wanted nothing to do with the 700. Loved my 505, hated the 600. Love my 650...completely passing on the T1.

I guess I'll have to see how I still feel about Sony with next year's offering.

[khalleron]

Can we have a moratorium on non-owners starting threads b****ing about problems with devices they don't have?

Thank you.

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by khalleron

Can we have a moratorium on non-owners starting threads b****ing about problems with devices they don't have?

I second this motion.