Just ordered the Sony Reader

[benn600]

I just ordered a Sony Reader today from Sony direct. I wanted to buy it at Best Buy to hopefully get it right away but they don't carry it in the store.

Any ideas how long it takes from Sony's web site (shipping wise)? Where do they usually ship from? How fast do they ship? I'm usually really anxious to get new gadgets and this one is no exception.

Any basic things I should know to prepare? I have noticed there are some ebooks here that I can download. I'm not a huge reader but am looking forward to the Reader because I'll be able to take more books with me on trips and such.

What do you guys recommend for a good source for books? Are there any good free places? I am willing to buy a lot through Sony and will definitely use my credit + buy more, but whenever I can get free stuff, that's great, too! I'd really like some people who have been following this forum for a few months to give me a quick update to get me up to speed.

I am a big time forum user and am known for posting lots on my favorite forums. This could quickly become a favorite of mine. If I could be brought up to speed then I'd have a better start to jump right in...lol, if there is much to even talk about (to start anyway)....things to discuss:

How does firmware updates work/do they do much?
How much have you people spent on CONNECT?
Is the SD card size limited? Can I use a 2GB card?
Anyone tried audiobooks? Might be hard cause I doubt it works with Audible.

[benn600]

What about books that I want that aren't available through Sony CONNECT? I wish more people would buy Sony Readers so they would have more reason to hurry up and get more books up! I find very few books that I search for, honestly. Not that I'm demanding that I read exactly what I read about but it would be great to read some of the "Books everyone should read."

[HarryT]

IMHO most of the "books everyone should read" are out-of-copyright classics, and available through PG, Manybooks, etc etc. We have a "Book Uploads" sub-section on this forum where you'll find a fair number of books that various people (and thanks to everyone who's contributed!) have created nice Reader-specific versions of.

The main source of "free" books is Project Gutenberg. They have well over 20,000 books which can be downloaded free of charge.

Although you can use a memory card with the Reader, most people seem not to bother. You can store a very large number of books in the Reader's internal memory (100-ish, depending on their size) and, since the Reader only has a "flat" file system, there's really no point in storing 1000 books on a memory card if you have to page through 100 screens in order to find one .

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by benn600

What about books that I want that aren't available through Sony CONNECT? I wish more people would buy Sony Readers so they would have more reason to hurry up and get more books up! I find very few books that I search for, honestly. Not that I'm demanding that I read exactly what I read about but it would be great to read some of the "Books everyone should read."

Do what I have been doing. I have some LIT format books that I purchased since they are not available as paper books. This was back before the Sony reader. Anyway, I never got around to reading them. I have used CLIT 1.8 to remove the DRM. So I can now use Book Designer to load them and covert to LRF for reading on the Sony Reader. Just purchase LIT format books and you'll be able to use Book Designer to convert to a number of different formats including LRF for the Sony Reader. Meaning if you someday swap the Sony Reader, Book Designer will let you write out some format the other device can handle (hopefully). Well you have a much better chance of that starting ith LIT then you do with any other format.

[g4eqz]

Me too, spent $50 on ebooks for my Palm T|X got hooked, bought the Sony reader a week later and had to buy the same bloody books again - unacceptable face of DRM. My preffered approach if I buy a book is take the lit format, remove the DRM and its only a quick job to use Book Designer to put in the format I want. I dont approve of or rip off/pirate software or eBooks and give it away to someone else so my conscience is clear. If I couldnt do this they wouldnt sell me the book once let alone twice so everybody wins. There ought to be some device independant DRM with your name and credit card# in it but which you could freely transfer between the common formats on a central publishers database.

Keith

[benn600]

This is precisely why I still buy audio CDs...I own over 1,000 CDs. I hate how all this digital content is so annoying like this...essentially, buying books is similar to CDs. When you buy it, it's not copy protected. Unfortunately, digitizing a book is not as easy as digitizing a CD or DVD.

It's hard for me to say much now without actually having the Reader yet, but I'm betting that if you convert ebooks from one format to the Sony's format, I bet you lose some of the great formatting. Any ideas how many books sony sells? I will want to use up my $150 credit, obviously. Some classics are available for $2 from the Sony classic section (which works from the free 50 Classics) but then there are other versions for $4, $6, or so and that would eat away from my $50 credit. Obviously, the classics collections are better because 50 free classics--geez! I wonder how many they even have! But $50 can go pretty fast, especially when I saw some interesting books at $14-$20! I think $7 is about the most I'd be willing to pay, generally.

A friend of mine was laughing at my decision to buy the Reader. She reads a lot--a handful of books a month. She was telling me the gets them at the library...lol. So great, not only do I start up with a $350 charge, but I have to buy tons of books then, too! I wish there was a way to rent books for the Sony Reader, either for free (like a library lets you do!!!) or for a small monthly fee, say $7 per month for all the books you can read. Brand new books could cost the full amount and not be offered part of the all-you-can eat bundle until it has been released for a while.

[Azayzel]

Unless you plan on reading a ton of books at once, switching between all of them, I wouldn't even bother with the SD card. I've had a 1GB card in since I bought it, filled it up initially with about 50 titles, saw how much a PITA it was to flip through all of the and whittled it down to about 25-30 (only actively reading one at a time, ocassionally browsing a few others).

The only really good uses for the SD are: a) quick way to put books on your Reader w/o having to connect it to your PC; i.e., pop out card, inject/remove books, pop back in, and go, b) useful for large PDF's that are too big and may fill your local storage space, and c) good for MP3's, if you want to use it for that (I haven't used that feature once).

I'm all for converting between formats, and have already done so with a few LIT's & PDF's, so don't feel that you're limited to the Connect Store (that's what $ony wants you to believe, they have to milk this cash-cow while they can). I've been overly impressed with the quality of tools you can find through this forum, so check back often (besides, it's adictive!).

[scottcstoness]

Originally Posted by benn600

A friend of mine was laughing at my decision to buy the Reader. She reads a lot--a handful of books a month. She was telling me the gets them at the library...lol. So great, not only do I start up with a $350 charge, but I have to buy tons of books then, too! I wish there was a way to rent books for the Sony Reader, either for free (like a library lets you do!!!) or for a small monthly fee, say $7 per month for all the books you can read. Brand new books could cost the full amount and not be offered part of the all-you-can eat bundle until it has been released for a while.

There are a couple of library-like options. Project Gutenberg has thousands of classic, out-of-copyright books, many of which are available from manybooks.net or in enhanced versions on the content forum here. These are all free.

If you like science fiction, Baen offers a free library of 50+ electronic books (and are adding 2-3 new books a month this year), as well as offering webscriptions (buy 6 new books a month for $15) and quite reasonable prices on individual books downloads ($6 for the electronic version when the book is published in hardcover).

Incidentally, free isn't always free; the library is supported by tax dollars as a public service -- ebook publishers and providers have to try to make a profit.

Whether Baen's e-publishing model will catch on in the industry is obviously an open question, but PG appears to be here to stay (and if you enjoy their texts, I'd highly recommend signing up as a volunteer proof-reader at distributed proofreaders and give something back if you'd rather provide some time than money).

Cheers,

ScS

[benn600]

I will definitely use a SD card because I have 4 or so laying around not being used so adding an extra 512 MB would be easy. I would like to store books on the internal memory and use the extra card for music and, like you said, larger PDFs and images. I really don't plan on even considering more than one book at a time so it's not a huge issue. Carrying a boatload of books at a time isn't a big deal.

My complaint and confusion is that Project Gutenberg is that lots of the books have to be downloaded from tens or hundreds of files! Why aren't books just in a single file?

[NatCh]

When you get those that are multiple files, it's because they're HTML versions. If there's an RTF version available, it'll be a single file. If only the HTML is available, you may be able to open it in Word and save it as a single RTF in one go -- I'm guessing, 'cause I haven't tried that specifically.

I feel the same way you do about carrying a bunch of books, but I have found I like carrying a half-dozen or so. Basically, when I decide I'm going to read a book -- add it to my reading list, I mean-- I go ahead and add it to the Reader. I keep a collection for this purpose so that I can put the books in the order I plan to read them. That way when I finish one book, I can just go to the next without having to visit the computer. Then I just pull off the 'finished' books the next time I hook it up to the PC. Keeps me from feeling tied to the thing.

[benn600]

It is just plain humorous that I went ahead and made such an extravagant purchase as this because generally speaking, I read very little. I'd say a under 10 lengthy books per year and most of them are required for my college work. I have lately started enjoying the reading more and decided I'd like to see if I can get more interested in reading. There's no doubt about it, I've read quite a few of the classics but there are obviously many I would still like to read. I always run into those everyone should read lists and I may start with those.

Another reason I wanted to get the Sony Reader is because it is simply amazing. I have never seen one in person but I've looked at a lot of pictures and videos. So, it would be quite interesting when it finally arrives. Besides, I can carry any text I want.

I also have an HP iPaq HX4700 so I can use the different devices for different purposes. The Reader's screen is supposedly amazing and I'm waiting very impatiently (lol) to get it! I wish they wouldn't ship it from CA!! Why do some places always ship from CA when they know that that means a huge distance for a lot of the United States! Have two or three warehouses--especially one in the middle of the US and maybe one on the east coast. That's the best and fastest solution!

[g4eqz]

I can convert a book to sony format in 1 to 2 minutes using BD and formatting is fine, author and title is fine and no different than books I bought from Connect. Only thing I am too lazy to figure out is indexing chapters etc but I dont need it and oknly I read it so cant be bothered.

Cheers ... Keith

[benn600]

One interesting discovery I made is that some libraries have online components. It would be amazing if they would allow the eBooks they provide to be copied to the Sony Reader (and expire). One issue I am running into is that the eBook text--well, it's right there (lol). I also own Macro Express. I have almost been attempting to create a macro to quickly copy the text from a page, paste it into Notepad, and then go to the next page (repeat). Most sites like this prevent simple copy and paste but with Firefox, it usually works...unfortunately, it also usually stops working so that method doesn't work. By saving frame, the actual text can be saved. This file, when opened, contains only the text and Page xx. From what I have accomplished so far, I end up with lots of extra spaces and tabs between lines with more line breaks. I figure all I need to do is run it through Word and use its more advanced replace features.

There is no reason to say Page xx is there? The problem is if it doesn't line up exactly, it's worthless, and it already tells page numbers.

My biggest issue is that the source I am using often logs me out after a short period of time. I'm thinking they may be having server difficulties. If I could get this working better, I would basically have access to a huge number of eBooks, including many big time names.

[hcobbs]

benn

From my personal experience with the Sony Shipping... if you take the bottom-rung shipping... be prepared to wait two weeks for it... and I'm serious about waiting two full weeks.

They almost gave me a "lost item" claim form because it took so long with mine... But hey, it was free shipping....

[NatCh]

The main distribution nexus in Elbonia is where it seems to get delayed.