Firmware Upgrade Available!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Stingo

My ipod did not have volume restrict and it was added by firmware update. It did not have. It enabled cover art. etc... you need to update your Ipod more often Harry .

I honestly didn't realise they'd been added by firmware updates - thanks. I obviously buy too many new iPods .

The bottom line is that customer satisfaction is a question of subjective perception. If enough people are not satisfied someone else gets the business. If people need updated functionality to feel that a product is properly supported then that has to become a part of the business model.

I completely agree with you. My perception is that the Reader is a superb product as it stands for Reading fiction, and that's what I bought it for. We all have to make up our own mind about these things.

Certainly in this age of rushing products to market, expecting feature updates is not unreasonable.

But do you think that the Reader was "rushed to market"? Its ship date slipped by something like 9 months, as I recall. My impression is that Sony wanted to make certain that it wasn't a "rush job" but didn't ship until it was good and ready. I believe personally that they did an excellent job with it.

[athlonkmf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Two things:

2. The speed of indexing new files is determined by the speed of the Reader's CPU. This is deliberately slow to use minimal power. I think it's a reasonable compromise, personally. I certainly wouldn't like to see battery life halve merely so new books were indexed more quickly - would you?

With th current technologies, scaling CPUs should be no problems. If fullfledged computerCPU's can run at a mere 35watt on full load and half of that on idle, it wouldn't be strange if a minimobileCPU could do the same. Show power when needed, otherwise, go to sleep. Especially since the OS is linuxbased.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by eppythacher

You hear that Sony? Cross platform! Ya now maybe the price will drop.

The price did drop from $349.99 to $299.99.

[JSWolf]

Ok, here's an interesting issue. My wife's reader said low battery and showed no bars. So I plugged it into the power brick and did the firmware update and put back in the flasher hacks. Now it shows 3 bars from having been 0 bars and I know it's only been plugged in as long as it too do do the updating/flashing. So what gives?

[aleks]

Hey everyone! I just completed updating the firmware on my unit with no problems.

Hope everyone else has the same success as I did.

[Dylrob]

Originally Posted by HarryT

There appears to be a technical reason why support for >2GB SD cards is complex; I know of a number of devices which don't support them, and Bookeen have said that the new CyBook will also only support SD cards up to 2GB in size. I don't know what the issue is, but Sony are certainly not alone in having this limitation.

My understanding is that when talking about SD cards 4GB and over (with some exceptions), you're really talking about the SD2.0 ,or SDHC, standard. SD2.0 uses a different addressing system than the older SD 1.1.

Now I would speculate that the reason these devices don't support the newer standard comes down to cost. It's likely cheaper to just implement the older standard.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Dylrob

My understanding is that when talking about SD cards 4GB and over (with some exceptions), you're really talking about the SD2.0 ,or SDHC, standard. SD2.0 uses a different addressing system than the older SD 1.1.

Now I would speculate that the reason these devices don't support the newer standard comes down to cost. It's likely cheaper to just implement the older standard.

Also it means if you want over 2gig of ram, you have to buy a memory stick.

[eppythacher]

I would be happy if sony made the reader linux open source. Then if they don't feel like updating it for 5 months the fans can work on it. See half life and counter strike. Counter strike is bigger online and it was made by fans. It's a company mind set. Sony isn't really fan friendly. Take the iphone. 3rd parties are making tons of apps for them. Sony should hire the guys on mobileread that mod , like half life hired the counter strike team, day of defeat, red dawn?, etc. Of course, that would take great vision. On the plus side for sony, blue ray is doing good.

[Dylrob]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Also it means if you want over 2gig of ram, you have to buy a memory stick.

Well yeah. I'd be surprised if this wasn't a factor in Sony's decision not to support SDHC.

[twb010]

Originally Posted by eppythacher

Take the iphone. 3rd parties are making tons of apps for them.

That's not the best example, since the iPhone is closed source, and the only way there are 3rd party apps is through sheer determination of those trying to reverse engineer it.

A better example would be Linksys' WRT54G line of routers. They released the firmware, and now there are at least half a dozen alternatives to stock, all of them better. I actually purchased the WRT54GL in large part due to the fact that I could customize the firmware to add functionalities.

I think it would be great if Sony did open source the Reader, but considering there are only 50-60k Readers in the wild, compared to millions of PS3s and other equipment, I think the Reader is pretty low on the list.

[beartard]

Originally Posted by eppythacher

I would be happy if sony made the reader linux open source.

It is. ;-)

[Nogg]

I'd just like to confirm for everyone that my update from the original firmware (yes, I know) to the latest version worked perfectly. In addition, I flashed it to add the joystick page turning immediately after the update, and everything is aok.

[jasonkchapman]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Ok, here's an interesting issue. My wife's reader said low battery and showed no bars. So I plugged it into the power brick and did the firmware update and put back in the flasher hacks. Now it shows 3 bars from having been 0 bars and I know it's only been plugged in as long as it too do do the updating/flashing. So what gives?

I've seen other battery displays require a kind of "registration" before. The Rio Karma, for example, had a problem in the early days where it would get confused about just how much juice equaled "full" vs. "half". In that case, using it until it was empty, followed by a full charge, reset the thing.

Maybe that's the case here.

[beartard]

After my battle with the previous firmware upgrade (short story: bad brickage on third day of ownership) I took mine to the Sony store and they upgraded it for me. I was just too scared to try again with a VMware Windows session. lol

I gotta say, the Sony store staff are awesome. They did the upgrade without any fuss, and I can't confirm or deny the fact that someone in the store pointed me here with information about the clock and joystick hacks ;-)

[JSWolf]

Nice job of Sony. I wonder what they'd think if I showed them my reader at the SonyStyle store next week sometime. I still need to install the history hack to get history back.