Total N00B questions! (Apologies in advance).

[dhbailey]

I need to apologize to Nate the Great, who did indeed mention the fine books on this forum. I simply missed it. Munsey's is a great place, but so is manybooks.net.

There is such a vast wealth of wonderful books which are ONLY available in electronic format these days, that I can't imagine life without a reader of some sort, whether the sony, the kindle or the cybook or whatever will come next.

And I am so thankful that Project Gutenberg decided to post their files in lowest-common-denominator format so that people can make them available for all the various flavors of readers to come along.

I have read and thoroughly enjoyed many fine authors of the past whom I had never heard of before finding Project Gutenberg as well as the good folks who have posted books on this forum which aren't available at PG.

As for the charger, you most definitely will need to charge your new 505 before your long flight home, so be sure to buy a PSP charger and find yourself an outlet! And possibly also buy a PSP car charger so if for some reason you're prevented from charging the reader before the flight, you can use those outlets in the seatbacks of many airplanes these days.

[OUTATIME]

Originally Posted by Mike's Place

One more suggestion. Hope it doesn't come too late. If you're loading them up yourself you don't have the option of putting them into categories so don't put too many files on any one card. It would be great to have a bunch of cards with no more than 50 files on each. That will be about 5 pages of files on each card. It gets a little frustrating to wade through twenty pages of filenames to find the one you want to read.

Don't forget about all the great books available here.

Have a blast,

Mike

Thanks again Mike.

So you can't put them in folders or the device won't recognise them?

I'm going to check the downloads available here today, hopefully start to compile a decent little library.

I started to convert a couple from txt and htm to LRF, they convert fine but unfortunately I've no way of checking to see it they work...lol

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by OUTATIME

Thanks again Mike.

So you can't put them in folders or the device won't recognise them?

I'm going to check the downloads available here today, hopefully start to compile a decent little library.

I started to convert a couple from txt and htm to LRF, they convert fine but unfortunately I've no way of checking to see it they work...lol

The 505 will indeed see the stuff in the folders.

[OUTATIME]

Coolio...I'm starting to get the hang of this.

[gwynevans]

The device will see them fine - it just ignores everything except the files themselves & just indexes them all without taking any account of folders...

[DrMoze]

Alex, Where in the States will you be? If it happens to be NYC, Datavision sells them in-store with a reasonable discount. (I think $270 plus tax.)

[OUTATIME]

Originally Posted by DrMoze

Alex, Where in the States will you be? If it happens to be NYC, Datavision sells them in-store with a reasonable discount. (I think $270 plus tax.)

Nevada I'm afraid.

I'm guessing Datavision is a strictly East Coast company?

Thanks for the heads up.

[Cthulhu]

Wanted to add $0.02.

Outatime, glad to hear that you will be getting a new Reader. Congratulations (& way to reference a DeLorean ;-).

You will indeed find lots of older content and help here on the forum.

As a side note, I wanted to point out how brilliant it was of SONY to use PSP ports for their Reader. It reminds me of the Skunkworks of Lockheed, that believed the best way to make a revolutionary device quick and cheap was to cobble together off-the-shelf parts around one amazing piece of new tech, or combine existing components in a new way to create said revolutionary device.

I hope this was on purpose; if so, it reveals an amazing enginering mindset at SONY while ensuring continued parts and services for our overly-fancy book thingies.

[recycledelectron]

Originally Posted by OUTATIME

So you can't put them in folders or the device won't recognise them.

It will list the files without regard to what directory they are in, by title (in the meta data, not the file name) author (in the meta data) and by the date they were coppied to the card.

Therefore, mike says:

Originally Posted by Mike's Place

If you're loading them up yourself you don't have the option of putting them into categories so don't put too many files on any one card. It would be great to have a bunch of cards with no more than 50 files on each. That will be about 5 pages of files on each card. It gets a little frustrating to wade through twenty pages of filenames to find the one you want to read.

and Mike's right. The PRS-505 will sometimes rename a file (by using its title from the metadata, not the file name) so you can not find it.

This lack of directories is a shocking dissapointment, but I live with it.

Originally Posted by OUTATIME

So I can just drag and drop txt and pdf on to the card and pop it in the new machine?

Correct! Same for .RTF, .LRF, .LXF, most image formats,.MP3, (non-DRM) .AAC, etc.

Originally Posted by OUTATIME

I actually have a PSP, but that's not gonna help if I need to charge it in the US before the flight...

Thank you all for that very useful (if not shocking) piece of information.

You will have to charge it, probably for 12 hours, before it will work for the first time. It will only charge by USB on some computers, and then only some of the time. It only comes with a USB cable. While the USB cable is plugged it, it will not turn on to see if it's charged enough.

Using a PSP cable, it charges faster. It always charges off the PSP plug. You can use it while the PSP cable is charging it.

Yes, it's shocking. Sony's about as silly as any company ever in not including a USB to USB & PSP "Y" cable.

[OUTATIME]

Originally Posted by recycledelectron

It will list the files without regard to what directory they are in, by title (in the meta data, not the file name) author (in the meta data) and by the date they were coppied to the card.

Therefore, mike says:



and Mike's right. The PRS-505 will sometimes rename a file (by using its title from the metadata, not the file name) so you can not find it.

This lack of directories is a shocking dissapointment, but I live with it.



Correct! Same for .RTF, .LRF, .LXF, most image formats,.MP3, (non-DRM) .AAC, etc.



You will have to charge it, probably for 12 hours, before it will work for the first time. It will only charge by USB on some computers, and then only some of the time. It only comes with a USB cable. While the USB cable is plugged it, it will not turn on to see if it's charged enough.

Using a PSP cable, it charges faster. It always charges off the PSP plug. You can use it while the PSP cable is charging it.

Yes, it's shocking. Sony's about as silly as any company ever in not including a USB to USB & PSP "Y" cable.

Hello Sir, thank you for the reply, everyone on here has been super helpful and patient.

One little concern that popped up, that I'm hoping you might be able to help me with, is that some PDF files don't view properly on the 505?

I have quite a few books that are PDF and they display okay on the home PC, but will they be resized or messed up on the Sony?

If so is there any way to tell which will work before I leave?

I would just convert them all using Libprs500, but I've no way of checking if they're converting correctly until I get the damned thing...lol.

[OUTATIME]

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

Wanted to add $0.02.

Outatime, glad to hear that you will be getting a new Reader. Congratulations (& way to reference a DeLorean ;-).

You will indeed find lots of older content and help here on the forum.

As a side note, I wanted to point out how brilliant it was of SONY to use PSP ports for their Reader. It reminds me of the Skunkworks of Lockheed, that believed the best way to make a revolutionary device quick and cheap was to cobble together off-the-shelf parts around one amazing piece of new tech, or combine existing components in a new way to create said revolutionary device.

I hope this was on purpose; if so, it reveals an amazing enginering mindset at SONY while ensuring continued parts and services for our overly-fancy book thingies.

Thanks for the reply dude, much appreciated.

Glad you caught the BTTF reference, I'm quite the obsessed fanboy.

[soilwork]

Originally Posted by OUTATIME

Hello Sir, thank you for the reply, everyone on here has been super helpful and patient.

One little concern that popped up, that I'm hoping you might be able to help me with, is that some PDF files don't view properly on the 505?

I have quite a few books that are PDF and they display okay on the home PC, but will they be resized or messed up on the Sony?

If so is there any way to tell which will work before I leave?

I would just convert them all using Libprs500, but I've no way of checking if they're converting correctly until I get the damned thing...lol.

For previewing sony format (LRF) files on PC, you can use either
(1) Sony ebook library software (free download), or
http://ebookstore.sony.com/downloadclient.html
(2) open source LRF viewer included with libprs500.

About converting PDF into LRF, you can try 'PDFLRF' in addition to libprs500. If the pdf documents contain maths or figures, PDFLRF may work better since it process the file as images.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13135

[OUTATIME]

Originally Posted by soilwork

For previewing sony format (LRF) files on PC, you can use either
(1) Sony ebook library software (free download), or
http://ebookstore.sony.com/downloadclient.html
(2) open source LRF viewer included with libprs500.

About converting PDF into LRF, you can try 'PDFLRF' in addition to libprs500. If the pdf documents contain maths or figures, PDFLRF may work better since it process the file as images.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13135

That's excellent, thank you very much for those links.

[OUTATIME]

Do all PDFs need to be rotated to view them properly?

[OUTATIME]

Originally Posted by soilwork

For previewing sony format (LRF) files on PC, you can use either
(1) Sony ebook library software (free download), or
http://ebookstore.sony.com/downloadclient.html
(2) open source LRF viewer included with libprs500.

About converting PDF into LRF, you can try 'PDFLRF' in addition to libprs500. If the pdf documents contain maths or figures, PDFLRF may work better since it process the file as images.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13135

Two great links there Sir, thank you very much indeed!