PRS-650 Text Marking gets awful slow with time on my PRS650

[Leserli]

Hi

I have the following problem.
I use a lot the text marking (highlighting) function on my PRS650 just as I did with a conventional marker on conventional books (this is why I absolutely wanted to have an EBook with Touch Screen)
But the PRS650 seems to have a real big problem with this.
First it works OK, and the marking is fast. But as soon as your going to have more and more markings saved, the marking gets extremely slow. My PRS650 now always needs about 30seconds to save a new marking and it's getting more and more worse.
Is there anything one can do about it, besides just deleting all markings?
Like that, the marking feature is IMHO completely unusable.

Would really like some help/suggestions on this topic.

Thanks

[peitsao]

What I do is sync with desktop program, then create rtf file which I save in my docs for future reference. The problem is that if you don't remove the DRM, your rtf file will have limits on the number of words you can save in your document.

I then remove the book from my reader and keep only the books I am currently reading on it. I don't know any other way around this problem.

[Analogus]

Hi!

You are not the only one complaining about that. Same behaviour on the PRS350.

I guess the reason is that the file which stores the notes is becoming larger and larger with every note. And with every additional note, the whole file (which is getting larger and larger...) has to be stored completely new consuming more and more power and time.

Thus I'm using this function very seldom.

No suggestion so far...

A.

[jshzh]

Just curious. When did the slowing down happen? After how many highlighting blocks?

Just FYI, I also noticed this with iBooks on iOS devices and the NookColor. I'm wondering if it is an ePub thing or an Adobe ADE thing?

[vxf]

Originally Posted by jshzh

Just curious. When did the slowing down happen? After how many highlighting blocks?

I used to have the same problem with my devices. It happens soon... I had a dozen PDFs, 50 pages each or so, with an average of 10-15 annotations on the margin - and it became absurdly slow - closing a note was taking about 40-50 seconds.

I have resorted to doing the same - downloading the papers to my PC and deleting them from my device. I can view the annotated papers on the PC or re-upload them when needed.

I say 'I used to' because I have switched to an iPad for PDFs and notes. I still prefer my SONY for reading - but not for annotating.


But something peculiar happened a couple of days ago. I backed up some files on an SD card and put the SD card into my reader. So now I have about 200 annotated PDFs on my reader... and notes are sluggish, but not nearly as slow as they used to be in the past. I don't know why, frankly. And I have not bothered to experiment to figure it out - as I said, I have moved over. I don't see why having the papers on an SD card would help - if anything, I would expect that to make it worse. Yet....

[jshzh]

Thanks, VXF, guess the annotation function is just for very occasional thoughts rather than serious note taking.

[vxf]

Originally Posted by jshzh

Thanks, VXF, guess the annotation function is just for very occasional thoughts rather than serious note taking.

Well, you can do serious note-taking. But one document at the time...
I have over 600 annotated PDFs in my desktop library... I mean, annotated on my PRS900/950.

The good is that you can view the doc with annotations on your PC. The Export is a mixed bag... it works if you want to highlight and export snippets, but it doesn't really work if your goal is to have a whole document exported with annotations. The bad is that you can't print it, or view annotations in other software (for example, iAnnotate on the iPad saves annotations directly on the PDF document, in PDF format... why can't SONY implement that is beyond me).

But the slowdown is ridiculous. I always thought it is a broken feature that SONY would eventually address... but it's been years and they seem satisfied with it. The exporting is a work-around... doable but clunky.

On the other side, us users interested in annotations seem to be the minority. Even here, on the forums, you will occasionally read someone complaining about it, but it gets a handful of responses, and that's it. Clearly, most people don't care.

SONY gave me hope when they patched the RTF export feature - but that was almost two years ago, then nothing.

Anyhow, I am tired and ranting...

[jshzh]

Yeah, companies don't take are of minorities' needs. It is not cost effective.

I wish I could get a 200$ PRS-950 here in Canada, in addition to my 6" Pocketbook 602. I have many Chinese pdf books with vertical texts. They can't be read in landscape mode. Too small without zoom in portrait mode but if I zoom it, it becomes unreadable again because the lines go vertically - i have to go up and down to read each line....9" devices are just too heavy...

[Leserli]

I guess the reason is that the file which stores the notes is becoming larger and larger with every note. And with every additional note, the whole file (which is getting larger and larger...) has to be stored completely new consuming more and more power and time.

So it's not just me! And it doesn't look as there's a usable way to get rid of this...Really disappointing. I hoped, there would be an easy solution.

I don't have much books on my ebook. And I need these books on my ebook, as most are science books. This really sucks.
Why doesn't any review actually point on this problem?
I bought this ebook, for it's good review and especially because it has a touch screen, so that one can easily mark/highlight text passages. Seems like I made a bad choice...

The explanation you give doesn't really make sense to me. For every book has his own annotation file. So why should the reader be impaired by the annotation files of other books? This I really don't get...
If it would just get slower in every new book, I would understand it. But it gets slower in relation to the annotations of every book. This is IMHO strange. Who programmed this piece of crap SW?
It really looks like the Reader has always all annotations of all books in the memory. And upon every change it stores all XML files completely new.
IMHO this is really just lazy programming, and yes, I'm a professional programmer myself. You can do this for a hobby SW, but for an ebook SW, which will be deployed in thousands of units? I really cannot get this.
Just a little more time spent in SW development and this problem could have been solved.

Sorry for being that negative. But I'm currently quite disappointed, that there's no solution to my problem, and it seems that I either have to live with waiting and watching out of the window for 30 seconds several times per page, or buying a new reader.
What other readers are there with touch screen, good display, PDF and EPUB functionality, and a working annotations function? Any suggestions?

[jshzh]

Originally Posted by Leserli

So it's not just me! And it doesn't look as there's a usable way to get rid of this...Really disappointing. I hoped, there would be an easy solution.

I don't have much books on my ebook. And I need these books on my ebook, as most are science books. This really sucks.
Why doesn't any review actually point on this problem?
I bought this ebook, for it's good review and especially because it has a touch screen, so that one can easily mark/highlight text passages. Seems like I made a bad choice...

The explanation you give doesn't really make sense to me. For every book has his own annotation file. So why should the reader be impaired by the annotation files of other books? This I really don't get...
If it would just get slower in every new book, I would understand it. But it gets slower in relation to the annotations of every book. This is IMHO strange. Who programmed this piece of crap SW?
It really looks like the Reader has always all annotations of all books in the memory. And upon every change it stores all XML files completely new.
IMHO this is really just lazy programming, and yes, I'm a professional programmer myself. You can do this for a hobby SW, but for an ebook SW, which will be deployed in thousands of units? I really cannot get this.
Just a little more time spent in SW development and this problem could have been solved.

Sorry for being that negative. But I'm currently quite disappointed, that there's no solution to my problem, and it seems that I either have to live with waiting and watching out of the window for 30 seconds several times per page, or buying a new reader.
What other readers are there with touch screen, good display, PDF and EPUB functionality, and a working annotations function? Any suggestions?

I suspect many people on this forum do casual reading: best sellers, light fictions, cooking books, etc. Or some are company representatives...

[Rizla]

I had this problem on a 600 until I installed an SD card and it seemed to stop. I have an SD card on a 650 now and note taking speed seems consistent.

I never store books in the device memory. I keep it empty. All books are on the SD card.

I never annotate pdf files (only epub).

[elcreative]

The fundamental problem relates to the usage of eReaders... most users are readers (many substantial readers) of fiction and things like annotations were put in as a feature but (I suspect) without any thought of being used as a major factor on the devices by non-fiction readers. If you want serious annotation functionality then the better choice is a tablet especially as you can more easily choose the software which you run and choose to meet your particular needs rather than a more generic setup...

[vxf]

Originally Posted by Leserli

So it's not just me! And it doesn't look as there's a usable way to get rid of this...Really disappointing. I hoped, there would be an easy solution.

I don't have much books on my ebook. And I need these books on my ebook, as most are science books. This really sucks.
Why doesn't any review actually point on this problem?
I bought this ebook, for it's good review and especially because it has a touch screen, so that one can easily mark/highlight text passages. Seems like I made a bad choice...

The explanation you give doesn't really make sense to me. For every book has his own annotation file. So why should the reader be impaired by the annotation files of other books? This I really don't get...
If it would just get slower in every new book, I would understand it. But it gets slower in relation to the annotations of every book. This is IMHO strange. Who programmed this piece of crap SW?
It really looks like the Reader has always all annotations of all books in the memory. And upon every change it stores all XML files completely new.
IMHO this is really just lazy programming, and yes, I'm a professional programmer myself. You can do this for a hobby SW, but for an ebook SW, which will be deployed in thousands of units? I really cannot get this.
Just a little more time spent in SW development and this problem could have been solved.

Sorry for being that negative. But I'm currently quite disappointed, that there's no solution to my problem, and it seems that I either have to live with waiting and watching out of the window for 30 seconds several times per page, or buying a new reader.
What other readers are there with touch screen, good display, PDF and EPUB functionality, and a working annotations function? Any suggestions?

1) The best device for annotations is still an iPad.

2) Yes, it appears every annotation is linked to some sort of centralized database. Nonsense, I agree.

3) You might want to try the SD card. It seems to mitigate the problem. But it doesn't eliminate it.

4) Yes, I share your outrage. SONY devices slow down when you have many notes - even worse, they slow down when you have many books. I uploaded about 2,000 PDFs once and my device would take 2hours+ to index every time I disconnected. When I spoke to customer service, they told me that wanting 2,000+ documents on an ereader was nonsense. Which seems to contradict their own advertising ("Carry 10,000 books with you"). I have reported SONY to the BBB, there isn't much more to do. The really annoying thing is - their devices are still the best on the market.

[Leserli]

1) The best device for annotations is still an iPad.

The problem I have with an IPad is the display. IMHO are TFT-Displays just not good for longer reading sessions, as your eyes get fatigued very quick.
Therefore I like the EPaper-stuff.

3) You might want to try the SD card. It seems to mitigate the problem. But it doesn't eliminate it.

OK, I will try it. At least something I can do!

4) Yes, I share your outrage. SONY devices slow down when you have many notes - even worse, they slow down when you have many books. I uploaded about 2,000 PDFs once and my device would take 2hours+ to index every time I disconnected. When I spoke to customer service, they told me that wanting 2,000+ documents on an ereader was nonsense. Which seems to contradict their own advertising ("Carry 10,000 books with you"). I have reported SONY to the BBB, there isn't much more to do. The really annoying thing is - their devices are still the best on the market.

That they shall be the best on the market, was also why I initially bought my PRS-650. But as said before. In all the reviews I read in advance, not one ever even mentioned these problems? What the heck are they reviewing?
That they do also have big problem with a lot of books is IMHO also ridiculous. It seems like the basic SW for this thing was actually really written, when you only had one or two books on your ebook, and that they never changed this SW foundation.
If it really needs more than an hour(!!!) just for indexing the books, something really has to be wrong...

BTW: What would be the best Sony addresses for complaining about these problems? It can at least not hurt. And if enough people complain, maybe they will change it...

Thanks again for all your answers!