First Sony Reader Update Available!

[Leaping Gnome]

When I'm lying in bed reading and I know I need to go to sleep by X time or I'll be haggard at work the next morning, I'm not wearing a watch.

[Aprilbeginnings]

All right, all right, I will let this one slide, the being in bed thing and not wearing a watch, LOL.....<G>

[yvanleterrible]

Same as LG. What's wrong with having a clock on the reader? If one does'nt want it, one turns it off!

[NatCh]

I use the clock on the nightstand for that. It also tells me when to get up in the morning (sometimes I even listen to it), and I can see it in the dark.

As for watches, I use a pocket watch, having a watch (or anything else, for that matter) on my wrist bugs me.

It would be nice to have a clock on the Reader's screen (if there were one, I'd definitely want the option of turning it off), but I'm not all that concerned about it, after all, I've somehow managed for years with clockless paper books.

[diabloNL]

Originally Posted by HarryT

In one way that could be worse than not having a clock at all, because if you're a slow reader you'd never know whether or not the clock was right .

What they could do is make a 5 minute span. So either 5 minutes or with a page flip whichever comes first to update the clock. In that way you won't miss to much time and since te most will read a page within 5 minutes it won't attack your battery to much.

[Leaping Gnome]

Originally Posted by NatCh

I use the clock on the nightstand for that. It also tells me when to get up in the morning (sometimes I even listen to it), and I can see it in the dark.

Luddite! Get with the times and use your cell phone as an alarm.

[orcinus]

Originally Posted by diabloNL

What they could do is make a 5 minute span.

5 minutes for a page?
That's either extremely slow reading or a veeeeery small font

Re watches: i normally wear a 153-gram Tissot T-Touch, but the first thing i do when i sit down and relax is to take that steel lump of gadgety goodness off my wrist

[diabloNL]

Originally Posted by orcinus

5 minutes for a page?
That's either extremely slow reading or a veeeeery small font

Yeah, I know. But now you can make a cup of coffee, bake an egg and read the newspaper before you switch the page and the clock updates.

But ok, make it 2 minutes or better yet, user option 1-5 minutes.

[flumbo]

Who would have thought the inclusion of a clock would rival the religious arguments of mac vs. pc?

I also haven't worn a watch in years and don't plan on wearing one again. When I used to read on my pda/phone it was nice to have a convenient clock I could glance at when I was relaxing at a coffee shop.

Yes, we could all carry an extra gadget or watch to check the time but if you are using the reader, this would be more convenient. As someone else pointed out, you don't have to refresh the entire screen to update the clock-- just press the volume button on the reader to see local screen updating in action. If you can show me that pressing that volume button once a minute while reading significantly impacts the battery life, I would be very surprised.

Sony, could you please include a clock but offer a "don't display clock" option for our fanatical watch-wearing faction?

[porkupan]

So, I guess, everyone in agreement that this update brought absolutely no functionality improvements, but was purely a step by Sony to close some security holes in the device? Has anyone noticed any real improvements in PDF rendering, or in RTF, or in TXT, or in LRF?

Who would have thought that the company spent half a year working on fighting back hackers or guerrilla developers who were working on making their device more usable than it was (why would Sony even do it, to make the device less attractive to prospective buyers?) and not on fixing bugs and listening to the people who asked for improvements...

I am just very disappointed.

[eppythacher]

Just updated on XP SP2 and it seems to be working fine. Moved about 24 MBs from the library to the sd card and took about 6 minutes. I did not crash, which is good

[RWood]

I guess the "security" fixes were that somebody somewhere figured out their DRM scheme.

[Nightwing]

A clock would consume power...

[flumbo]

Originally Posted by Nightwing

A clock would consume power...

The reader already keeps track of the time. Make a bookmark and then go back to the main menu/All Bookmarks. It lists the date the bookmark was created-- the only way it can keep track of the date is by having a clock ticking away in its innards right now. So, no extra power consumption there.

The only refresh needed for a clock would be the small square area around the number that needs to change. The only time that small area would be refreshing is when you have the unit on and are reading. I don't think that would have any significant effect on the power used.

This thing already works for weeks without having to be plugged in...

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by porkupan

Who would have thought that the company spent half a year working on fighting back hackers or guerrilla developers who were working on making their device more usable than it was (why would Sony even do it, to make the device less attractive to prospective buyers?) and not on fixing bugs and listening to the people who asked for improvements...

I agree that improving the reading software should be their primary goal. Now, I heard "through the grapevine" that the Sony tech guys are working hard on improving the way the Reader handles PDF. I hope we will see some improvement here in one of the future firmware updates.