Advice: do not buy a sony reader. Battery issues and support sucks

[Kolenka]

I'll second one of the other guys: How long (in days) was it lasting between recharges? Let's back off the page count for a second and look at the other measurement of battery life for these readers (time between recharges). Combined, the two place a limit on battery life, not just one or the other, and the length of time between charges is more likely to be the limiting factor than page counts. Especially since I don't know anyone who is heavy enough a reader to actually burn through the 2 dozen books required to hit the page count limit in under two weeks.

There have been a couple calls asking for how you determined what the page count was, or asking for more detail on this second aspect of battery life, and I think it would help prove your case in more minds if you actually gave us the whole set of data and the rationale behind it. Otherwise it comes off as biased opinion, and those of us with contradictory experiences will simply argue with you until we are all tired of it and the thread dies, with no real conclusion made.

And in my experience, I've found that my 900 does actually get the 2.5 weeks with wireless off that Sony claims, although I can usually only make it through about a half-dozen books in that time, plus the daily newspapers I read. That would maybe only account to 1-2k page turns under heavy reading. The 600 I played with was similarly close to the 2 week mark, although it came up short, which I attributed to the high numbers of annotations I was doing with it (I was proofreading one of my OCR'd scans at the time and was annotating pretty much every page).

[scottjl]

Well, I am a happy Sony customer on a number of products, even dealt with their support on one occasion (dead PS2) and it was a good experience. I get well over 400 "turns" of a page (remember, each screen refresh for a menu counts as a page anyway) out of my 600.

[Bremen Cole]

What wall charger were you using? Did it use the USB slot on your reader or the "barrel" hole?

I, like most everyone else, get amazing battery life. So, in spite of the title of your thread, people should buy Sony's..... And.... as crazy as it sounds, UPS could have messed up or even Sony and UPS may have messed up..... Companies (which are just people) do make mistakes.

By all means get rid of the reader, but the odds of two units, both with bad battery's and going to the same person...... Possible... sure. But then, you asked Sony to send a pickup to UPS, and they did so 3 times.... what exactly do you expect them to do?

I have had plenty of dealing with lemon products, and the typical lame customer service provided by most companies. But the sequence of events of you saga does seem a bit of a stretch.... Again possible.... but you have to admit if you were on the other side of it, it looks unlikely....

Bottom line: I hope you are able to send it back and get a Nook. Another thing I don't understand is why you want to take it to a landfill rather than pay $30 to send it back.... Heck I'll give you $50 for it and pay postage for you to send it to me.......

[dubyajay]

Originally Posted by PhishStyx

I've gotta admit, I'm curious about how you kept track of how many page turns you took. Do you keep a little notepad with you and make a little hash-mark every time you turn the page? Did you count other refreshes in there amongst your page turns? Did you also keep track of the time you spent reading each page?

I'm very intrigued by the process you went by in calculating this.

Since I read on the 'large' type print, depending on the book I'm reading, sometimes one book page equaled 3 or 4 reader page turns. So, for example, if I read 50 pages in the book according to the book page numbers, I'd multiply 50 by 4 (how many times I turned the page) and get 200 page turns. When I first realized on the first reader I had that power was draining significantly, I marked down the page number on a piece of paper and then when I had to recharge, I noted the page number and then did the math with those numbers.

When I got the second, 'refurbished' reader, I kept track on the first charge, just so I could see how much better it got from the one I had to send back - I was expecting to be astounded with at least a thousand page turns. But I only got 400 or so. It was really disappointing that I had to charge the unit multiple times to read one book. Not what I had in mind when I bought it.

Since I didn't use teh reader to write notes, listen to music and rarely used the dictionary, the only other time I'd be using power would be turning it on. I just used is like it was a book and the only thing I ever did with a regular book was read it. And use it to block the LED on the alarm clock ;-) It sat on my bed stand in about 65 deg temps. I would also fully power down every night, just to make sure there was no leak.

You know, if Sony didn't send me a bad refurbished unit after the first one went bad, and had better customer service on dealing with the second bad unit, I wouldn't be complaining. I could handle one. Or the other but not both for that much money. I mean really...TWO bad units AND bad customer service in an attempt to right the situation? I've really been looking around for a good thing in this experience and have been more than patient for two months. I suppose I should just suck it up, not say anything and consider it a $379 loss. Though I do have to say it would have been more fun flushing the money down the toilet - that pretty green and white swirling around in the water would have been way more entertaining than Sony's 10th circle of hell.

[dubyajay]

I know what you mean - I feel the same way about other products - like ibm computers, lg phones, you know what I mean.
I'm envious of your experience - I really wanted to like this thing and have made a huge effort to give sony a chance to right the wrong but they don't seem to have an interest in doing that.

[vivaldirules]

I've only skimmed through your long post so I don't know if this relevant but I wanted to mention that several people have experienced greatly reduced battery life when they have used a nearly full SD card. I've had the latter problem and so don't usually use one any more except for special needs. Just a tidbit in case it's helpful to you.

[PennyPie]

And on a related note with VivaldiRules...could it be at all possible that you've somehow activated the audio?? This happened to me with my 700...quick as a flash, battery was used up. Just a thought.....

[Bremen Cole]

And in the spirit of VivaldiRules and PennyPie..... have you checked to see if perhaps you have a defective wall charger?

[mksco]

I too am very happy with my PRS-600 - so much so I bought my daugher one for Christmas, and she loves hers too.

My battery lasts at least a week. I travel NC to CA coast on airlines and spend most of the day each way reading (typically 8 to 10 hours each way). Read for an hour or two each day during the week as well. Charge on the weekends when I am home. In the two months I've never had a reason to contact Sony for support.

I do think their note taking functionality is very poorly implemented, and not being able to set the zoom for an entire document is poor design (I read a lot of technical pdf that are 8 1/2 by 11 with figures).

[dubyajay]

No sd card in either the original or re-furbished readers.

I thought of the 'bad charger' possibility too. The only way around using it, without forking even more money over to sony, was to charge via the usb thru my pc, which everyone, including Sony, does not recommend. I tried it anyway because of the possibility of the charger being bad but got the same result - <400 page turns. I also do not 'overcharge'. I unplug within minutes of the red light going out.

One interesting thing - the serial numbers on both units were the same except the last four characters which means someone else had already returned one from the same batch that mine came from and that's the first 'refurbished' one sony sent me.

I'm not necessarily looking for a solution here. I've been cruising the forums and tried all the tricks. I just want people considering a reader purchase to know that sony is probably not the one they want to buy. I really am glad for all you having such a good experience and wish I could be here saying the same thing.

Sony knows there is a problem which is why they agreed to send me another one at their cost. Their customer service can't seem to send out a UPS ticket to get the unit picked up from my house. Since I paid for the first one to be returned, they are paying for this one. They just can't seem to do that right.

[dubyajay]

Originally Posted by PennyPie

And on a related note with VivaldiRules...could it be at all possible that you've somehow activated the audio?? This happened to me with my 700...quick as a flash, battery was used up. Just a thought.....

I checked that on the first reader when I started having problems ;-) No, the music wasn't on. I've worked in computer support - we call those issues I-D -10 -t problems.

[Donnageddon]

Although there are, I am sure, other exceptions, for the most part, buying a Sony Reader is an excellent option... unless your initials are WJ.



Hope you get your particular problem settled to your satisfaction, dubyajay.

[krighton]

no problems here....on my 3rd reader....oh well.

[dubyajay]

Originally Posted by Donnageddon

Although there are, I am sure, other exceptions, for the most part, buying a Sony Reader is an excellent option... unless your initials are WJ.



Hope you get your particular problem settled to your satisfaction, dubyajay.

Me too. There are a few of us on the forum with similar problems so I don't know as though i'm alone on this one.

Some people come here to find out the good and the bad about the different readers before buying. Given my experience, I have come to the conclusion that Sony makes crap and their customer service is worse. I'd be bummed if someone else knew what I know but never said anything. That's all. No hard feelings to folks that like sony reader.

[lilac_jive]

Originally Posted by dubyajay

No sd card in either the original or re-furbished readers.

I thought of the 'bad charger' possibility too. The only way around using it, without forking even more money over to sony, was to charge via the usb thru my pc, which everyone, including Sony, does not recommend. I tried it anyway because of the possibility of the charger being bad but got the same result - <400 page turns. I also do not 'overcharge'. I unplug within minutes of the red light going out.

One interesting thing - the serial numbers on both units were the same except the last four characters which means someone else had already returned one from the same batch that mine came from and that's the first 'refurbished' one sony sent me.

I'm not necessarily looking for a solution here. I've been cruising the forums and tried all the tricks. I just want people considering a reader purchase to know that sony is probably not the one they want to buy. I really am glad for all you having such a good experience and wish I could be here saying the same thing.

Sony knows there is a problem which is why they agreed to send me another one at their cost. Their customer service can't seem to send out a UPS ticket to get the unit picked up from my house. Since I paid for the first one to be returned, they are paying for this one. They just can't seem to do that right.

Where does it say that Sony doesn't recommend charging via USB? There's nothing wrong with it, other than it is slow (and if Sony didn't recommend it they would hopefully include an AC adapter).

Not to disparage you in any way, but very rarely do we see issues with the battery on Sony's (or any ebook device for that matter), so to have two in a row more than likely points to user error. Although I can't see anything that you are doing that would cause it from your posts.

I would have also requested to speak to a manager (calmly) when you were on the phone a second time.