I'm new to the ereaders and ebooks - need help please.

[DarkHaloPrincess]

Hi,

I'm new to this forum as well as the ereading world. For the last months I've been looking around and have finally decided on the sony prs300 which I'm picking up early next week. I've got a few questions which I can't find the answers to (maybe I've not looked hard enough). I don't know much about ereaders so please bear with me.

First question is about the charging. I know that the reader comes with a USB cable but I've read that takes 4 hours to charge whilst using an ac adpater takes 2 hours (about). For the first charge I've read that the charging takes a really long while but what I want to know is, can I charge the reader with an ac adapter the very first time it's taken out of the box? Or do I have to use the usb and a computer?

I've found this ac adapter charger - is this suitable or is it a cheap knock off? http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/UK-MAINS-CHARG...item563cc8d264

Second question. I'm aware that there are free ebooks on this site, google, manybooks.net etc. If I were to download the Jane Austen collection say, and add them to Calibre, can I then send them to two ereaders from the same Cailbre programme? These two ereaders would both be the sony prs 300models (mine and my sisters'). Or would she have to transfer those books to her reader from her own Calibre account?

Third question. When I download books from Waterstones and Whsmith, where do they go on my laptop? I know that I have to install both the sony reader library and adobe digital editions but why do I need both? It's all so complicated for me.

Sorry if these questions have already been answered (I can't find them). I want to be prepared for when I get my reader so that I can start reading straight away (without days of painstakingly trying to work out which is what).

Thanks!

[tofubean]

That charger looks perfectly alright for the reader. Although, there's always a slight risk involved with unofficial products. Charging is fine using the usb cable if you don't mind not being able to read while charging. Just leave it charging via the cable and forget it for many hours.

I'm not very sure about the transfer of books but i don't think calibre will differentiate which prs300 it's transferring to unless you have both plugged in at the same time.

[redhead231]

I bought my charger from E Bay for my 505, its fine, m,uch better than leaving it for hours on the computer.

Will your sister not want her own library? I am not sure either, about whether Calibre will work for both EReaders, someone more knowledgable than me, will answer that one.
Take a look at Smashwords & Feedbooks, you will find a whole wealth of free books there, as well as Indie authors who write some terrific books. You will find the prices good as well & best of all, they are not DRMd, so fully portable.
I have not used Smiths or Waterstones yet, but think you will have to load them into Sony/Adobe, because thats how they work, but they can be transfered into Calibre, once downloaded to Sony/ Digital Ediitons. Remember though, these books cannot be transfered to another reader as they have DRM on them. In other words, you can read them, but no one else can unless they borrow your Reader.
I have had my Reader since the end of April & have some 75 books, of which I have bought 6 (4 with a book token) & 2 that were recommended from this site & you will be amazed at how much reading material is out there on the web, without resorting to the likes of Smiths & Waterstones.
There is life outside of Amazon, Smiths & Waterstones, for us in UK, who are more restricted than those in the US.
Have a play & most of all ENJOY!

[church mouse]

Hello DHP.

If you are worried about getting a charger from ebay, you can get the Ultimateaddons one for a couple of quid more from Amazon - I know that one works well.

As has been pointed out already, you cannot share DRM encrypted books but you can get the Austen books for free (legally) from sites such as manybooks.net.

Purchases from Waterstones, Smiths etc I always open up first in Adobe Digital Editions to get them authorised and then I manually add them to Calibre. I never use the Sony software.

Oh, I would also mention that sometimes it is possible for us UK readers to buy e-books from the States, but that depends upon any publication restrictions the publishers have placed on the title. This is one of my biggest frustrations - finding a book by a UK author, with a UK publisher available as an e-book in the States but not in the UK and with a territorial sale restriction placed on it by the publisher.

[redhead231]

Church Mouse, yes thats what I did when I bought the 4 books , I used Adobe to get them & then transferred them to Calibre.
I use Smashwords a heck of a lot, because I have yet to encounter any restrictions on the book being available to us here in the UK.

[DarkHaloPrincess]

Originally Posted by redhead231

I bought my charger from E Bay for my 505, its fine, m,uch better than leaving it for hours on the computer.

Will your sister not want her own library? I am not sure either, about whether Calibre will work for both EReaders, someone more knowledgable than me, will answer that one.
Take a look at Smashwords & Feedbooks, you will find a whole wealth of free books there, as well as Indie authors who write some terrific books. You will find the prices good as well & best of all, they are not DRMd, so fully portable.
I have not used Smiths or Waterstones yet, but think you will have to load them into Sony/Adobe, because thats how they work, but they can be transfered into Calibre, once downloaded to Sony/ Digital Ediitons. Remember though, these books cannot be transfered to another reader as they have DRM on them. In other words, you can read them, but no one else can unless they borrow your Reader.
I have had my Reader since the end of April & have some 75 books, of which I have bought 6 (4 with a book token) & 2 that were recommended from this site & you will be amazed at how much reading material is out there on the web, without resorting to the likes of Smiths & Waterstones.
There is life outside of Amazon, Smiths & Waterstones, for us in UK, who are more restricted than those in the US.
Have a play & most of all ENJOY!

Hi. Thanks for your book site suggestions. My sister will have her own library, it's just that for the free classics, she'd rather not download them herself (lazy, she is). The DRM info helps - I know there are restrictions but that's fine. And yes, the US get almost everything! I love the Barnes and Nobles site but I don't think I can download from there - it has restrictions I think.

Halo

[DarkHaloPrincess]

Originally Posted by church mouse

Hello DHP.

If you are worried about getting a charger from ebay, you can get the Ultimateaddons one for a couple of quid more from Amazon - I know that one works well.

As has been pointed out already, you cannot share DRM encrypted books but you can get the Austen books for free (legally) from sites such as manybooks.net.

Purchases from Waterstones, Smiths etc I always open up first in Adobe Digital Editions to get them authorised and then I manually add them to Calibre. I never use the Sony software.

Oh, I would also mention that sometimes it is possible for us UK readers to buy e-books from the States, but that depends upon any publication restrictions the publishers have placed on the title. This is one of my biggest frustrations - finding a book by a UK author, with a UK publisher available as an e-book in the States but not in the UK and with a territorial sale restriction placed on it by the publisher.

Oops. Just realised how to multi-quote. Oh well. I've looked at manybooks.net and found loads of great books on there. So does that mean you don't have the sony software installed? Or is it neccessary to have it installed but you don't use it? I've heard there are lots of problems with it. I know that it shouldn't because it's the latest OS but will it have compatibilty problems with windows 7 64bit?

When I first connect the reader, if I have to install the sony software on my computer, can I later remove it and install it on my new laptop (which is arriving in a couple of weeks)? It's still going to recognise my reader right?

Thanks for the help!

[Kevin2960]

Hi the charger should be fine,

Also Argos do one that charges All varieties of the Nintendo DS and the PSP, I have used one for several months without problem,

In the Argos Catalogue it's priced at £9.99, but it's actually selling for £5, a real bargain,

Good Luck,

[DarkHaloPrincess]

Originally Posted by Kevin2960

Hi the charger should be fine,

Also Argos do one that charges All varieties of the Nintendo DS and the PSP, I have used one for several months without problem,

In the Argos Catalogue it's priced at £9.99, but it's actually selling for £5, a real bargain,

Good Luck,

Hey. Thanks for the suggestion. Just checked it out. Will probably get that one (it is a bargain with all those for the ds models as well as psp) -if not, the the one on ebay.

Halo.

[sony_fox]

Or is it neccessary to have it installed but you don't use it? I've heard there are lots of problems with it

It is necessary to have it, I think. It's how Sony Validates the reader, and sorts the DRM out. The problems aren't that it's buggy or crashes, merely that it's annoying to use.

Adobe Digital Editions ADE is what other companies, Waterstones etc use to contol the DRM.

I think - though I haven't tired it - you can use upto 6 devices per DRM, so you adn your sister may be able to both read books one you has bought. If you each register your readers on each others computers.

if I have to install the sony software on my computer, can I later remove it and install it on my new laptop (which is arriving in a couple of weeks)? It's still going to recognise my reader right?

You won't need ot remove it, and should be able to use your reader on both laptop and desktop. It will count as one of the 6 above.

[Worldwalker]

I'm not the person to answer DRM questions, because I vote with my wallet (tiny though it may be) and refuse to buy DRM-restricted ebooks. I don't think DRM restrictions are "fine" so I buy from Baen, from BookView Cafe, and a few other random places, but not the Sony store. I also read a lot of free ebooks. Project Gutenberg has been digitizing books since the 1970s, believe it or not, and they have tens of thousands of them. I'm a little notorious for posting my great ebook source list at the slightest excuse -- you'll find it further down in this post.

Calibre can handle any number of reading devices just fine. There's no reason not to share a library, unless you've got DRM stuck all over your books. Calibre, by the way, is free. Really free. The GPL kind of free. No accounts, no worries. And it does pretty much anything you can imagine. If you and your sister want partially-overlapping libraries (that is, if you like books by Austen and Baum, and your sister likes Baum and Cooper, each of you can assign them tags in calibre ("mine" and "hers", perhaps) and look only at the books that are tagged "hers" but not "mine", for instance. Drop in on the calibre board (it's down the forum list a ways) and ask any questions you may have, and the person who wrote whatever feature you're asking about will probably answer your question himself, unless the user-gurus beat him to it.

External chargers are better than USB because they're faster, they don't interfere with reading your books (when you plug a USB cable into a Sony Reader, it expects books and goes into transfer mode, even if it's just a USB power brick), and they're the only thing that can charge a Reader with a totally flat battery. I have an actual Sony charger, and the thing is rated at 2 amps. For such a little device, my 505 can be awfully hungry! Incidentally, do not plug the Reader into an unpowered USB hub, or it will try to power the hub and drain its battery.

Now, about where you can get ebooks by the tens of thousands:

Right here on MobileRead is a good start -- the ebooks are built by hand by MobileRead members, and in my opinion they have the best formatting. There are a lot of other good ebook sites out there. Here's my personal free ebook source list:

Public Domain

MobileRead - best formatting, limited selection (hand-built by MobileRead members)

ManyBooks - PG scraper, but sometimes has books from other sources, good formatting

Feedbooks - mostly scrapes PG, improves formatting

Project Gutenberg - the granddaddy of them all, phenomenal selection

Munseys - painful to use, but has books nobody else does

the Internet Archive - generally only the scans are readable

Google Books - most of the time, what's good isn't free, and what's free isn't good

Free non-PD

Baen Free Library - amazing selection; also, they will tempt you into buying books

5th Imperium - Baen CD collections

Other Things

Search: Inkmesh. Sadly, it's not a very comprehensive search engine, at least when it comes to free ebooks - it misses a lot of them - but as far as I know, it's the only ebook-specific one out there.

If you're using free ebooks, it's only right to give something back: proofread a page a day at the Distributed Proofreading Project.

[dorino]

I'll second the DRM stance. It's just unnecessary trouble for the sake of preventing piracy.
It fails at that, as any IRC search will tell you...

Project Gutenberg is a great resource. Watch Amazon for free books, too, often the author will distribute them without the Kindle DRM outside of the Kindle store (MetaGame by Sam Landstrom is an example)

[redhead231]

Don't Forget Smashwords, I have got loads of books from there & yes I have bought a couple as well...lol
The only DRMd books I have bought are because I had a book token to use up & was able to spend it at Pickabooks online.
Until I got my Reader, I was totally unaware of what great reading material is out there, for little or no cost.

[DarkHaloPrincess]

Will keep an eye on Amazon. Didn't know that.

[DarkHaloPrincess]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

If you and your sister want partially-overlapping libraries (that is, if you like books by Austen and Baum, and your sister likes Baum and Cooper, each of you can assign them tags in calibre ("mine" and "hers", perhaps) and look only at the books that are tagged "hers" but not "mine", for instance.

External chargers are better than USB because they're faster, they don't interfere with reading your books (when you plug a USB cable into a Sony Reader, it expects books and goes into transfer mode, even if it's just a USB power brick), and they're the only thing that can charge a Reader with a totally flat battery. I have an actual Sony charger, and the thing is rated at 2 amps. For such a little device, my 505 can be awfully hungry! Incidentally, do not plug the Reader into an unpowered USB hub, or it will try to power the hub and drain its battery.

Thanks. The tags options sounds great - will try that. I'm going to get an external charger for sure. But what is an unpowered USB hub? Is it okay to charge the reader via the usb ports at the side of a laptop or on the computer? (I sound like a complete nut but I don't know much about gadgets).