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dsalomon · 09-23-2010, 11:29 AM

jaxx6166 - yes, that's with the Sony software. I downloaded about 580 books, about 20% were large PDF files.

I'd like to expand a bit on my initial comments about the Sony software. It's significantly better than it was when it was first released. However, it does still have a tendency to crash when working with a large number of books, approximately 600 in my setup.

I've also noticed that there are times when it eats up an ENORMOUS amount of memory. I've seen it use as much as 1.3GB of memory - and that's when it really starts to bog down (I have 8GB running 64-bit Win 7, so plenty of memory available.)

I do use the sync feature, which I do like. However, it shouldn't have to spin through every book every time it syncs. The software should be able to track changes and sync only those, without checking the date/time stamp first (which is what I assume it is doing as it spins through the entire list.) It needs to have a way to suspend the sync until the user is ready to let it do its thing. When I am adding a lot of books or moving books around into collections, every change I make seems to queue up another sync. After making a bunch of changes, I looked at the Status and it showed about 20 syncs in the queue. Every single one of those will look at all changes. Yes, you can click the "x" to cancel them, but that's just a pain to do. Granted, now that I have everything loaded and into collections the changes should be minimal and much quicker. Syncing is a fairly new feature, and I hope that Sony will add functionality and a greater level of control over it in future releases. (Sony, are you reading this board?)

The software also needs to be able to detect duplicates in collections. If you inadvertently add one or more books multiple times in a collection, it just lets you with no warning or error. There is also no way to remove duplicates other than manually.

Another gripe I have is with the Sony Store. It downloaded some of the same titles multiple times in a single session. This was when I first migrated from the 505 to the 650 and had to migrate from LRX to EPUB format (I had a lot of purchased books). When the download was complete, nearly every title was duplicated at least once, and some up to 8 COPIES! Again, this was a one-time thing, so its not a huge problem, it was just annoying.

I found another really annoying thing yesterday. I had the reader software running in the background. I inserted an SD card that was previously used in the reader into my card reader in my laptop to re-format it for other use. The reader software recognized that it had been used in the reader before (which was NOT currently connected) and started syncing the SD card to the library. This resulted in a mess that I had to manually clean up.

One main reason I use the Sony software as the interface is for the collections feature. Sony did a great job with that (other than my nit noted above). I find it very easy to use and very flexible.

My final comment (for now :-) is that it would be nice to be able to make changes to some of the metadata. I have found incorrect metadata a few times, and there's no way to deal with that in the Sony software. Yes, I know I can do this with Calibre - and I do that as necessary. It's just a minor annoyance to have to do this in separate software.

Finally, thanks to all of you who have welcomed me to the forum!!

09-23-2010, 11:29 AM	#8
dsalomon Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2010 Location: Atlanta, GA Device: Sony Reader PRS-650	jaxx6166 - yes, that's with the Sony software. I downloaded about 580 books, about 20% were large PDF files. I'd like to expand a bit on my initial comments about the Sony software. It's significantly better than it was when it was first released. However, it does still have a tendency to crash when working with a large number of books, approximately 600 in my setup. I've also noticed that there are times when it eats up an ENORMOUS amount of memory. I've seen it use as much as 1.3GB of memory - and that's when it really starts to bog down (I have 8GB running 64-bit Win 7, so plenty of memory available.) I do use the sync feature, which I do like. However, it shouldn't have to spin through every book every time it syncs. The software should be able to track changes and sync only those, without checking the date/time stamp first (which is what I assume it is doing as it spins through the entire list.) It needs to have a way to suspend the sync until the user is ready to let it do its thing. When I am adding a lot of books or moving books around into collections, every change I make seems to queue up another sync. After making a bunch of changes, I looked at the Status and it showed about 20 syncs in the queue. Every single one of those will look at all changes. Yes, you can click the "x" to cancel them, but that's just a pain to do. Granted, now that I have everything loaded and into collections the changes should be minimal and much quicker. Syncing is a fairly new feature, and I hope that Sony will add functionality and a greater level of control over it in future releases. (Sony, are you reading this board?) The software also needs to be able to detect duplicates in collections. If you inadvertently add one or more books multiple times in a collection, it just lets you with no warning or error. There is also no way to remove duplicates other than manually. Another gripe I have is with the Sony Store. It downloaded some of the same titles multiple times in a single session. This was when I first migrated from the 505 to the 650 and had to migrate from LRX to EPUB format (I had a lot of purchased books). When the download was complete, nearly every title was duplicated at least once, and some up to 8 COPIES! Again, this was a one-time thing, so its not a huge problem, it was just annoying. I found another really annoying thing yesterday. I had the reader software running in the background. I inserted an SD card that was previously used in the reader into my card reader in my laptop to re-format it for other use. The reader software recognized that it had been used in the reader before (which was NOT currently connected) and started syncing the SD card to the library. This resulted in a mess that I had to manually clean up. One main reason I use the Sony software as the interface is for the collections feature. Sony did a great job with that (other than my nit noted above). I find it very easy to use and very flexible. My final comment (for now :-) is that it would be nice to be able to make changes to some of the metadata. I have found incorrect metadata a few times, and there's no way to deal with that in the Sony software. Yes, I know I can do this with Calibre - and I do that as necessary. It's just a minor annoyance to have to do this in separate software. Finally, thanks to all of you who have welcomed me to the forum!!