Well I bought my reader for school and chose this one as it is the only one that allows mark up on all files loaded on the reader...not just purchased PDFs - but also ones that my professors distribute.
I take back what I said about it never connecting - in late Dec. I finally trouble shot with someone from Sony who seemed to have fixed the problem by messing with the reader software. I was ecstatic as it had taken since Thanksgiving to get this far. I thought the problem was solved until earlier this week when I went to dock it to add my etextbooks and PDFs and the "charging stopped" error appeared again! So I know that it CAN work.
So I called Sony and they wanted to send me another replacement (they already replaced the original one that had this error appear). Phone tag, dropped calls an incompetent tech support were the order of my day. I pretty much talked to someone that told me it was bc I was using a Mac and that it was Apple's problem. I told him that any external drive (cameras, memory cards, flash drives) were immediately recognized so that is seems like a Sony problem to me and that if they claim the product is Mac compatible they should know how to trouble shoot it (plus from my internet searches it seems that MANY have had this same problem). I asked him why he couldn't follow the same procedure as the previous tech and work from the software end and he pretty much said because that wouldn't fix it and the tech that solved it last time was on a lower tier. I feel that if he could have repeated the procedure and it worked again that it might have given him some insights into why it was only a temporary fix the first time. Nothing like some techie elitism to thwart a solution....
Tonight I purchased a powered USB hub to try that solution to no avail - the device still isn't recognized. I did look through my console log today and saw that when I reinstalled the reader software that even though it said it installed successfully it threw up an "error during the installation that says error attribute filesize not recognized" and "error attribute filename not recognized." I'm not sure if this has anything to do with it???
If Sony can't get it to work consistently when I call again then I will get my money back and the money that I spent on my etextbooks. Sony Customer Support = FAIL. I would never recommend this reader to anyone - even though it's the one I really wanted. This saga has been a frustrating nightmare of bad customer service, incompetent technical support and at least 20 hours wasted with no resolution
Tomorrow I will try to locate another USB cord...stay tuned!