Quote:
Originally Posted by BeccaPrice
One thing about Amazon is their amazing customer service.
For me, the jury is still out on which I prefer. I haven't used the Sony enough yet to know how intrusive the touch page turns will be. I have to wait til my skin or my cover arrives so that the Sony will be more comfortable in my hands. I really like the Sony size - I could easily do without the Kindle keyboard, but I like the page turning buttons on both the right and left hand sides of the unit.
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Yes the side page turn buttons did work well on the Kindle 3 that I tried, but I suspect that Sony thought they would be too prone to accidental bumps on these new more compact readers. I have trouble with them sometimes even on the somewhat larger Kindle 3 (when I shift the way I am holding it, or when I go to set it down, or pick it up, I end up accidentally turning the page).
On my Sony PRS-650 I have a nice padded book-cover style folio cover, so I just hold it cradled in one hand, and alternate between pressing the lower page turn buttons with my thumb and using finger swipes on the IR screen.
I find that with the case, having both the bottom buttons and touch screen available is a pretty good combination, though for a bare reader without the case, I would also miss having side page turn buttons.
This is one area where BOTH Sony and Amazon aren't being very smart, because I think these buttons would be less prone to trouble (even if they had them on a very small device like the PRS-350), if there was a simple way to disable the side page-turn buttons when you don't want them active, and quickly re-enable them when you need them. That way, those who want to use the right side buttons exclusively could easily keep the left side buttons from causing trouble.
Of course, those who like to have both sets active could just as easily leave them set that way as well.
Something simple like, hold down BOTH forward
and the back buttons on either side at the same time for 2 seconds to disable that side, hold them both down again for the same 2 seconds and that side is re-enabled (a little text window would pop up on the side next to the buttons for a second in each case to tell you the status)
There are about a zillion small things like this that would be wonderful additions to the Kindle 3 and the PRS-650 (like MORE FONTS!), but sadly although B&N seems to be pretty good about listening to customers and releasing updates, both Sony and Amazon are really, really, really, BAD about it. They almost never release new software to improve performance or add features until the next model (which comes with it's own NEW set of bug that will also most likely NEVER get fixed)
If they screw something up so badly that the reader completely locks up, or just won't work, and are getting a lot of returns on the unit, then just possibly they will do an update, but short of that you are just stuck.
Case in point, on the Sony, if you pick Landscape mode, the page advance is not right. It doesn't advance by a full screen like it should, and leaves about a third to a half the last screen. This is a particularly bad bug in landscape mode because vertical space is at a premium, so you really don't have space to waste on every single page turn due to some stupid bug.
Or how about this - Open up that wonderful Sony User Manual I was bragging about earlier in this thread. Now search for the text "MP3" My PRS-650 won't find that string even though it appears several times in the PDF document. Apparently there is some kind of stupid bug that keeps it from being able to search for numeric values correctly in PDF's. You can put in just the "MP" part and it will eventually find it (along with several "MP" partial matches) but if you try it the other way and just put in a simple number "3" IT CAN'T EVEN FIND THAT! (though there are lots of '3's in the User Manual PDF)
I searched for the same kind of numeric strings, and mixed alpha-numeric strings, in an EPUB on my PRS-650 and it worked FINE, but numeric searches in PDF's definitely seem to be screwed up.
It would be interesting to know if this is fixed on your PRS-350, or if it also will have problems finding numeric search strings in the PDF user manual (though you probably can't use the string "MP3", since that string legitimately may not appear, since the 350 lacks an audio player). Try searching for a simply number value like "350" (minus the quotes of course) that you know is present somewhere in the user guide, and see if it can find it.
Edit: Searching for 350 will probably work, because my PRS-650 DOES find the number string "650" correctly, as well as the exact string "PRS-650" (so at least my Sony does know it's own name 
) but it still won't find "MP3" or even the "3" in MP3, so it may be something in the PDF encoding of the phrase "MP3" in this specific document that is keeping the 3 from matching. Still pretty strange though 
These are the kinds of things that should FORCE Sony to do an update to the firmware, because they are JUST FLAT OUT BUGS, but good luck getting Sony to fix them (much less add new fonts or other features).
Fortunatly, the stuff I have found so far on the PRS-650 have been the kind of things I can live with in a pinch, because they don't effect features that I use frequently.