[alexqwerty159]

Hi all,

I've been reading forums here for some time, you've been a great help !

I managed to get hold of a PRS-500 here in the UK. I've been looking forward to a usable reader for years but still, I have mixed feelings about it.
I thought to write a review here, and to summarize some of the issues I've read from other posters that apply to me.

The screen background (even under good lighting) is quite grey (as many have said official photos are a bit deceiving) and the letters much less clear than a paperback. So I've found there is a big trade off.
a) If you increase the font size then the page holds many less words than a book of an equal size and reading is a bit of a chore, you have to turn pages every 5-10 secs and it's like reading a children's book. But pages turn quickly and a 300 page book is less than 0.5mb.
b) Embedded fonts make the book more than 2mb and slow the page turning considerably. From 1 secs without embedded fonts to sometimes more than 4 sec with. You have to remember when you reach the last lines to press the button, that's distracting and unnatural to do when you haven't finished a page. But embedded fonts, even if they are at the same size as the PRS-500 internal fonts, appear much much clearer and bolder (I use libprs-500. Why does that happen ?). By the way the first time the reader encounters a text with embedded fonts, it makes a LONG time to access it, many minutes.

To quantify the above, a character count of 55-70 letters per line (incl. spaces) and a page of 25-30 lines approaches the setting of a normal small book, and is a good balance in my opinion. I've stuck to this but the quality is noticeably lower than a normal paper page.

Apart from that and the usual format conversion glitches talked about in the forums, I'm extremely happy with the reader. I thought the screen would be too small but it's just the right size for reading in home and outside.

Do you think that this technology will catch on after all ? I have my doubts. Most of acquaintances who are avid readers were intrigued at first but not one considered buying one (and many of them are quite wealthy and into gadgets). And I can see their point. Books are indeed better, they are good for display also, they are reasobably lightweight and portable and they are at the same price almost as an e-book.

Also there is very little variety at the Sony ebook store (the same applies to Amazon kindle too). I live in a very rural area, no post office, so how am I supposed to read ? It's quite challenging to find a way to download legally e-books that interest me.

Do any of the above (especially the line character-count/page-turning delay/filesize/embbedded-font trade off) relate to your experience ? What are the settings you find most comfortable ?