I was unfortunate enough to be hospitalized for a surgical procedure that kept me in imprisoned Wednesday the 16th until today. I was fortunate enough to have several hours to convert a bunch of .mobi content to .lrf and have my Sony as a blessed companion during my durance vile!
The Good: This device is a pure pleasure to read! I don't watch much TV so the Sony was a real savior of my sanity. The battery life was superb, I dropped from four bars to three after hours and hours of reading from the 16th until about 5PM EST today. I bet my remaining three bars of battery would last until some time next week easily. The 505 was a hit with the staff too, I got loads of oohs and aahs and 'where can I get one,' from my caregivers.
The Bad: The Sony firmware just plain sucks. Now, I pretty much knew this going in (no folders, limited format support,etc) but even given these limitations, I'd just hate to try to manage more than the 35-40 Sony-format ebooks I have sitting on a 2GB SD card. I can and will live with it, since I can easily convert and manage ebooks with the godsend libprs500 package. Truly, If I was stuck with the Sony EConnect software I'd be wondering if I has wasted my $300 bucks! God Bless Kovidgoyal for this application!
I hope Sony steps up to the plate and hits a home run with a firmware update. At a minimum, folder and html support.
If not, I hope the openinkpot folks are able to deliver Sony-compatible firmware. I'd give my eyeteeth for an open Linux distro for this lovely hardware with a native implementation of FBReader. Of course I'm still on pain meds
