MobileRead Forums - View Single Post

big_stan · 10-06-2006, 09:16 AM

I finally got my yesterday, it took 3 days to go the final about 3 miles, very painfull. Anyway, I have to agree with some of the other posters. The box was very small, and fairly nondescript. The box certainly wouldn't jump out at you if it was sitting on a shelf (like an iPod or Slingbox would).

The unit itself, is amazingly solid. It actually feels quite heavy for its size. If you closed your eyes you would almost think your holding a slab of metal in your hands.

When I first turned it on, I initially thought that the display looked somewhat similar to my old Palm Pilot Pro, except the display has absolutely no depth. It looks like the text (or graphics) are printed directly onto the screen (with a printer). I have to say that it's just uncanny, and it will take me some time to get used to the idea that text can look this good on an electronic device. After years of staring at CRT's and LCD's (or 8+ hours a day on a work day), it going to take my brain some time to get used to!

I immediately downloaded a couple of books off of Sony's site, and a bunch of books from manybooks.net. For some reason when I select the librie format off of manybooks.net I get a 0 byte file, so I ended up downloading about 6-7 books in RTF format. I opened them up (in Word) changed all of the text to size 16, imported them into the connect software, and moved them over to the reader. I have to say I'm very impressed, they look just great.

The connect software itself is generally not bad, but it is kind of stupid. For example, I made a "collection" of SciFi books. Initially I had just 2 books in it, which I copied to the reader. Later I added 3-4 more. I then copied the entire selection to the reader, but instead of overwriting the original directory (which is what I expected), it actually created a second SciFi collection on the eReader. You also can't copy collections to the memory card, which I think is a huge issue. I for one would love to walk around with hundreds of books, including all of the classics (many available for free!), but as it is now this isn't really possible.

At the moment I have about 15 books loaded up, which combined only take 10 or so megs (and you have 64 Megs available internally). So if I was going on a vacation (even for months) taking enough to read wouldn't be an issue, even if I only relied on the internal memory.

So far I've used the device for a couple of hours, I read in bed, and played around with it for a couple of hours, and overall I'm very impressed. I charged it up when I first opened the box, but haven't charged it since. So far the battery meter is sitting at 100%. I'm going to try to go a couple of days without recharging to see how long it will actually hold out. So far so good.

10-06-2006, 09:16 AM	#114
big_stan Member Posts: 14 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2006 Device: Sony Reader	I finally got my yesterday, it took 3 days to go the final about 3 miles, very painfull. Anyway, I have to agree with some of the other posters. The box was very small, and fairly nondescript. The box certainly wouldn't jump out at you if it was sitting on a shelf (like an iPod or Slingbox would). The unit itself, is amazingly solid. It actually feels quite heavy for its size. If you closed your eyes you would almost think your holding a slab of metal in your hands. When I first turned it on, I initially thought that the display looked somewhat similar to my old Palm Pilot Pro, except the display has absolutely no depth. It looks like the text (or graphics) are printed directly onto the screen (with a printer). I have to say that it's just uncanny, and it will take me some time to get used to the idea that text can look this good on an electronic device. After years of staring at CRT's and LCD's (or 8+ hours a day on a work day), it going to take my brain some time to get used to! I immediately downloaded a couple of books off of Sony's site, and a bunch of books from manybooks.net. For some reason when I select the librie format off of manybooks.net I get a 0 byte file, so I ended up downloading about 6-7 books in RTF format. I opened them up (in Word) changed all of the text to size 16, imported them into the connect software, and moved them over to the reader. I have to say I'm very impressed, they look just great. The connect software itself is generally not bad, but it is kind of stupid. For example, I made a "collection" of SciFi books. Initially I had just 2 books in it, which I copied to the reader. Later I added 3-4 more. I then copied the entire selection to the reader, but instead of overwriting the original directory (which is what I expected), it actually created a second SciFi collection on the eReader. You also can't copy collections to the memory card, which I think is a huge issue. I for one would love to walk around with hundreds of books, including all of the classics (many available for free!), but as it is now this isn't really possible. At the moment I have about 15 books loaded up, which combined only take 10 or so megs (and you have 64 Megs available internally). So if I was going on a vacation (even for months) taking enough to read wouldn't be an issue, even if I only relied on the internal memory. So far I've used the device for a couple of hours, I read in bed, and played around with it for a couple of hours, and overall I'm very impressed. I charged it up when I first opened the box, but haven't charged it since. So far the battery meter is sitting at 100%. I'm going to try to go a couple of days without recharging to see how long it will actually hold out. So far so good.