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Originally Posted by Bob Russell
So given a very limited set of features, the obvious goal is to make it great for reading books. Sony has done a great job with that for a first device, I think, even if we wish some things were different.
The real challenge is picking what additional features would make sense. Even from the customer side, not taking into account all the development issues. Personally, while I think the book analogy is very useful to keep focus, I think that it's not a reason to not choose other features that are universally useful. It's the balance that is really tricky!
Like being able to delete a file from the Reader itself. I'd love that. But is it really analagous to a paper book? Not really. And it's not even so critical for Windows users as you can do it when you dock. So how high on the list does it go? I'd put it near number one near hierarchical book listings and better pdf viewing, but I'm sure that if we took everyone's opinions into account it would fall down much lower.
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I'd agree with you Bob if the PRS500 was indeed a "first device", but it isn't.
The Sony Librie had many of the features most people have been drubbing the Reader for not supplying. You could for example delete files, you could move files from card to internal and from internal to card. You had a keyboard for searching and renaming. I liked the scroll wheel and miss it.
The issues with lots of ebooks existed on the Librie and Sony has done nothing to address those issues with the Reader. It is in fact as if they shot all the Librie developers and gave the hardware plans to the Reader team to work from.
What astonishes me with this update is that they didn't fix the broken PDF rendering. The fix for the moth eaten text is very simple and I don't understand why Sony didn't implement it.