Quote:
Originally Posted by NatCh
Well, back in October, no one would have been nice enough to refer to the search function as a POS. It really was that bad. Almost completely dysfunctional. Now it's gotten to the point of "kinda works ... sorta," I'm not saying it's fixed, just that it has come a ways.
I'm not giving them a pass, don't misunderstand, I'm just saying that it's not as bad as it used to be. As a programmer myself, I'd've put in that weekend time on my own initiative if this was where I was at on the thing, I wouldn't have needed anyone to 'suggest' to me that it needed more work. 
The really scary thing is that the ConnStore was around for quite a while, in its music incarnation, before the e-books jumped in the mix. I'm glad I wasn't involved in that really early stuff, it must have been positively brutal.  |
Callinmg the ebook Connect store a POS is my being nice for the forum. If I cannot go to the store, put in the search term I want and have it come up with the book I want when they DO have it available is atrociaous. It's bad business for both Sony and me. I know how to convert other format books to LRF. So, if I cannot find it there, I'll go elsewhere, buy it in a different format, convert it and enjoy (hopefully). But the problem is that unless Sony fixes things, they will lose out on a lot of sales.
Take your average person thinking of buying a Sony Reader. That person might not know of MobileRead and all the free goodies. Might not know of the other sites that have free books. Might just know to go to the Connect store. So that person goes and does some looking/searching and cannot really find what he/she wants and goes away and does not bother to purchase a Sony because the books that are wanted are not coming up when looked for when they are available.
Sony is doing themselves and us a disservice when they have a search engine that doesn't work well enough. When I put in the title or the ISBN, there is no reason the book should not show if they have it. I should not have to find the author and then click the author field to find a book that won;t work with search. Also, the website end lets me define what field I am inputting. The Connect software only allows a keyword search from the search field. The category field box is broken. Not just flakey, but 100% broken. There is no reason for this to be foisted on the unsuspecting public. Hey, if Sony would hire me as a beta tester, I'd be happy to give them my input and help them get it working. But for now, it's a POS (being nice) and not worth my time other then to spend the remaining amount of my $50 credit. I'll be sticking with LIT format purchases and converting. Sorry Sony, but you fucked up big time and are going to lose your ass on this one. Good luck with that POS.