10 Days with the Reader

[Amadeus]

I've now had my Reader for about 10 days, so I thought I post a few comments on the experience so far.

Reader Hardware – the screen is good, not quite as contrasty as I expected, but easy to read with sufficient light. Not looking for a backlight – paper books don’t have backlights. Also not bothered about lack of colour. Ghosting is a little disappointing, but not a problem when reading. Overall I’m pretty pleased with the hardware and the build quality is better than expected.

Lack of Search – this would have been nice, but is not essential. Again, it’s something you don’t have in a paper book. At least hyper links are implemented, so if these are used in the creation of the electronic text you can just jump from the contents or index to the page you want.

Page turns – it would be nice if the 2 seconds flash on turning pages could be improved, but again this isn’t really much different from the experience of reading a paper book, once you get used to it.

Case – the textured vinyl case is nicer than I expected, and looks like it will wear well. For additional protection from dust, I bought a black toilet bag for £1 from Tesco and removed the drawstrings so I can just slip the Reader inside and fold it over.

File Support – yes, it’s good to have .RTF and .TXT support, but lack of HTML support is a sin. We also need to see more options for Acrobat .PDF support, particularly reflowing of text and more font size options.

Memory – If you only want to carry a few dozen compact texts around with you, the included memory of up to 96Mb is fine. However, my plan had always been to carry my entire collection of texts around with me. My wife is Cuban and we often travel to spend a month or two at a time with her family. Normally I have to take a load of paper books, without really knowing what I will feel like reading while I’m in Cuba. I currently have 6000 e-books in Spanish and about the same number in English, so I was pleased to see that both SD and Memory Stick formats are supported. However, the manual is vague on exactly what memory will work. I mistakenly assumed that any 4Gb Sony Memory stick would be supported, but it seems that the High Speed version of the Pro Duo is not, although the regular one is. I only found this out after digging around and finding a somewhat confusing Memory Stick support page on Sony’s site. I now need to try and sell a 4Gb High Speed Pro Duo stick which I bought in error.

Library Management – Anyone in their right mind would expect that Sony would support some kind of directory structure for the organisation of files. This is not the case – the only structures supported are “Collections”, but – get this – only on the internal memory of the Reader! So, I can transfer my 12000 books to the memory stick, but then they just appear in one big list of 1200 pages to wade through on the Reader! Appalling implementation! What is the point of supporting memory sticks of 4Gb or more when you cannot make use of any directory structure?

USB Support – the Reader only support USB 1.1. I guess somebody figured that with only a small amount of internal memory the speed of USB 2.0 would not be required. This is a classic example of how Sony misunderstands the requirements of its users. If there is only 96Mb of memory, chances are that users will want to transfer books back and forth more frequently, so a higher speed is important. I cannot believe that it was any simpler or cheaper to implement only USB 1.1 rather than version 2.0 protocol. And then what about those of us who have 4Gb memory sticks? Then there is the issue of how USB is implemented. The Reader does not come up simply as a USB Mass Storage Device – rather, the only way of transferring content is by using the Connect Reader application on a PC. Unfortunately my office network will not let me install this, so if I want to copy books from work to the Reader I have to take out the memory stick and attach it to a suitable reader on the PC. But then Sony says that if I copy files this way rather than importing them via the Connect Reader software, they will not be indexed properly and will take longer to open on the Reader. Great.

Connect Reader PC application – this really is dreadful. It’s very slow and uses non-standard window elements. The integrated bookstore uses the Internet Explorer functionality of Windows, so if your regular browser is something else (like Firefox in my case) and you don’t have IE set up properly, then it won’t work. You can only buy and download books from the Connect store using this software – not in a standalone browser, but there are many problems - like the search box you get at the top of the home page in a regular browser does not appear, so you have to first select a category and then search within this. Then there is no option to sync libraries between the Reader and the PC. On several occasions when I have been transferring files to the Reader, the whole lot has crashed. I’ve had to disconnect the Reader and use the reset button on the back to do a soft reset. I could go on, but before you even buy the Reader you can download and install this software for free, so you’ll see what I mean.

Digital Rights Management – I am not a fan of DRM generally, because it is claimed to be for the benefit of copyright owners when in reality it is often used to limit and control what would normally be reasonable use by buyers. For example, if I buy a paper book I can read it and then sell it to someone else for perhaps half the price I paid for it. There is nothing in existing copyright law that prevents me from doing this. But Sony doesn’t want me to do it with books from their Connect store. Instead they want to sell me a book for about 75% of its printed price, which I can then do nothing else with after reading. This by comparison looks expensive. I would do better to buy a paper copy and then sell it when I’ve read it. Of course, Sony’s fear is that if ebooks can be sold on this will mean fewer first-hand sales from the Connect store, but this is wrong thinking. The average user will have a monthly budget he is prepared to spend on ebooks – say $50 to $100. If he can sell these on after reading them, then he will have more available to spend on first-hand downloads. I therefore believe that by allowing books to be sold on this will encourage people to buy more and actually increase sales from the Connect store.

Summary and Suggestions for Sony – Overall I like the device, but I hate the way much of the software has been implemented (or not). If Sony really wants to see this device used properly they should release all the source code and encourage developers to adapt and improve both the Reader OS and the PC host application. I would actually like to see the Connect Reader running as a Java app within a browser, rather than the other way round as it is at present. It would be multi-platform and would run in most environments without the need to install anything other than the usual Java support.

But apart from this, the priorities are: -

- Support for directory browsing is essential – FIX THIS NOW!!!!
- Add support for HTML – this is a no-brainer.
- Allow selling-on of protected content. Sony could charge $1 to transfer from one device to another, make money this way and encourage more sales.
- Support syncing between host and Reader. I just want to connect the Reader to my PC and sync all content both ways without messing around.

[Xenophon]

There're 10 numbered buttons on the Reader. Sony should easily be able to get me to any book with no more than three or four button presses. Here's how!

Assume I've chosen to view my books 'by author'. Additionally, assume I have 900 books on the Reader -- not too much of a stretch, as I have nearly 500 right now, and my SD card is only about 1/2 full.

The initial display of authors looks like this:

1. Allston, Aaron -- Ball, Margaret
2. Bard, Of Avon -- Clarke, Sir Arthur
3. Cook, Glen -- Douglass, A.

and so on, up to
"10. Weber, David -- Zelazny, Roger"

I pick a button (say, number two). The new display shows me that subset of authors, divided into 10 groups. These could have as few as a single author, or could contain many. Doesn't matter. I keep selecting until I have a single author. At that point, if there's more than 10 books to choose from, do the same with that subset of titles.

Note that you get roughly a factor of 10 fan-out per button push. 3 buttons to pick one of 1000 books, four to pick one of 10000.

The same approach works fine for books by title. It's not so good for 'By Date' as I might have a few hundred books all added on the same day. It would even be good for 'By Collection' -- if I could put collections on the SD card as well as in main memory.

There's no excuse for making me scroll through 50 pages of titles!

There's even LESS excuse for making me scroll through all those titles when I'm viewing 'By Author'. Just show me the #$%$%^^&&* list OF AUTHORS dag nab it! Don't show me books until either I pick an author or there're fewer than 10 books to show!

Xenophon

P.S. Just in case anyone from Sony reads this, don't worry about IP in the idea -- there's tons of prior art, AND it probably doesn't leap the bar for being a patentable idea anyway.

[AndiR]

Hi Amadeus,

I agree with all of your points and I am sure most members here will also.

I am in Spain and I would be really interested to gain your insight in to good websites for Spanish documents as I can't seem to find any decent sites.

You can message me if you prefer or email andiroberts(AT)masterfacilitator(DOT)com

Thanks, AndiR

[ojleblanc]

I, too, like many of the points made in the review, but I feel there is little real reason why Sony cannot implement search and a 'go to' function on the Reader.

They could, for example, program a long press of the joystick to bring up a window with two options: "search" or "go to". One would choose the option of interest with a left-right movement of the joystick, then press enter.

In the case of the search box, one could enter a word or short phrase using the ten number buttons, much like we hammer out text messages on cellphones. In the case of the "go to" window, one could use the number buttons to enter the page number one wishes to go to.

That seems fairly straightforward to me. Granted, punching out a search string may not be fun or fast, but I'd rather have the option.

[tapf!]

A Search-function would be nice for the reader, but if I compare with Paper-Books, they also dont have a search function.

Greetings

Fabian

[Amadeus]

Originally Posted by ojleblanc

I, too, like many of the points made in the review, but I feel there is little real reason why Sony cannot implement search and a 'go to' function on the Reader.

Don't get me wrong - I'd welcome something like this as well - just it's not essential if what you mainly want is a device for reading. I wish Sony would address the points about file handling and management, because without improvements there the Reader is failing in areas of basic functionality. Once they've done that if they want to add other stuff, then it's fine by me

[RWood]

Sony can add anything they want to the Reader, for a price. For the functions that it is designed for and the market that it is targeted for it does an excellent job. Some would like a better button placement, for me they are fine where they are. Some want a faster page turn, I have no problem with the current speed of turns. There are others; but, they have been expounded upon in other threads since before the Reader was released.

What I fear is feature creep wherein the Reader tries to be too many things to too many people. This is not a Swiss Army Knife, its a dedicated ebook reader that also happens to also play music and display b+w pictures.

[Amadeus]

Originally Posted by RWood

For the functions that it is designed for and the market that it is targeted for it does an excellent job.

I disagree. It's currently crippled by the internal file management (or lack thereof) combined with difficulty of managing and transferring material using the host PC application. As a reader I too am not bothered about bells and whistles or other additional functionality. What I want to do is dump a whole load of books to the Reader, perhaps by syncing it with the collection I have on PC and updating any RSS feeds at the same time. Then I want to be able to pick out which one I want to read. Currently I cannot do that easily, especially if I want to keep more than a couple of dozen books on the Reader.

[HarryT]

How often do you switch books?

It would be nice to have better file management, yes, but for my needs at least, it would be a wild exageration to say that the Reader is "crippled" by it. I start a new book perhaps once a week, so if it takes me 5 minutes to find it, I'm really not that bothered.

If I were opening a new book every hour, it would bother me. We all have different requirements in these things. But this has all been discussed ad nausiam already, of course.

[Amadeus]

Yes, we all have different requirements. As I said above, I am often away for a month or two at a time in a place where there is little Internet access and it would be difficult to load up with new books. Over that period I might want to read a couple of dozen books, and I don't necessarily want to have to choose which I am going to read before I go. Rather, I would like to have most of my library with me most of the time, just like I have most of my music with me in my (separate) mp3 player.

The Reader supports 4Gb memory sticks which would easily allow this, but the file system makes it really difficult to get to the book you want. Why bother supporting that much memory in hardware if it's not going to be of any practical use?

I also frequently am reading several books at the same time - maybe one work of fiction and two or three factual books. And then there is the issue of HTML and RSS support. I frequently find interesting articles on the Internet and save the page concerned in my Web folder, where for the major part they tend to remain unread at present. I'd like to be able to sync this stuff to the Reader so that I actually might have chance to look at it some time when I'm travelling.

These are not arcane requirments - they are for fundamental reading tasks and they would be simple to implement. I love the Reader hardware, but it's maddening that Sony cannot provide better firmware and software to support it.

[NatCh]

I agree that it's not a big deal for most folks, who only deal with a book or two at a time, but it's still pretty much a no-brainer to provide a hierarchical file system -- I mean everything has a hierarchical file system -- there are even refrigerators with them these days!

While the flat file system may not be a problem for most folks (and it doesn't affect me all that often), it's still pretty astounding that they settled for a file system that actually dissuades folks from carrying more than a dozen or so books at a time -- they advertise that you it has room for ~90 books, so they must have expected folks to carry more than a few. I just don't get it.

Maybe there is some arcane hardware/software peculiarity that makes this difficult, but I still don't get it.

[LaughingVulcan]

Actually, it wouldn't surprise me that Sony didn't expect most folks to carry around that many ebooks with them.

Borrowing a dubious parallel, there are people who use MP3 players to store just a few songs or a couple of albums at a time and rely on their management software (iTunes, direct access, Creative Source, whatever...) to on-and-offload works frequently. Then there are those of us who have a 30GB player and expect any piece of audio we've ever been exposed to or bought to have a permanent home.

At least Sony allowed for the expandability of memory cards. (Which would be an expensive and inefficient, yet workable, solution: keep a given collection on individual cards and then swap them out as desired. Wouldn't be my cup of tea, but would work for collections in the hundreds of books range.)

And a very nice review, Amadeus.

[BuddyBoy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It would be nice to have better file management, yes, but for my needs at least, it would be a wild exageration to say that the Reader is "crippled" by it. I start a new book perhaps once a week, so if it takes me 5 minutes to find it, I'm really not that bothered.

Alas, if it were only 5 minutes!

One of the main reasons I wanted to switch from the old GEB1150 (which, by the way, had a very nice file management system) was in order to carry more books than with fit on a puny 128MB SmartMemory wafer. My purchased eBook library tops a gig, and my PD versions going on for days.

When I bought my PRS-500 I also picked up a new 2GB card to hold those books I may need when travelling, plus a good chunk of my regular reference and finction library. However, once I loaded everything up it became a nightmare to find anything. No subject sort, no categories if you're using a memory card or stick, and no goto page funtion within a book. You try paging through Mrs. Beetons Guide to Household management - 5000 pages - at either one, ten or 500 pages at a time.

One thing that some people seem to forget is that the PRS-500 is not just supposed to replace a single paper book, it's also supposed to replace a library, or a couple of bookcases.

As it stands I've had to downgrade it to a bookshelf or a small bookcase, just holding 100 or less titles at a time, actually using less memory than I did back in the bad old 128MB SmartMemory days.

I don't know, maybe it's just me, but what's the point in making a device than can hold 2000 books on it if you haven't a decent way of organizing them.

It may not be a crippling problem for some, but for other, it limits our ability to actually use this to its full potential and, might I add, its advertised potential.

[dhbailey]

Having run into similar problems with the Gutenberg text files while using them on my Palm devices, I early on renamed all such files so that the author's last name is first. For authors with the same last name I add the first name of the less important authors for clarity.

So Huckleberry Finn is now: Twain -- Huckleberry Finn.txt

And Deerslayer is now: Cooper -- Deerslayer.txt
and Elinor Wyllis by Susan Fennimore Cooper is: Cooper (Susan) -- Elinor Wyllis.txt

It makes finding what I want much more easy. I wish there were a way to edit purchased books so that the book title would reflect the author in the same way, since .lrx and .lrf files aren't listed by file name at all.

But even with that I don't have a problem finding a book among my 2700 (and growing), just by looking through the titles, since my text files are listed by file name instead of any title or author field.

But I am hopeful that a new file system will be forthcoming in a future software upgrade. I bet that the folks at Sony had no idea how diverse the uses and the files would be that Readers would be used for. And now that complaints would be flowing into Sony, I'll bet they come up with some better file organization, even if it's only to turn the title and author listings into 26 entries, each dedicated to a single letter of the alphabet.

I think it could also be possible that from within any listing with more than 10 pages of entries, some key combination such as holding the size button while hitting the number buttons to enter a large number might be possible.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by dhbailey

I think it could also be possible that from within any listing with more than 10 pages of entries, some key combination such as holding the size button while hitting the number buttons to enter a large number might be possible.

Are you aware that if you press and hold the "page forward/back" rocker switch, it'll jump in units of 10 pages? That works both while reading a book, and in tables of contents, lists of books, etc. Can be a real time saver in a long list.