Adios Sony, Let's try this again

[fdp]

Having feelings quite similar to Betty and many of those who posted in response to her, but not wanting to have to embed my message in the middle of a back and forth about televisions, I am going to try this again.

Some people feel that what is being done to the PRS500 is unfair (in the interest of disclosure I am one of them). They were 1st generation adopters, and there always is a level of risk to that, but at the same time many of these people were the core believers in e-books, e-ink in particular, and in the ideas that are now proliferating into the wide variety of products found in these forums. They, we, constitute a valuable consumer block in the area of portable reading devices.

Sony created a very good product in the reader, but at the same time did not come through with decent software for users to get materials onto the reader in formats other than the proprietary Sony BB-bs. In particular proper pdf reflow support has been a necessary but lacking function since the inception of the device. For me at least, this has been a primary frustration with an otherwise enjoyable device, and has been the main factor in keeping me from buying another Sony reader.

The truth is that I did expect software and firmware updates that would allow the reader to overcome some of it's deficiencies and honestly the software ones wouldn't have been that hard (in particular a browser plugin akin to the fully working but Japanese-only one available for the Librie). The reader didn't replace print-outs for me, as most of the articles I read are published in PDF format and not made to fit onto a tiny page. I can't use it for work or school, and I'm not saving paper. Seeing an update finally come out that supports more formats and pdf reflow, and then realizing that it doesn't support the PRS500 is more than disappointing. Most PRS500's are probably only 1/3 to 1/2 way into their potential operational life span, maybe less if the batteries are replaced at some point. What we have here is a case of a product being made obsolete by a software update.

Now I understand that Sony has to make money, they have to sell the new model. I'm sure others, like myself, are already looking around for a replacement device/upgrade for the PRS500's they bought at launch. I've been waiting for an excuse to give my reader to a family member for some time. Here's the thing, I have, whether or not you agree with my feelings or the reasons for them, lost faith in the product line. Years of stagnation with little to no progress on the software front led me close to it, and now it has happened. I can't see buying another Sony reader product if they go through with this move. I don't personally like the Kindle, or anything else out there, but I can wait.

So, add me to the angry customer list, and if you feel the same, add yourself too.

[acidzebra]

I'm very disappointed that my 505, even with the latest update, won't bring me coffee in the morning. I heard the 510 will totally do this after the latest firmware update, and knowing this has made my 505 completely worthless.

You left out an option in the poll:
"My reader still performs the functions that I bought it for initially and I will happily continue to use it"

[Undue Process !]

Originally Posted by acidzebra

I'm very disappointed that my 505, even with the latest update, won't bring me coffee in the morning. I heard the 510 will totally do this after the latest firmware update, and knowing this has made my 505 completely worthless.

You left out an option in the poll:
"My reader still performs the functions that I bought it for initially and I will happily continue to use it"

This is entirely true. Sony was 100% unable to put the updates they put on the 505 onto the 500. Their choice was not "We can either put it on both of the devices, or we can only put it on the 505 just to screw over the early adopters," it was "These features will only work on the 505, that's too bad." I mean, would you rather have them not release any updates at all just so that your 500 has a similar feature set to the 505?

You may say that "the software ones wouldn't have been that hard," but this statement lacks credibility unless you are a professional industrial engineer. Or, even if you were, it would be quite a stretch to make claims unless you were a member of the PRS's design team. Things may seem easy (and in all probability the unicode support you mentioned, among other things, would be easy and can be attributed to Sony's misguided attempts to keep things simple) there may be serious physical limitations to processor power, memory limits, and battery life that would keep certain functions like PDF reflow from being feasible. The truth is, we just don't have all the information.

Specifically in regards to the desire for "proper pdf reflow support" being necessary, this is true as far as the concept that an enhanced method of optimizing fixed aspect ration PDFs for smaller screens would be a useful feature, but the sentiment falls apart beyond that. This is because there is no such thing as "proper pdf reflow". PDFs aren't supposed to be reflowed and Sony's method of doing it amounts to nothing more than a clever hack. So far all the PDFs I've tested have been given greatly improved readability by the reflow, but they've also had swaths of blank or one character long pages among other aesthetic problems. To say that PDF reflow support "lacking" is a stretch because before Sony created this little workaround there was no such thing as PDF reflow and even now that there is it is far from perfect. The absolute whole of the matter when the 500 came out and the absolute whole of the matter now is that A4 formatted PDFs will never be perfectly readable on a small screen and disparaging Sony for this lack is naive at Beth. Furthermore it is very likely that this unconventional and, in all truth, rather sloppy method of doing advanced graphics manipulation is a perfect example of a function that is too processor intensive to be truly useful on the 500 as it would likely take much longer than it does on the 505 and eat the batter more quickly than would be desirable.

Updates are still entirely possible with the 500, just not these specific ones – asking for these features in the 500 is like buying a 505 now and when the 515 comes out in 5 years with a color screen, saying, "Sony should have known that this would happen, why didn't they put this in my device?" Sony does know. Everybody knows that technology will improve, but it has to be taken in steps. Hopefully someday some general improvements will be released for it, but it just can't support the killer features of the new 505 update.

I will say that I would be a little disappointed if Sony never updates the 500, but it would be far from anything to complain about, and was 100% foreseeable for anyone who bought the device in the first place. Technology moves forward at an astounding rate, nobody expects their Apple ][s to be able to hook up to a broadband internet connection or play Doom 3, but they continue to admirably perform the functions that they were originally intended for. Dedicated ebook readers are a radically new niche market – not to mention that e-ink itself is a very young technology in its own right – and anybody who bought one in the first round of readers — hell, anyone who's buying them now – should be aware that they will not do the same things as the products that will be available next year.

To close, I reiterate that, while it is unfortunate that the new updates to the 505 couldn't be put on the 500, owners of the 500 should have foreseen this and should keep in mind that their device is not obsolete, it is merely older, and that what's important is that Sony is still supporting the reader line at all. You might say that it's easy for me to say, considering that I have a 505 and am greatly enjoying the new features in the update, but then again, I fully expect it to be "made obsolete," but I will not mind, because that would be an absolutely boneheaded position to take.

[harrynewman]

Early adopters always pay a price. 505 users will pay the price in the future when a new model comes out. It's the nature of technology.

Anyway - I don't count you as an early adopter. I started out with a Libre - that was a first gen product. I paid the price with crappy firmware, a crappy screen and crap battery life. Am I bitching about it? No. I still bought a 505 - knowing that it would be superceeded in the future.

As others said above - you have a device which is still doing the job that you bought it for. Nothing has changed.

[Gravitas]

Originally Posted by acidzebra

...

You left out an option in the poll:
"My reader still performs the functions that I bought it for initially and I will happily continue to use it"

QFE

yep, that one gets my vote

[morty1753]

Originally Posted by Gravitas

QFE

yep, that one gets my vote

My vote also

[HarryT]

This is a ridiculously biased poll. As a former PRS-500 user I agree entirely with the previous posters.

[simond]

To be honest, with Sonys track record, I'm impressed they released the update for the 505 in the first place rather than just releasing a 510 with it (after all, for their PDAs they rarely released any updates)

[M0zza]

I can't see why people are so up in arms about this. I have heard that the reason the 500 doesn't have the update is due to hardware limitations. Fair enough.

Sony don't usually make grand announcements well in advance when it comes to their updates and so you don't know what may be coming in the future for you. Maybe a partial update, maybe something quite different. We don't know. But just because there is no update this time for your device doesn't mean they have abandoned it.

If Sony had said you would get the update and then decided against it then sure rant away! vent your spleen! I doubt any here would object. I myself had this happen to me. I bought a PocketPC with an early copy of MSReader. And microsoft said they would be writing a patch so it would read DRM'd ebooks. In the end they only put it on the new version of the OS, and left me high and dry. But this isn't what has happened here. Sony never said they would give this to you. They never said for a long time they would give it to 505 users either. When I bought my device in November I bought it for what it could do, not what it may do in the future.

You are upset that someone came along later got a better upgrade. Were you like that as a child? Happy that you had an icecream until you saw someone else with an icecream with sprinkles? Then your icecream is horrible? And you don't want it and you want a new one with sprinkles even though you've eaten half already?

Anyway. What it all boils down to is that you have had over a year of enjoying your device. It is still the same. Just keep enjoying it.

L.

[llasram]

I agree with all the other un-unhappy (happy?) posters, with one caveat: the "gray background" PDF rendering on the 500 & pre-update 505 is flat-out a bug and I do think Sony should have fixed that before abandoning the 500.

[slayda]

First, I am one who is dissatisfied with Sony's business plan as indicated by, not only the Reader but other hardware as well.

I find it incredible and yet expected that the Sony supporters seem so belligerent on this issue. The original poster presented, IMO, a calm logical statement of his opinion, only to be attacked and ridiculed. So here is my opinion;

• Sony promised PDF capability on the PRS-500.
  - What we got was the ability to view PDFs in a size too small to be readable. OK maybe we were wrong to believe that "PDF capability" meant "readable PDF capability". One can argue whether Sony completely fulfilled their advertised capability but their statement implied something better than what was delivered. Perhaps there are HW restrictions or even PDF format restrictions that make that impossible. I didn't care about PDF personally but I can readily see how many people could be disappointed. Yes perhaps they should have gotten one in their hands to see for themselves. I have only personally ever seen one Sony reader, the one I purchased. We don't all live in large cities where a store was that carried them.
• Sony promised RTF capability on the PRS-500.
  - Again what we got was a somewhat crippled RTF capability when the implication was a full RTF capability. No Sony did not state "full RTF capability" so by the letter of the law they are off the hook there too. However, I really did want the ability to at least have images embedded in my RTFs and the RTF format easily supports that. That is only a SW upgrade and should be doable. Maybe there is a restriction due to memory (a HW issue) but Sony does support embedded images in their LRF format so I find it hard to believe they couldn't have added that feature in the RTF format.

Several of the attackers say it is foolish to expect a HW upgrade. I agree. However we are not asking for HW upgrades, but did reasonably (IMHO) expect them to at least try to provide a more complete ability to do the things they said the 500 would do.

You can not say that they can't make SW upgrades when several "hackers' on this very forum have managed to provide some upgrades independent of Sony. I would like to point out that they were not and are not on the Sony design team. Does this mean that "our hackers" are geniuses or that the Sony design team are untalented? I'll leave that for you to decide, but there is obviously room in the memory for SW upgrades if Sony chose to support the 500. Since they have, I believe, stated that there will be no SW upgrades, it is obvious to me (again IMHO) that they have abandoned the 500. The only logical reason I can think of is because they are no longer selling it and therefore no longer care about it.

'nuff said. I've had my rant and hopefully it has been logically presented. If not I apologize.

[fdp]

Please hear me out. What I have stated is my opinion, you don't have to accept it. I'm not trying to argue with anyone over whether they feel that I am correct, Rather, I want to see how many other owners of the PRS500 feel unhappy about this issue.

Those of us who feel that Sony has failed to properly support the product are unlikely to risk the same thing happening again. Having someone tell us that we are like children crying about ice cream cones isn't going to encourage us to be loyal Sony customers, it's simply going to lower our opinion of the communication skills of some of our fellow human beings.

I believe, as someone who designs hardware systems for a living, that the potential of both the software on the computer end and that running on the reader hardware has more potential than Sony has chosen to pursue. The results of not-for-profit work done by certain very generous members of the reader community highlight this.

As someone familiar with how these kind of things work I wouldn't be surprised if the PRS design team is less to blame for the device's shortcomings than Sony management, and, to be honest, we consumers ourselves. My solution to this is to simply state that I expect more, demand more, and won't be fooled into thinking that Sony will support it's products in the same way that I have come to expect from other companies and even from other Sony product lines. I'm stating it here because others seem to feel the same way, and if enough of us feel this way maybe Sony will notice. It's only fair to let them know why they lost my business, maybe, just maybe, that will help someone in the Sony hierarchy argue that they should make a better product, or support their existing products more aggressively.

I love the size, feel, and physical design of the reader. I will happily continue to read text files and preformatted books on my reader, but it isn't saving me much paper, and it isn't replacing most of the books I have to carry around.

[wallcraft]

The PRS-500 is a legacy product, I doubt anyone at Sony is actively working on the PRS-500 and it will therefore never see another software update.

PRS-500 owners got what they paid for, but Sony's policy of not being forthcoming about software updates is one factor worth considering when deciding what to buy next. Sony has known from the very beginning that Adobe DE would not run on the PRS-500, and could not run given the software's minimum hardware requirements. Even after DE is released on the PRS-505, they still won't come out and say this directly.

[slayda]

Hey, wallcraft, what part of Mississippi are you in? That's my home state. I have in-laws in north MS near the AL border. You can send a PM if you prefer. I would like to see the Iliad & Kindle if the trip isn't too far & you'd be willing. I have a Cybook Gen 3 & Sony PRS-500.

[BlackVoid]

I did not vote, because none of the answers make sense. The PRS-505 is so MUCH BETTER, that it is worth the money. Going back to the 500 made no sense after I had the 505 and so I sold it.