which sony ereader should I get!

[Hicham]

Hi guys, I am student, I am a kindle 3 owner but I am selling it soon and getting a sony ereader since this kindle 3 cant read pdf ebooks well and cant let me take notes and highlight passges easily the thing which i need really lots for my studies. so could suggest which sony is better for my needs? I want one that can read pdf files REALLY good and which has a GOOD battery life.
I thank you lots in advance and have a nice weekend!

[sonyreaderfan]

I bought the Sony Daily Edition (PRS 950) precisely because I needed to read PDF. I also returned a K3 because of its limited PDF feature.

Some features of the Sony Readers for reading PDF:
- You can select margin cut page view to have document have bigger fill of the screen.
- There's scaled zooming and locking which approximates the behavior of pinch-zooming of documents.
- Pdf documents can reflow, so you can change the font sizes. However this messes up diagrams and charts.
- You can read documents in the original form in landscape mode, although the document is split into 2 or 3 screens.

This link gives a pretty good overview of the PDF feature.
http://www.the-ebook-reader.com/prs-950-pdf-review.html

I bought the PRS 950 because the 7 inches screen allows for adequate view of pdfs in landscape mode. The text size is bigger than on a 6-in screen. I mostly view the pdfs in portrait mode using reflow or locked zoom. For viewing documents with math symbols or technical drawings (or any document that needs its format intact to be read, such as scanned PDF that can't be reflowed), I use the reader in locked zoom or more often, in the landscape mode (because the reflow messes up the document and I want bigger text size).

The pdfs I have are mostly text with a few charts and the Sony reader has met my needs.
If you're a liberal arts major and the pdfs you're reading are mostly text (and it can be reflowed and read in portrait mode), the PRS-650 is good enough. I wanted the 7-in screen for reading in landscape mode because of the documents with math symbols.

For pdfs in which formatting is important, like multiple columns pdfs or textbooks (such programming books from Orielly.com), I wouldn't recommend a Sony reader. The formatting is too cumbersome for it to handle. (Nor would I recommend a Kindle DX because it doesn't let you jump on links -- so Table of content is useless. The pdf is rendered static.) I use an iPad with Goodreader to read those pdfs.

Hope this helps.

[Hicham]

Originally Posted by sonyreaderfan

I bought the Sony Daily Edition (PRS 950) precisely because I needed to read PDF. I also returned a K3 because of its limited PDF feature.

Some features of the Sony Readers for reading PDF:
- You can select margin cut page view to have document have bigger fill of the screen.
- There's scaled zooming and locking which approximates the behavior of pinch-zooming of documents.
- Pdf documents can reflow, so you can change the font sizes. However this messes up diagrams and charts.
- You can read documents in the original form in landscape mode, although the document is split into 2 or 3 screens.

This link gives a pretty good overview of the PDF feature.
http://www.the-ebook-reader.com/prs-950-pdf-review.html

I bought the PRS 950 because the 7 inches screen allows for adequate view of pdfs in landscape mode. The text size is bigger than on a 6-in screen. I mostly view the pdfs in portrait mode using reflow or locked zoom. For viewing documents with math symbols or technical drawings (or any document that needs its format intact to be read, such as scanned PDF that can't be reflowed), I use the reader in locked zoom or more often, in the landscape mode (because the reflow messes up the document and I want bigger text size).

The pdfs I have are mostly text with a few charts and the Sony reader has met my needs.
If you're a liberal arts major and the pdfs you're reading are mostly text (and it can be reflowed and read in portrait mode), the PRS-650 is good enough. I wanted the 7-in screen for reading in landscape mode because of the documents with math symbols.

For pdfs in which formatting is important, like multiple columns pdfs or textbooks (such programming books from Orielly.com), I wouldn't recommend a Sony reader. The formatting is too cumbersome for it to handle. (Nor would I recommend a Kindle DX because it doesn't let you jump on links -- so Table of content is useless. The pdf is rendered static.) I use an iPad with Goodreader to read those pdfs.

Hope this helps.

thanks for the great answer, but what about the battery life? should i worry or not? i am thinking to get prs 650, is that enough for a student who is taking linguistics as a major? i need to take lots of note and make lots of highlights.

[sonyreaderfan]

The battery is suppose to last for two weeks or more without recharging, although I've never went for more than that without recharging. I've never had the problem described on board where battery drains overnight. (Seems like it's a defective reader.) Mine held for as long as two weeks and at times I left it on standby overnight.

I never annotated text or used the highlighting, so I can't comment on the annotating capability. Maybe these links will help.

User guide:
http://docs.sony.com/release/PRS650.pdf

Shortcuts
http://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/201...Reader+Blog%29

You could try it out on display Readers at Best Buy or Borders.

I have used the Reader to jot down little notes and such, and it's ok. The performance can be a little laggy (about as fast as or faster than Kindle's cursor movement). Obviously it's not as fast as operations on a smartphone or ipad. If you're needing to take copious amount of notes you may find it too cumbersome to do it on a reader. YMMV.

Interesting video on note taking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q9Q_7_mjrg

[pidgeon92]

I am reading a PDF from the library right now on my 950. It is not a great experience. It's just a text novel, but it has footnotes and small graphics at the start of each chapter.

I have the text size set to small, even though it is smaller than is easy to read, as when I changed it to medium the formatting went haywire. The graphics at the start of the chapter went to to the bottom of the page, and the graphics exploded into parts. The footnotes are a complete mess.

There is no way I would use this ereader for PDF textbooks.

[delphin]

Originally Posted by pidgeon92

I am reading a PDF from the library right now on my 950. It is not a great experience. ...

If by 'not great' you are speaking literally, meaning not stellar, then I would agree.

On the other hand, I wouldn't agree if 'not great' is a euphemism for 'bad', because , at least for the example you gave of a simple text novel, the PDF reflow on the PRS-X50s is actually fairly usable once you get past the annoyance of the fact that it messes up the formatting somewhat.

Where I think there are some legitimately problems, is when you are dealing with a PDF with tables, or one that has been scanned but not OCR converted (one where the text is still represented as a bit-mapped image), because then the reflow is pretty much useless. Tables get ripped to bits, and scanned pages that are represented as images either don't change at all (leaving them too small to read), or worse, the scanned images just disappear completely when reflow is turned on (when using any font size except 'S').

Even so, I still found the Sony's a bit better than the Kindle. Unlike the Kindle, the Sony at least tries to reflow text for you, and on documents where that causes the formatting to get too messed up, the Sony PRS-x50 readers have better ZOOMING capabilities, which gives you the option to leave the font set to 'S' to preserve the formatting, and using the ZOOM feature instead of a reflowed larger font to increase the text size.

Having said that, I think for academic work, I would plan on also having at least an inexpensive Netbook available, for those cases were the smaller eInk devices just can't cut it.