PRS-350 Really slow help

[injapan]

My wives PRS 350 has really slowed down over the last few months

I have told her to buy a new one but she likes the size, anyway can anyone tell me how to speed it up?

is there a way to do it?

I know the reader is far from full, I know that isnt the reason, in fact I think less than 15% of the memory is being used

Thanks for any advice

[BaenSidhe]

Does your wife take notes? If so, that might be causing the slow down.

[Ripplinger]

Badly formatted epubs can cause the slowness and too many books on the device even with enough free ram as you said, it still takes time to index the books (when I hit around 1000 books on my 350, I noticed a considerable slowdown in everything, even turning pages within a book).

I'd suggest a factory reset first to clear out all the old files and notes from deleted books, and then load the books again and see if performance doesn't improve.

[Poppaea]

I second everything Ripplinger said.

In case you still need/want to buy a new reader, the naked Kobo Aura is exactly the same size as a 350 in a Sony case. So you get the best of both worlds: small reader, bigger screen and a backlight, too. I love mine and I also thought I'd never part with my 350.

[injapan]

Thanks guys for your ideas. Appreciate it

[injapan]

and no, she does not use notes. Only for reading

to give an example, when she charges it up from the USB (via computer) it takes about 3 to 5 minutes for it to get back to normal reading mode (ie it can not be used for anything in this time!)

[Ripplinger]

I'd definitely try the factory reset then, and when done, add just a few books and see if the slowness is gone. If it's fine, then add your additional books, but I'd strongly suggest keeping it to around 300 books or so. If the slowness starts up again after you add the rest of the books, I'd really suspect a badly formatted book.

I once was obsessed with the idea of having all my ebooks on my readers with me all the time. Then ran into the slowdown and realized how pointless it was to want to keep thousands of books with me, and started to keep only between 250-350 books or so on at a time. When I'm done reading, I delete the book from the device. And with around 300 books to choose from, I always have plenty of content to choose from that will suit my fancy at the moment.

I have all my books in a Calibre library on my PC though, and that's backed up to 4 more drives and the cloud, so I can freely delete from the device without losing anything.

[injapan]

thank you for your advice.

I doubt she has more an 30 or 40 books on it!

and I like the idea of resetting it but worried about losing the books she has bought

[injapan]

I just timed my wife's ereader, after unplugging the USB it took a whole 6 minutes 37 seconds to get back to a useable mode!!!
and thats after me deleting all but about 50 books!

[Ripplinger]

Before you do the factory reset, just copy the books from the reader onto any computer. After you do the factory reset, just move a few of them back at first as I said above and check the speed of the reader.

[JSWolf]

Here's what could possibly be happening.

The 350 is slow. A lot of eBooks these days have high resolution graphics/covers. So, it takes longer to extract the covers to make the thumbnails. When you unplug the 350 from the USB port, it goes through and pulls out the covers from the eBooks and makes thumbnails. I'm not sure if it does it just for the newly loaded eBooks or all of them.

The other option is to get a Kobo Mini which is the same size screen. There is plenty of help with the Mini in the Kobo forum. Also, plenty pf patches to customize it how you want.

[injapan]

Thanks for the advice

JSWOLF & Ripplinger
She doesn't really want to change readers because in Japan she uses the Sony Japanese book store (yes its still open)
so the books have DRM (I don't know much about it?) so the actual and the books she has brought do not appear as epubs etc on her device

I have T2 and I can see all my epubs clearly but she buys from the Japanese sony store so .....

Maybe she needs to bite the bullet and get a new ereader?

[Ripplinger]

Download and install Calibre if you don't already use it, and Google "Apprentice Alf" for how to remove DRM. But having purchased the books from the Sony store, they should still be available for her to download should something go wrong or they get deleted (I haven't bought from the Sony store in ages though).

[injapan]

Thanks
yes, I use Calibre. I have it on my computer. Its aweswome

but I am sure my wife doesn't

so, yes, I suppose she could look at another reader and just use calibre. But she does like the 350

[Ripplinger]

So move the books off her reader onto your computer so you could remove the DRM if there's a problem getting them back onto the reader. You have nothing to lose by trying the factory reset, and your wife would get to keep the reader she prefers.