Sony Reader outside US

[astra]

The best way as they said to me is to call them.

[jupaen]

Ok, thanks. I'll try later, now the shop is "off-line" to make any order.
I sent a question to my bank about "Verified by Visa" in connection shop to my bank.

Perhaps if it's so difficult to order a Sony PRS-500 then it's a good moment to choose a iRex iLiad, I've the shop here in Spain. Hummmm, I've time to think about... (iLiad=649€ .... )

[astra]

It is not difficult to order at all.
All I did I called them, ordered over the phone, then made digi pics of my card(front and back side) and sent them to their special verification email. As far as I understand it is done to make sure there is no fraud when using credit card.

The only problem I encountered was on my side My visa declined the transaction forcing me to call them and say that it is ME who placed an order not some shyster.

[slaveprobe]

Hi to all,
I'm from Italy and I'm waiting for my PRS500 purchased on ebay.
It's about 6 days and I'm feeling a little bit nervous. The seller's feedback is good and no reason to dubt but, you know, when you wait for such a long time... I'm like a child and a promise for the new toy.

Waiting at the window.

[astra]

It might take up to 14 days for airm mail.

Btw. Why risking ebay and not buying on bhvideoaudio?

[slaveprobe]

Originally Posted by astra_lestat

It might take up to 14 days for airm mail.

Btw. Why risking ebay and not buying on bhvideoaudio?

On ebay I payed 391 USD comprehensive of shipping cost and I used paypal: very friendly. BTW, above all, I join mobileread forums after purchasing my reader on ebay... I tought ebay was the only way to get a reader. My mistake. Next time I'll do better.

The shipping is with USPS Global Express Mail and they say about 3-5 business days. Am I deceiving myself?

[astra]

Sorry, I don't know about USPS.

[HarryT]

With USPS Global Express the sender should be able to give you a "tracking number" that you can use on the USPS web site to find out where the package is.

This is the same way that I had my Reader shipped to me in the UK - it took about a week to arrive.

I really wouldn't worry about it - especially if your 6 days includes Easter!

[reycat]

Originally Posted by slaveprobe

On ebay I payed 391 USD comprehensive of shipping cost and I used paypal: very friendly. BTW, above all, I join mobileread forums after purchasing my reader on ebay... I tought ebay was the only way to get a reader. My mistake. Next time I'll do better.

The shipping is with USPS Global Express Mail and they say about 3-5 business days. Am I deceiving myself?

Hello, slaveprobe.

I live in Spain and bought my Reader in e-bay (there was no stock in BPH webpage at that time )

Anyway, I had the Reader shipped with USPS and it took much more than expected to arrive. I talked a lot with the seller, a really nice guy, and we finally figured out that the Reader was stuck in Madrid, waiting for ME to give my ID number so that it could get through the customs.

I did so and the day after I was the happy owner of a PRS-500

To make a long story short: ask the seller for a tracking number and then ask USPS about the Reader, it could be stucked in the custom.

[jupaen]

Hi from Madrid (Spain),

It was impossible to buy in bhvideo, so I had to buy in ebay. USPS Global Express Mail. Perhaps, more expensive than b&h. I paid with PayPal, no problem, in bhvideo only accepts PayPal from USA (of course), Canada and UK.

Cheers!!

p.d. I've an IRex Iliad.... impressive machine. I hope Sony will be similar (800x600 vs 1024x768 and 6'' vs 8'') quality and more transportable.


(Sp: Que pena que no exista un foro de este tipo en nuestro idioma).

[leandroide]

Originally Posted by jupaen

Hi from Madrid (Spain),

(Sp: Que pena que no exista un foro de este tipo en nuestro idioma).

Sí

[tapf!]

Hello,

I'm also thinking about buying a Sony Reader. I could get it for 384 US$ incl. Shipping to Germany, but probably plus 19% taxes. So i would end with 285 EUR (335 EUR with taxes).

But I'm not sure if the Reader is really that what I want. Today I'm reading on an IBM X41 Tablet and an Handera 330.

The X41 Tablet has an 12-inch XGA TFT, weights 1,8kg and runs about 5 hours on a battery charge.

The Handera 330 has a ~3-inch QVGA LCD, wheights 160g and runs more than 32 hours on a battery charge. (I've got the optional Li-Ion Pack).

Both devices are OK for reading, but far away from optimal. The PDA has a tiny screen wich is hard to read, the tablet is too heavy and big.

Unfortually you can't get recent buy recent titles as ebook. You have to buy classics, read from Project Gutenberg or get them as illegal PDF. The books I like can't be bought nor they are in Project Gutenberg. Well, these PDFs can be exported to text, that does't look optimal, but works.

The Reader supports zooming in PDFs? Because the books often have big borders on the sides and the text is only in the middle.

Best Regards

Fabian

[Hadrien]

Zooming won't answer your problem here.

What you need in your case, is a custom PDF or RTF/LRF.

For the Sony Reader template on Feedbooks, I use these settings: 90mm x 120mm and 1mm margins
You can easily create PDF files with a fake printer that will print the content to a PDF files.

If you don't need links/images, you can use RTF files, they'll work fine.

Finally, if you need both pretty advanced formatting and the ability to change the size on the reader, you should use Book Designer to create LRF files.

Take a look at the wiki, you should find more advances informations about all these formats.

[mogui]

Actually I was thinking of the Nokia N800 or the Palm TX. I had seen the Sony Vaio UMPC in a Sony store in Kunming. I was put off by the tiny characters on the small but brilliant screen. I was afraid the N800 would give me the same problem. I had faith that the TX would be usable because I have a Palm history. I have an ancient TRGpro that I was using for reading, and I had another Palm (a M125) waiting for me in the US, whenever I could get there.

I was not stuck for reading appliances. The TRGpro is sensitive to lighting conditions. I find myself constantly tilting it to get the best display contrast. I consider the backlighting unusable. Nontheless, I did a lot of reading on it. I also had an MP4 player that would display text files on a 24 character wide display. That was actually quite good, as it had adequate backlighting.

There are no good reading devices in Kunming. I took a China Eastern flight to Shenzhen where I looked around a bit. My friend Yoyo distracted me with Korean food and exotic coffee shops, so I did not get much shopping done.

I took the KCR train to Hong Kong and got off at Tsim Sha Tsui, The shopping was great, but I had questions. I saw PDA's with the Palm logo that were labeled Palm Tungsten, but were obviously something else using that name. I was offered more Rolex watches on the street than Rolex ever made. There were other offers too.

I bought a real paper book in the Hong Kong airport and flew to Taipei. The airport shops in Taiwan had loads of electronics, but the Taiwanese money had so many digits in it that it gave me a headache.

I flew to Vancouver on China Air. The food was quite good. A nice stranger gave me a Wilbur Smith paperback. I was seated next to a pretty blonde Australian girl, so I didn't read much. The earplugs in our seats didn't work, so we couldn't watch the movies. The food was quite good.

My daughters were going to meet me in the Vancouver airport. I boarded my transatlantic flight out of Hong Kong at 10:25 Sunday morning. I arrived in Vancouver at 9:30 Sunday morning. Who would have thought? I had told my daughters I would arrive on Monday. I had to take a bus.

I looked around the Seattle area. CompUSA was closing business, so I looked for bargains. I found a prepay Tracfone for US$12. I bought it. They offer international calling at no extra fee. I could call China for only airtime charges!

I drove my daughter's Prius to Portland. It is the most high-tech car I have ever seen. I carried the rf-tag key in my pocket. The car recognized me and allowed me to open the door and start the engine with a PC-like on/off button on the dash. When I backed out, the info display changed to a camera view behind the car. Otherwise it showed me the moving average of my fuel consumption as a set of bar graphs. I could change the display units on the speedometer from Imperial to metric.

I drove into the parking lot of Fry's just south of Portland. Wandering around, I spotted Seagate external USB hard drives of 500G capacity for US$139.99. Two of them went into my shopping cart. Looking at flash drives, I found a flash storage unit in a small box, thinner than a cigarette pack but longer, that had 15G and sold for US$66.98. Two of those fell into my shopping cart.

Friend Larry called with an offer of Italian lunch. It was delicious, topped with gelato. I hit the cash machine and we went back to Fry's. The PDA display consisted of boxed units either double-wrapped with strapping tape or housed in alarm boxes. I saw the Nokia and The Palm TX, but I could only imagine what they must look like. A salesman said they could open them to show them to me at a certain sales counter. It was then I saw the Sony Reader box. A customer said they had one on display.

The reader was strapped into a metal affair that rendered it immobile. I could see the quality of the screen. It was a tad greyer than I had believed, but more readable than any monochrome PDA. I hadn't realized it wa so big! The unit was non-functional.

I went back over to the PDA shelf and checked the price on the readers. They had an opened box for US$332. I took it to the magic sales desk and had it opened and demonstrated. It worked well. The screen latency and ghosting were in the range of unnoticable to unproblematic. I pronounced it "sold" and the salesman wrote it up for me. Between the reader and the storage, it ate up all my cash. Oregon has no sales tax, so I paid with a grin. I would have to hit the ATM again though before driving on.

Back in Seattle, I popped a 4G SD card into my new reader and loaded it with books. Wow! I like it. It is just the right size and weight for easy comfortable reading.

I hope on my flight back I don't sit next to a pretty girl. There are so many books I want to read now.

[HarryT]

Wow - that's quite a shopping trip! Hope you enjoy your Reader .