When should we start seeing 350/650 in stores

[jjw]

Got my PRS-650 today.
Here's quick video if it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbe7sftrI-g

My only other Ebook reader was an iphone so this seems like a massive improvement to me.

[Orn8one]

can someone tell me what Calibre is please? I only use digital editions - am I missing out on something? Is Calibre what DRM is all about?
Tx

[Javed]

Hi Orn8one! Calibre is a program that converts ebooks into different formats. It is a great program! Here is the Calibre website where there is more information about it (even an introductory, explanatory "Grand Tour" video that should tell you a lot about it with visuals of the program being used). There is also a great Calibre forum here at MobileRead. Calibre can also download newspapers articles onto the ebook even.

[Vertigo]

Originally Posted by Orn8one

can someone tell me what Calibre is please? I only use digital editions - am I missing out on something? Is Calibre what DRM is all about?
Tx

Calibre is a great program - it's prime rasion d'etre is management of your ebook library. However it can also convert between pretty much all the different formats and it seems that very often this is the main reason people use it, or at least start to use it; I'm sure many like myself started purely for the conversion and end up loving it's management features. However what is not is anything to do with DRM. It cannot strip DRM and it cannot convert books with DRM. For that you need other software. Do a search on MR and you will find loads of posts talking about how to do that.

[Latinandgreek]

Originally Posted by jswinden

BTW, I included the sales tax in the comparison because for many people it is a legitimate concern. There are a lot more states with a Sony presence than there are with an Amazon presence, so sales tax becomes an issue to be considered if when you are making a price comparison.

Including the sales tax in the comparison is a good idea, as it can make quite a difference in the price.

[Latinandgreek]

Originally Posted by jjw

Got my PRS-650 today.
Here's quick video if it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbe7sftrI-g

My only other Ebook reader was an iphone so this seems like a massive improvement to me.

I just watched your video. Wow, the 650 looks fantastic, and the page turns are faster than I anticipated. Thanks for posting!

Originally Posted by Squirsier

Thanks for that!

Confirmed - full justification of ePub works. And so does Margin Cut for those eBooks with "big" margins, it effectively reduce them.

Edit : Also used Calibre to convert an ePub to ePub with fully justified text and this also worked! Altho the font sizes of LRF suits me better than ePub ; small is too small, medium is too big. I'll have to experiment with Calibre to find a good middle ground!

With the six font size choices, as opposed to only three on the 300, it shouldn't be too difficult to find a choice for font size, especially when converting with calibre.

One thing that always annoyed me with my 300 was that a font size setting in portrait was smaller than the same font size setting in landscape. Changing to landscape basically stretched (zoomed) the text so that the same amount of text stretched across the screen as did in portrait. So in other words, unlike my Kindles you did not get more words per line of text when you switched from portrait to landscape, you got the same words per line but with bigger text. Yuk! Does the 350 act like the 300 in this regard?

[Squirsier]

Alright, I have the pictures up at my Picasa account :

http://picasaweb.google.com/squirsie...instThePRS300#

I added some captions too, mentioning light conditions the pictures were taken under.

[Orn8one]

@ Javed and Vertigo. I shall look into Calibre immediately! Thanks so much, I only buy/download books from UK retailers and use digital editions - very unadventurous! Thank you.

[Squirsier]

Originally Posted by jswinden

So in other words, unlike my Kindles you did not get more words per line of text when you switched from portrait to landscape, you got the same words per line but with bigger text. Yuk! Does the 350 act like the 300 in this regard?

Just tried it, same thing still! Altho with more font sizes you should be able to find a suitable one for landscape now.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Squirsier

Thanks for that!

Confirmed - full justification of ePub works. And so does Margin Cut for those eBooks with "big" margins, it effectively reduce them.

Edit : Also used Calibre to convert an ePub to ePub with fully justified text and this also worked! Altho the font sizes of LRF suits me better than ePub ; small is too small, medium is too big. I'll have to experiment with Calibre to find a good middle ground!

What you can actually do is use a % to specify the font size. For example, in places where small is specified to show different text, I've sometimes changed that to 90% which is larger then small and smaller then default/medium.

Originally Posted by Squirsier

Just tried it, same thing still! Altho with more font sizes you should be able to find a suitable one for landscape now.

Thanks for checking! Yes with twice as many font sizes it shouldn't be a problem, but I think it is a feature Sony should do away with. I think most people will find the optimum text size and desire to stick with it when changing page orientation. But I could be wrong.

[Fbone]

Thanks for the video and photos!

[Squirsier]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Thanks for checking! Yes with twice as many font sizes it shouldn't be a problem, but I think it is a feature Sony should do away with. I think most people will find the optimum text size and desire to stick with it when changing page orientation. But I could be wrong.

No, this is a good point, I would also expect the font size to remain the same when switching orientation. A firmware update could fix this but we all know how Sony don't release them too often, or with the PRS-300 - not at all!

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What you can actually do is use a % to specify the font size. For example, in places where small is specified to show different text, I've sometimes changed that to 90% which is larger then small and smaller then default/medium.

When converting with calibre on the Look and Feel page you can also uncheck the Disable font size rescaling option then use the Base font size and/or Font size key options. You just have to play around with the options to find which settings work best for you. It is a bit more complicated since Sony changes text size when you switch from portrait to landscape, but it is still workable.

I think, but I'm not sure, that once you find the best settings for your tastes and save them as the conversion default, it will apply them to every book you convert and this will override the CSS in the books. Some changes that are made via conversion depend on whether and how much hardcoding was done in the book's CSS. Some books just use default font sizes by not defining them in the CSS, while others have defined font sizes for various divisions, elements, classes, etc. It is impossible to tell unless you look at the CSS.