Next Sony reader: wish list

[alaya129]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Sorry, wrong. God made the DS Lite... Sony made the PSP.

BOb

That's true.

[Taylor514ce]

Overall, I'm not dissatisfied with the Reader per se, as is. I like the size, I like to read on it, transferring books is no problem, 2GB SD is large enough for sure. I like the deluxe leather case, with the pocket for an extra SD, plus the Moleskine cahier notebook fits nicely in the pocket. I wish it had a pen loop, but I always have a pen with me anyway.

My gripes are the universal gripes of all e-book reader readers... (CONTEXT users?), which I won't renumerate, and which aren't device specific.

[HarryT]

Flash RAM is so cheap now that there's really no reason not to have 512MB or 1GB built-in. With that much, the need for using external memory cards is pretty much removed for many people.

[JeffElkins]

A folder-based reader, a-la FBReader, with the ability to read multiple formats.

[HarryT]

A user-replaceable battery.

[Megatron-UK]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Sorry, wrong. God made the DS Lite... Sony made the PSP.

BOb

Have some karma

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Taylor514ce

And a faster processor wouldn't let it "handle more books", unless I misunderstand that expression. A larger internal storage, would.

Well, it would make navigation through the Book list/menus when you have a large amount of books (using that 1GB of internal ram) on your device.

BOb

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Well, it would make navigation through the Book list/menus when you have a large amount of books (using that 1GB of internal ram) on your device.

BOb

Does the refresh speed of an eInk screen depend on the CPU speed? I'd have thought that it was primarily dependent upon the physical characteristics of the device - the time taken for all the little capsules to move, or rotate, or whatever it is that they do.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Does the refresh speed of an eInk screen depend on the CPU speed? I'd have thought that it was primarily dependent upon the physical characteristics of the device - the time taken for all the little capsules to move, or rotate, or whatever it is that they do.

This has nothing to do with the screen refresh. It has to do with the amount of time it takes to read the data from the file system, sort it or organize it into by author or alphabetically or by collection. All that work is done by the CPU. Once it is done, it is displayed on the screen.

BOb

[HarryT]

Are you referring to the "spinning wheel" cursor that you get when you disconnect the USB cable and the Reader figures out what you've added or deleted? Yes, that would be quite nice to speed up, I agree.

[Taylor514ce]

...destroying all record of what page you were on... yes, please fix that.

[DrMoze]

Originally Posted by HarryT

A user-replaceable battery.

This is about my only wish, and it's not critical. I use my Reader for reading lots and lots of books and stories. It does that great. The screen size and thin form factor are just right IMO. (A larger screen for pdfs would be a different beast.) It really hits the mark for a leisure reading device.

I don't need no dictionary or lookup, because I just read books. I don't want a back/front-light at the expense of battery power. (No p-books have backlights either.) One of the booklike joys of the Reader is not worrying about power and charging. I get enough of that with my cell phone, camera, portable video games, etc.!

I don't need more memory. My 505 internal memory is about half full, and it has at least 2-3 months' worth of reading. What are y'all reading that takes up so much memory? Or do people want to carry "every" book file with them? That's more of an obsession than a functional /need. Seriously, I have quite a variety for any reading mood, with tons of memory to spare, and no need for memory cards.

I guess I'm just happy with my Reader. It is just like a book (OK, many books!) to me, with no techie bells & whistles, nor the accompanying hassles. And the Sony Library software has been glitch-free for me. (Even flashed Cyrillic with no problem.)

OK, I *might* like "official" customizable options like clock display or mapping the menu keys to page turns, but I already have that anyway.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DrMoze

I don't need no dictionary or lookup, because I just read books.

Dictionary lookup is one of those things which you can get on very happily without but, when you get it, you suddenly find that it's just amazingly useful. When I changed from a Sony to a CyBook I didn't think the dictionary would be any big deal, but then I bought a decent dictionary for the Gen3 and I suddenly found myself using it all the time. If you read 19th century books (as I do a lot) you come across all sorts of words that yes, you can guess the meaning of from their context, generally speaking, but it's so nice to be able to easily look up their exact meaning. Not only increases your vocabulary, but enrichens the reading experience too.

[astra]

Originally Posted by DrMoze

This is about my only wish, and it's not critical. I use my Reader for reading lots and lots of books and stories. It does that great. The screen size and thin form factor are just right IMO. (A larger screen for pdfs would be a different beast.) It really hits the mark for a leisure reading device.

I don't want a back/front-light at the expense of battery power. (No p-books have backlights either.) One of the booklike joys of the Reader is not worrying about power and charging. I get enough of that with my cell phone, camera, portable video games, etc.!

I don't need more memory. My 505 internal memory is about half full, and it has at least 2-3 months' worth of reading. What are y'all reading that takes up so much memory? Or do people want to carry "every" book file with them? That's more of an obsession than a functional /need. Seriously, I have quite a variety for any reading mood, with tons of memory to spare, and no need for memory cards.

I guess I'm just happy with my Reader. It is just like a book (OK, many books!) to me, with no techie bells & whistles, nor the accompanying hassles. And the Sony Library software has been glitch-free for me.

I am with you on most of the points, except dictionary because English is not my first language and I use ectaco portable dic. and it would be helpful not to have to bring another gadget, but I can live without it , but the memory issue is a really funny one. I could never understand it at all, because I cannot understand why one would need to have more than 50 books with them at any given point of time.

[DrMoze]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Dictionary lookup is one of those things which you can get on very happily without but, when you get it, you suddenly find that it's just amazingly useful. When I changed from a Sony to a CyBook I didn't think the dictionary would be any big deal, but then I bought a decent dictionary for the Gen3 and I suddenly found myself using it all the time. If you read 19th century books (as I do a lot) you come across all sorts of words that yes, you can guess the meaning of from their context, generally speaking, but it's so nice to be able to easily look up their exact meaning. Not only increases your vocabulary, but enrichens the reading experience too.

I can see the value of a dictionary if you're a non-native English speaker (like Astra above). But for me, no way. If there was a dictionary, I wouldn't use it. When I read, I *read*. I'm immersed in the story, and it becomes like an internal movie to me. I would NOT stop and look up a word, ever. The reading just flows. And I would not even stop to mark words to look up later. That would kill, not enhance, my reading experience. I cannot imagine reading for pleasure any other way. Even if I had a dictionary in front of me while reading, I wouldn't touch it. Never have, never will.

I am curious if many people actually interrupt their reading to look up words. I've been a voracious reader since elementary school (almost 40 years) and have never done this.