Next Sony reader: wish list

[astra]

Originally Posted by HarryT

There's something VERY wrong there. There's no way that a LiIon battery should degrade that quickly. You'd expect it to have around 70% of its original capacity after 3 years, perhaps. Should still be at least at 90% of original capacity after only 10 months.

90%...I wish. I think my 500 holds charge for no longer than 2 weeks now. It used to hold for 3 weeks when I just bought it.

[olderjohn]

And yes I am aware of the "Portable AA Battery Charger", but it seem a solar cell could be cliped (afixed) to the cover and go a longway to charge as you read with such a small charge drain...

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Feel free to ask, Bob. I'm pretty well up on that kind of thing!

Ok...

"You can lay to that"... Means sort of "On that you can bet." ?

I don't have to book handy... there were a few others... "Durf" I think.

BOb

EDIT: Perhaps I should have started a new thread. Moderators feel free to move to a new thread.

[HarryT]

Next time you have the book at hand, dig them out and I'll have a go!

[dordale]

Regarding the dictionary debate--that's the ONLY thing I miss about reading on my Palm. I don't miss it enough to go back, but I sure did like being able to look up a word on the fly.

dordale

[sebastien]

- RS-232 interface with cable. The connector might be of a smaller size on the device, as long as it plugs into usb and is linux compatible. Make the cable a 20$ option...
- Access to /boot and the boot menu
- Reflash to factory default button, ie make a copy of the OS in a read only chip.

The rest I'm sure the community will do.

[Ebook lover]

Touch screen which can use stylus input and finger input will be nice

[Donnageddon]

I am in agreement with many here. I really miss the ability to look up a word on the fly that I have on my Palm, and the EB-1150.

Here is Amazon CEO Bezos on the reason the Kindle has a look up feature.

Portfolio: Every effort at e-books has failed. Why should this one work?

Bezos: We decided we were going to improve upon the book. And the first thing we did was try to determine the essential features of a physical book that we needed to replicate. The No. 1 feature is that it disappears. When you're in the middle of reading, you don’t notice the ink or the glue or the stitching or the paper — all of that disappears, and you're in the author's world. Most electronic devices today do not disappear. Some of them are extraordinarily rude. Books get out of the way, and they leave you in that state of mental flow.

Portfolio: How do you improve on that?

Bezos: We looked at things that physical books could never do. One of them is that you can look up any word that you're reading. It used to be that if I came across a word that I didn't know, I guessed from context. I'm astonished at what a bad guesser I am. Now that I’m looking up the words, I'm like, "Huh. Really?"

I am not really a bad guesser from the context, but I have been surprised more than once on how wrong I have been.

Wired interview with Bezos found here.

[=X=]

I agree with a lot of the new features so I woun't double post... okay I'll just add them in the end.

I would REALLY like to see the a new menu option "Top 10" to the root menu option either replacing or adding on the "Continue Reading..." (I've yet to use this feature on the root menu). I typically read 3-5 books concurrently and find it difficult and time consuming to have to navigate each time I want to toggle between books.


DITTO Feature (Just for voting Importance in descending order )
- SONY to compete with Amazon in price/offering ( i know not an 505 feature)
- TOP 10
- Input Device for annotations (I prefer styles but keyboard would work. I do not want something that must be attached I would end up losing it or forgetting it.)
- Dictionary
- PDF secure support (I know this is in the works, but it's not here yet )

[IceHand]

Originally Posted by astra

What does it matter whether it synthesises it or not as long as it is italic? It trully escapes me.

True italics look far better than slanted text. I guess, you'll need to have an eye for it to find slanted text irritating though. I'm irritated by it so that was a reason against the Reader.

[astra]

Maybe if I compared them side by side, I would notice the difference.
Otherwise I have no idea what you are talking about

When I was adjusting to Sony Reader I tried both fonts Times and Swiss. I wanted to use swiss because I believed I liked it more but I have noticed that Swiss italics are a lot less "visible" than Times italic. Swiss italics were there but they didn't really stand out like Times italics. It is like Harry Poter books were italics are very very bad. Since then I use only Times where italics and bold are very clear.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by astra

Maybe if I compared them side by side, I would notice the difference.
Otherwise I have no idea what you are talking about

The easiest way to notice it is to look at the letter that have different form. For example an italic a usually has a different form than a slanted a.

[ginalola]

Hi, I'm a former lurker here, but I felt I had to throw in my two cents on this one..........Santa, will you please make the new reader with a back-light or some kind of lighting that allows you to read in the dark? And if I'm really good will ya throw in a touch screen?

BTW thanks to all of you on the forum, you were a big help to me when I was trying to decide which reader to go with, and still a big help when I need info!

[duckeedoug]

A hold switch would be nice. The unit tends to switches pages when put into a bag with other items. Sony should integrate this hold into the power on/off switch. Also better power management would be great for the SD slot.

[Dylrob]

Originally Posted by duckeedoug

A hold switch would be nice. The unit tends to switches pages when put into a bag with other items. Sony should integrate this hold into the power on/off switch.

I don't know about the 505, but on my 500 all the "power switch" does [once the unit is on] is lock the buttons and blank the screen.