Iliad or Sony for heavy reader?

[JasonWalton]

I don't mind the exclusive distribution deals, but they do take on a new sort of menace in the (hopefully short-lived) age of DRM. I have no problem with Amazon having exclusive rights to sell anything, but you can easily see how this would end up with a world where you need a variety of different eBook readers to keep up with your favorite authors.

[sianon]

I have been reading on the Iliad for the past year and totally loved it. Only reason I no longer do is that I broke the screen through utter stupidity. I have now returned to using the Sony 500 and with the ability to format shift (legal where I live) my Microsoft lit books, I can now read pretty much anything I want in the Sony. The Sony certainly has the advantage on battery life. If I were to buy a new reader at the moment, I would seriously consider the cybook given it will read mobipocket, however the deal breaker for me is that in buying th unit from the cybook site, they want me to pay for it in Euro's rather than US dollars. In converting the price in Euro to AUD rather than USD to AUD it adds around $300 AUD to the price and I am not about to become prey to such price gouging. Out of the three at this time, my pick wold be the Sony and continue to purchase content in Lit and convert to LRF.

[cbell]

sianon, Australians don't have to purchase Cybooks direct from Bookeen.

DA Direct sells Cybooks and Iliads (also spare parts and accessories) in Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia.

[Jim Lester]

Originally Posted by HarryT

"Any" content? I thought that the version of ADE on the Reader had rather severe restrictions on the size of EPUB files (or rather, the size of an individual chapter of such a file) that it would read, and that a fair percentage of such books therefore couldn't be read. Please do correct me if I'm mistaken in this belief!

There are restrictions on chapter size of ePub because of processor and memory constraints in the Sony Reader. While I have seen some of these ePubs (when debugging), I'm not sure I would call these a fair percentage of the documents that are out there, and besides my quote was "any Adobe DRM protected content", and I have yet to see any of the problem ePub documents that are DRM protected.

[igorsk]

A few(many?) of the EPUB files sold by BooksOnBoard result in "resource too long" warning in DE and "Page Error!" on the Reader. Admittedly, the support is prety quick in notifying the distributor and providing fixed files.
See threads: 1, 2, 3, 4.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Toshanda

And will it support cropped PDF's in russian language

Yes it will.
Just make sure to set following things in the software you wil use to produce pdf file. I personally have got good results with OpenOffice.org
- set the size of the document to the 90x120mm,
- set the borders to something small, you do not want to waste precious screen real estate
- set the pdf "printer" to embed the fonts onto the document.

Originally Posted by Toshanda

.TXT or .DOC in russian???

No.
On "vanilla", "out-of-the-box" reader you can not.

You can, however, update the fonts via clever hack using sd card and some files obtainable from this site or the site of our resident hacker igorsk

[kacir]

Originally Posted by mickitaz

So, are you saying that the Sony doesn't have a dictionary available?

There is dictionary support for Sony Reader.

Just search this site.

The dictionary support was NOT developed by Sony engineers, as you might expect but by a clever hacker.

[JasonWalton]

Well, now I'm having a hard time picking between the CyBook and the Sony.

[JasonWalton]

I wonder if this is relevant; any CyBook users out there who are lefties? My wife is left handed; I'm wondering if she'd find the page-turn control in the bottom left corner of the Sony better than the one in the bottom right corner of the CyBook...

[HarryT]

I'm left handed; I can use the Gen3 just fine - if you hold it left-handed, your left thumb falls naturally over the page turn control.

[JasonWalton]

I understand there can be a significant delay when disconnecting/rebooting the Sony reader before you can start reading, while it goes off and indexes or does whatever it does. How does the CyBook stack up in this regard?

[HarryT]

I currently have about 300 books on my Gen3; when I disconnect the USB cable it takes about 20s to scan the memory and rebuild the library page. Somewhat faster than the Sony, but I don't recall it being a significant delay on the Sony either. It's not something I'd say is a "factor" with either machine.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Companies sign "exclusive" distribution deals all the time - it's good business sense. How often do newspapers buy the "exclusive" rights to stories?

As long as this is only for a limited period, I have no problem with it.

If say the Boston Herald has a story that the Boston Globe does not, I can purchase the Herald and read it. If Amazon has an eBook (Wizard's First Rule) I cannot read it unless I spend $360 up front to then have the privilege to purchase this eBook. Not even the same. With the number of reader out there now and forthcoming, it's not good for eBooks to be seen as being Amazon's right to control. It would be just as wrong if Sony got exclusive rights to eBooks. But in Sony's case, at least people can read them in Windows with eBook Library. And in order to really control the market, Amazon won't even release a reader for computers to read their eBooks.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by JasonWalton

I understand there can be a significant delay when disconnecting/rebooting the Sony reader before you can start reading, while it goes off and indexes or does whatever it does.

If you upload some 500 rtf files *without* the Sony library software, for example by copying the files directly on the card, you might wait more than 15 minutes after inserting the card. During that time your battery meter might do down two, three marks (out of four)

If you DO use their Connect software, there is no delay.

Recently I have some 360(**) rtf files loaded on the device and when I press the "menu" button while reading the book it takes the reader 12 seconds to actually display the menu. Yes, I have just clocked it.

It looks like nobody at Sony thought that users might want to put more than a few dozen books on the reader without the use of the <heavy sarcasm> fantastic </heavy sarcasm> Sonny Connect software. Consequently the software specification that went to the contractor did not mention anything about the software being able to handle up to several thousand documents in a reasonable manner.

**I have loaded up the reader before going for a holiday

[JasonWalton]

Harry: How can your left thumb fall over the page control? Are you holding it landscape?

This guy's thumb:

http://digital-lifestyles.info/copy_...reader-lg3.jpg

Doesn't look anywhere near that little stick on the right. Or is there a page control on the left somewhere?