It's Crunch Time- I need opinions!

[Rules.r]

Hey folks,

So I am a week away from making the final decision on E-book readers, and I want to get some help from the community-

Here are my requirements for a reader-

1. PDF support- I have a TON of pdf books already, and I do not have the cash to readily replace them all, or the time to convert them all.

2. DRM? My PDF books (I have .lit as well) are all without DRM, I need a reader that is not going to care!


Anyone think of any reason that I should NOT get the PRS-700? Any suggestions as to what alternatives?

Thank you in advance.

[HarryT]

Many people say that the PRS-700 has a rather poor screen, due to the touch-sensitive layer. There have also been problems reported with dust getting between the outer screen and the touch-layer. However, if you really must have PDF (and, as you know, it's a very poor choice of format for eBooks), it's the 6" screen device which does the best job of displaying them.

[doreenjoy]

If you're commited to PDF, then the large screen of the Sony 700 will suit you best. You might end up stripping the white space from the edges of your PDFs, even so.

[HarryT]

The Sony PRS-700 does not have a "large screen" - it has exactly the same screen as any other 6" eBook reader. If reading A4/Letter format PDFs is your main priority then a device with a larger screen such as the iRex DR1000S would be a much better choice.

[ooo]

I'm actually looking for the same thing at the moment. After a lot of research I found myself stuck between sony's 700 and foxit's eslick. I heard that the glare was pretty bad on Sony's device and seeing comparisons between the 505/700 screen I can see the difference in the text, so I ended up preordering the eslick.

Should I be getting the sony instead? Sorry to hijack your thread.

[lilac_jive]

Most of the people who have issues with the glare have had experience with an eink device before. I know quite a few people who are very happy with their 700.

[zelda_pinwheel]

i have a 700, and while the screen is not as good as an e-ink screen without the tactile layer, this is mainly obvious when they are in a side-by-side comparison. the screen has never bothered me while i'm reading, on the contrary. on the other hand, the vastly improved navigation and ergonomy permitted by the touch interface, along with features such as search, highlight, and note-taking, make (for me) the 700 a far more satisfying option than the others currently available. and note that i *do* have experience with other e-ink devices so i can make an informed comparison.

based on what i've read here, i think people who have been reading for some time on an e-ink screen without the tactile layer are often disappointed by the 700 in comparison (at least, at first glance), however people who get it as their first device or who have been reading on an lcd device most often fall in love with it.

personally, i love mine, and wouldn't want to sacrifice the comfort of the improved ergonomy and the extra features for anything.

[ooo]

I really like the features of the 700. I think another issue I had with it when I was considering purchasing it was the fact that it has no support for a mac. Which is a big problem for me. I guess I'll head to borders and load up a few PDFs on a SD card and check it out tomorrow.

[shighfield]

I also have a PRS700 and like Zelda I don't have a problem with the so called glare on the screen. It also reads those pesky PDF files very well. I'm getting rid of the 700 for a reason OTHER then the screen.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by ooo

I really like the features of the 700. I think another issue I had with it when I was considering purchasing it was the fact that it has no support for a mac. Which is a big problem for me. I guess I'll head to borders and load up a few PDFs on a SD card and check it out tomorrow.

i agree that sony is pretty short-sighted not to support macs. however, the good news is that you can use calibre for library management and file conversion on a mac (or a pc or a linux box... ) so that's not a problem. and it's free !

i forgot to mention that while i don't have many (...any ?) pdfs, i did try out the pdf support just to see how it worked and it's very good, including the reflow when you enlarge the text size. however, it's not nearly as good as epub if you have that option, so i continue to prefer that format.

[ooo]

How fast would you say the refresh is. Does it support zoom to fit. Do I just put PDFs into a SD card and plug it into the Sony device and it should work? Sorry for all the questions.

[ddave]

Rules.r and ooo,

It is also important for me to have a reader capable to displaying PDF files and so I've been experimenting with different PDF documents on a 700 at the local Borders store. The fact that I can simply copy the desired documents onto an SD card and drop it into the reader is encouraging. I began by comparing the 700 and the 505, quickly I focused on the 700 because 'turning the page' of a PDF file on the 505 seemed to take too long. The 700 was much quicker.
The default view is to display the PDF in a full page mode where the text becomes very small. In my case (especially without my reading glasses), I need to make the text larger.

There are 2 ways to read PDF documents on the 700. You can either 'zoom' the page view and pan around the page. This works well and the touchscreen allows panning the screen by swiping the finger. However, turning the page is tedious because the next page first appears in full-page mode. To read it you have to go back into zoom mode and pan around to the desired section. The zoom mode seemed ideal to view images or graphs.

The 2nd alternative is to increase the font size. Here is where not all PDF's are created equal. An older, image based PDF, could be read this way but some of the text was misplaced in the reformatted document. For example, figure captions may be separated from the text and equations don't show properly. Nevertheless, the paragraph text was usually readable.
This is when I began experimenting with different PDF files, so far I haven't tried reprocessing the PDF file with 3rd party programs (time...). Newer PDF's reformat better when the font size is increased. I had the best results with Wikipedia PDF-books. I created a few using subjects that contain several images and/or equations, for example Mayan civilization and script languge or Maxwells equations. These PDF files were processed by the 700 very well and the text was re-flowed around the images and the images were resized to fit on the screen. This made me hopeful that PDF's could be read on the 700.

Regarding the screen itself: I'll admit that the 505 looked clearer, but I never had trouble reading the 700 screen. And, navigation with the touchscreen seemed more natural.

I've just started reading about the dust issue and I'm not sure how much of a problem it really is.
I also looked at the behavior and print quality of the 700 with ebooks such as epub. Again, very readable.
Good luck with the decisions.

[ooo]

Thanks for the explanation. Is the zoom based off fixed percentages or can I zoom to any size. From what I understand, if you zoom then you will have to re-zoom the document when you turn the page. That would be a major problem.

From everything I've heard about the Sony device, it seems amazing aside from the zoom resetting when you turn the page. I guess I'll just keep the foxit eSlick on preorder.

[ddave]

As I recall, the zoom increment was fixed and you had to keep zooming in or out. And yes, I had to re-zoom for each page. So, I found it easier reading to increase the font size and allow the 700 to reformat the screen. In that case, the text stays the same size when you turn the page. The downside there, is, on some PDF's, some text gets separated from some images or graphs.

[ooo]

Thanks for the information.