Sony Reader questions answered by Sony Reader Team

[NatCh]

Ah. Now that, I followed.

Originally Posted by rmeister0

I'm unwilling to take anything Sony says at face value until I can test it for myself.

Heh -- I like the looks of the Sony (okay, I like them a lot), but I have also added a folder to the SD card I use to carry stuff around, and filled it with files expressly for testing all the various file types the first time I can lay hands on one of the rascals.

Originally Posted by rmeister0

...just about every one of Sony's endeavors in the past 10 years has been all about leveraging content to own the operating platform. Nevermind that said strategy has been hurting them pretty badly, I still see no real evidence that that mindset is changing.

Granted, but I think in this case, they may actually have a point. What have been the two major obstacles to e-reading? I think it's pretty well established that they can be summed up as hardware, and content availability (which rolls up a whole bunch of stuff, formats, DRM, just getting texts, etc.).

Hopefully, e-ink will address the former, but that still, as you point out, leaves the latter.

In effect, what Sony's Connect Store is doing (regardless of what Sony may be aiming to do) is to provide a pool of books that can be easily put on the hardware (I'll get to DRM in a moment, hang on ). I was explaining the general e-reader concept to my 62 year old, mildly technophobic mother, and she thought the harware and Connect Store sounded good to her.

Being able to click on the book she wants, and having it show up on a screen she can read easily (and enlarge the text) without hassling with conversion and such is just exactly what she wants. She doesn't care about DRM, because she only reads books once and then gets rid of them.

However, I think in the event, she'd be annoyed that she couldn't pass some of them along to others. But the point is that they've identified a way to reach a demographic that is outside the 'geek' set. Face it, there are a lot more middle-aged women readers than there are geeks. I think that kind of connection will do a lot toward making e-reading mainstream.

The DRM (told you I'd get to it) is something that a lot of publishers are going to insist on for the time being -- they believe they'll get robbed blind by piracy without it. I happen to agree that most folks are going to pay for such things if the price is reasonable (BAEN's example certainly seems to indicate that this is so), but the issue here is what they believe, not the reality.

I don't like DRM, but if it allows me to sell or give away my e-book, just as I can a paper book, I think I could live with that. The pubs will eventually realize that if I can't give away an e-book, I can't buy one as a gift for someone else -- gifts add a fair amount to my total book purchases.

I think that we'll eventually have some sort of industry standard for formats, as the publishers get on board. If I have to have DRM I'd prefer to see something that ties the text to something like an SD card (I bet 1Mb SD cards would be cheap enough to be viable), so that I could lend or give away my book without copying it.

I think about all the SciFi stories with book readers mentioned in them, they all seem to have the 'book' tied to a physical token, a tape, a chip, a cube, whatever. I don't see any reason that couldn't work for real.

I see the whole thing being tied up together, the hardware drawing the content, the content driving the hardware, and hopefully DRM getting mostly ground beneath the wheels. Call me an optomist, but I really think the advent of usable reader hardware (especially after the prices come down), at a time when the public is generally accepting of e-reading as a suppliment to p-books, will mark the point where the dam went from cracking to water beginning to run through those cracks.

You may be (perhaps, probably are) right that this will mostly penetrate the corporate world first, but so did PC's, and non-dot-matrix printers, and how many other things? The corps have more money to spend on things like this, and they'll do it if they smell a cost savings.

But on the other hand, this one may just surprise us. Call me an optimist, it's been done before, and maybe this will end up just one more disappointment on a road that's much longer than any of us would like it to be, but I'll hold onto the dream of being able to read anything I choose electronically.

The fact that folks had CD's lying around to be ripped to mp3 files did very much increase the mp3 player taking off the way it did. And the fact that books don't currently come digitally for transferring to a reader does mean that e-readers can't take off as fast as iPods did (and you're right that the more open the pubs are the less that will be a factor). On the other hand, there are a lot of products that are perfectly viable that didn't have the 'perfect storm' of circumstances that mp3 players in general have enjoyed. A product doesn't have to be the greatest commercial success in living memory to be successfull. Sony's Connect store may not be 'open,' but it is making a good claim at easy accessibility (okay, except for requiring XP).

As has been noted before, people regard books differently than they do music, the music models don't translate. The key is to make an e-reading situation that fits most people's view of what reading should be. That's what mp3 players have done for music, and when the e-reader manages to get into that range, then it'll do well enough.

[bob_ninja]

Well yes and no. There are several book user types (old/young, technical/leisure,...) as well as several book categories (free - public domain / copyrighted, entertainment/technical/....)

For instance, there is a lot of free public domain content (see Google books ) that can be used now without any limits on any device. I would imagine that students can find a lot of useful material right there. There are all sorts of technical manuals that are also free.

Even the worst DRM scheme may be suitable for books that are read once and simply discarded; leisure type stuff. You may not be able to pass it on to a friend like printed, but if it is cheap enough friend can buy his own.

I think that both of these will persist and exist for a long time, free unencumbered PDFs and TXTs as well as a plethora of DRMs. Of course, most of the books fall into the gray zone between these extremes. They are not free and probably have some sort of DRM, but not cheap and you'd like some privileges (keep it for a long time, pass/borrow to a friend, etc.) Hence the battle will rage for many years in this grey zone.

The obvious fatality will be these, first e-reader devices. They are doomed just like the first palm device, Apple Newton. Wonderful design, excellent features, but expensive. In this case the price is high relative to the lack of content, of course. From their ashes will rise simpler cheaper designs and only after they flood the market will there be significant pressure on publishers and they'll start trying to resolve the mess seriously. In summary, yes it will take a long time to achieve simple ubiquotous e-book availability, but no we don't have to wait as there are already many public domain e-books.

[randyman]

Hey, gang -

Just wanted to say hello, as I've just found this forum; I'm a Mac user eagerly awaiting the long-delayed Sony Reader. I've had experience at getting the short end of the stick by manufacturers, as I'm still occasionally using my original Rocketbook. (Yep, the battery still works!)

As long as the Reader supports the formats Sony states it will, I'll have no difficulty using it effectively - far more easily, in fact than the Rocketbook, which is orphaned by both the lack of connectibility to modern Macs and by OSX. The Mac will readily convert HTML to PDF files, and there's always text.

I know I'm preaching to the choir, but every time I hear about the failure of e-books to catch on, I just have to shake my head. People just aren't all that interested in DRM-based content; we really want a device that will let us load our own content (web, text, pdf) and go. Not because we want to pirate content, but (I believe) because much of what we want on our readers is non-commercial, or legitably available for free on the web.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to things heating up here when the Reader is released, and I look forward to sharing tips & techniques with other Mac users. And to the PC crowd - I come in peace!

[NatCh]

Hey, randyman, welcome to the forum! Don't worry, PC'ers around here are generally okay with you MacUsers.

[Frogsmasha]

Well it's September, and no news from Sony.
I wish we could get an update.

Welcome to the boards

[slayda]

[QUOTE=bob_ninja]rmeister0,
Books individually may be cheap, but at least half of them are thrown away and/or collect dust in the basement.

But you can still read the books your grandfather may have stored in his basement. Do you think our grandchildren will be able to read our ebooks? Can you remember the 8-Track Tape Player, Beta VCRs, the original Video Laser Player?

On another subject, I keep wondering if you can have increased text size by making the RTF file with a larger font size. This would be a great benefit to people you are vision impaired.

[Kosst Amojan]

A Mac user! Fresh meat!

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by Kosst Amojan

A Mac user! Fresh meat!

Is this humour ?

[Kosst Amojan]

No, its HUMOR

[Jaapjan]

Originally Posted by randyman

Hey, gang -

Just wanted to say hello, as I've just found this forum; I'm a Mac user eagerly awaiting the long-delayed Sony Reader. I've had experience at getting the short end of the stick by manufacturers, as I'm still occasionally using my original Rocketbook. (Yep, the battery still works!)

As long as the Reader supports the formats Sony states it will, I'll have no difficulty using it effectively - far more easily, in fact than the Rocketbook, which is orphaned by both the lack of connectibility to modern Macs and by OSX. The Mac will readily convert HTML to PDF files, and there's always text.

I know I'm preaching to the choir, but every time I hear about the failure of e-books to catch on, I just have to shake my head. People just aren't all that interested in DRM-based content; we really want a device that will let us load our own content (web, text, pdf) and go. Not because we want to pirate content, but (I believe) because much of what we want on our readers is non-commercial, or legitably available for free on the web.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to things heating up here when the Reader is released, and I look forward to sharing tips & techniques with other Mac users. And to the PC crowd - I come in peace!

Then you must be happy to know that you can run RBMake utilities on OSX and upload and manage books from your OSX

[bkilian]

Originally Posted by dugbug

Honestly, that number is likely closer to zero.

Just look at the millions of business travellers reading on planes. All they need is to promote the readability, battery life, and ability to carry lots of books in a small lightweight space, and its a hit.

I would like to thank sony for the replies. Here is a little feedback for sony:

Im interested in the user interface to the reader. Please consider before you release it to make some of the user interface configurable through the pc connect software. For example, I may not want to hold the "next page" button down for five seconds before it jumps forward.

Also, make sure your connect software runs on vista!

-d

It doesn't. :-( I've tried. I even installed a Virtual PC with XP, but the reader won't recognise in the Virtual PC.
I'm SOL until they one day decide to grace Vista with their sub-standard software. *sigh*

[Nightwing]

Originally Posted by bkilian

It doesn't. :-( I've tried. I even installed a Virtual PC with XP, but the reader won't recognise in the Virtual PC.
I'm SOL until they one day decide to grace Vista with their sub-standard software. *sigh*

Use both PC and Mac... The Reader is not setup to look like medial to a computer... Kind of like a Canon camera. So the best would be a SD card { small ok } tranfer and a card reader...

Tiger sees the Reader but that it. Even my Cowon A2 in Host modes tell me its a Sony Reader but hangs after that.

Wonder if a widigit could be made to manage the reader... Basically a PC programmer and just getting into Mac stuff...

[Teresita3]

Anyone know how I can delete the factory-installed book excerpts?

[Bob Russell]

You'll need to use the Connect software. While the Reader is connected, you just select the Sony Reader on the left hand side tree, and the book you want to delete on the RHS tree. Then hit the delete key and you should be done after maybe a confirmation dialog box.

If you put books on an SD card, you can manage the contents directly with an SD card reader also, but remember that the indexing is slow on the Reader, but almost instant with the desktop software.

I created a collection "Included Books" in my library before doing any deleting, and copied the Reader default contents into that collection first.

[Madam Broshkina]

Originally Posted by Teresita3

Anyone know how I can delete the factory-installed book excerpts?

You have to connect your reader to your computer and use the connect software.

You can delete content in the Library.

Click "Library" in the Source view, then click (List view).

The View area is switched to the List view and all the content in the Library is listed.

Hints
When you click "Books," "Audio" or "Pictures" in the Source view, only the respective content types are displayed.

By clicking (Thumbnail view), content can be displayed as thumbnails.

Select the content you want to delete from the list.

To select multiple content, click the content while holding down the Ctrl key.

Click "Delete" on the "Edit" menu.

A confirmation dialog box appears.

Click "OK."

The content is deleted.

Hint
You can also right-click on the content in the View area and select "Delete" to delete it.

Delete will not affect the actual file it was referred to.