Brother can you spare some truth?

[HarryT]

It's obvious that most of the reviews of eBook Readers are by people who just don't "get it" when it comes to what they're actually about.

MR is your best source for reliable, unbiased info.

[Alan P.]

[QUOTE=PennyPie;660640]Huh-uh!!! Of COURSE one using a PC can use Calibre to transfer books!!! See...it's not sometimes even half truths...it's commonly held 'myths' that continue to be perpetrated...just cuz you see it in print don't make it necessarily so. We've all 'heard' (read) things, they just sorta sit there in your brain fermenting, and all of a sudden, you think it's truth.

I'm fully aware PC users can use Calibre, too... what I didn't make clear in my post is that MOST people reading reviews NEVER HEARD OF IT because they see the specs, read a 1-paragraph review that says 'you must use this sony software' and shrug their shoulders and pop the CD in... my point was that you rarely, if ever, see a review where someone says something like, "it's supposed to be used strictly with the proprietary software, but there's a better cross-platform program that does the job too".

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by calvin-c

I'm not too sure about that last. I've seen an awful lot of 'reviews' that use direct quotes from the manufacturer's press release.

Well, reviewing the press release is a time-honoured tradition in anything IT-related, annoying enough.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

That is why I use Amazon, too. However, it seems to be quite easy to run into Topaz files, for me it is about 3 out of 20+ free and paid ebooks I have from them.

Yeah. I ran into one Topaz book, and then called Amazon and returned it, telling them why. They seemed pretty understanding

Since then, I religiously download a sample first, to at least try to make sure it's not Topaz. If it is, I go looking for the title elsewhere.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Sonist

Yeah. I ran into one Topaz book, and then called Amazon and returned it, telling them why. They seemed pretty understanding

Since then, I religiously download a sample first, to at least try to make sure it's not Topaz. If it is, I go looking for the title elsewhere.

Surprises me that they are "understanding" since if you use the books as Amazon intended (i.e. read them on the Kindle or the iphone) there should be no difference between the two formats. What bold faced lie did you come up with?

[PennyPie]

Originally Posted by Alan P.

I'm fully aware PC users can use Calibre, too... what I didn't make clear in my post is that MOST people reading reviews NEVER HEARD OF IT because they see the specs, read a 1-paragraph review that says 'you must use this sony software' and shrug their shoulders and pop the CD in... my point was that you rarely, if ever, see a review where someone says something like, "it's supposed to be used strictly with the proprietary software, but there's a better cross-platform program that does the job too".

Alan...you really hadn't made it clear that you were aware that PCs can use Calibre. And now that you've re-stated your point, it's much clearer what you were trying to say (at least to me). I guess that's why people need to be informed consumers...and that means doing some research above and beyond reading just one or 2 reviews. Considering the cost of these devices we love, we owe it to ourselves (and our pocketbooks) to investigate them thouroghly.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

reviewing the press release

First time I've heard it put that way. I like it-IMO precisely captures what they're doing. Thanks.

[DawnFalcon]

No, no.
I was being quite literal.

Two games I made were "reviewed" before the press copies were sent out. One scoring very badly, and sitting on metacritic for all 3 platforms (despite the fact it purported to be a review of one platform only) for two weeks, alone. Needless to say, this did not help sales.

[Gideon]

Originally Posted by Sonist

Yeah. I ran into one Topaz book, and then called Amazon and returned it, telling them why. They seemed pretty understanding

Since then, I religiously download a sample first, to at least try to make sure it's not Topaz. If it is, I go looking for the title elsewhere.

Have you ever found one? I've never found a book in the topaz format elsewhere, since it generally meant that Amazon scanned the book themselves.

[luqmaninbmore]

Originally Posted by Gideon

Have you ever found one? I've never found a book in the topaz format elsewhere, since it generally meant that Amazon scanned the book themselves.

They do sometimes show up in the Sony store or as Adobe DRMed PDFs. That's happened with a few books that I've been interested in.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by HarryT

One reason is if you want to buy a book in a format not supported by your device. Eg, if you have an ePub device, and the book you want is only available as a LIT or a Mobi file, then you have to remove the DRM before you can convert it to ePub.

And another reason is if you want to go to another ebook reader. I had a Cybook but now read almost all my ebooks on my ECO reader.

Regards, Alex

[HansTWN]

deleted

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Surprises me that they are "understanding" since if you use the books as Amazon intended (i.e. read them on the Kindle or the iphone) there should be no difference between the two formats. What bold faced lie did you come up with?

I didn't lie. I simply told the rep, that I just realized it's a Topaz title, and that I do not want anything to do with Topaz.

To which he responded that he understands completely, and refunded the $8 or so.

My impression was, that he knew why I didn't want it, and this was not the first time he had heard this.

The bottom line is, I will in all likelihood replace my readers within the next year, and it may not be with an Amazon device. I'd like to keep the titles I purchased, which is not so much to ask, IMO.

[zacheryjensen]

Originally Posted by Sonist

I didn't lie. I simply told the rep, that I just realized it's a Topaz title, and that I do not want anything to do with Topaz.

To which he responded that he understands completely, and refunded the $8 or so.

My impression was, that he knew why I didn't want it, and this was not the first time he had heard this.

The bottom line is, I will in all likelihood replace my readers within the next year, and it may not be with an Amazon device. I'd like to keep the titles I purchased, which is not so much to ask, IMO.

The question is, did he "Know" that you cared about DRM rippability or did he "know" that you disliked how topaz files can be incredibly slow and poorly rendered on the devices? There's more than one reason to dislike topaz.

Though to be truthful, I've got one topaz book so far and I just kept it because there's no other digital version of it around. At least, there wasn't in the last few months that I checked. It's "The Boy Detective Fails" but Joe Meno. A fantastic book. I believe it uses topaz solely to use a couple custom fonts in a few specific places but overall, I noticed no slowness or any other odd problems. I thoroughly enjoyed the digital read. I do wish I could rip it to be used in other devices in the future, but c'est la vie.

[zacheryjensen]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's obvious that most of the reviews of eBook Readers are by people who just don't "get it" when it comes to what they're actually about.

MR is your best source for reliable, unbiased info.

Reliable maybe. Biased definitely. It's okay to be biased as long as you're honest about it. Let people know "We at MR really like mobile reading, which basically implies electronic books and similar things." and they can adjust any interpretations of opinions with that in mind to their own person bias about eBooks.

Of course I don't think MR's bias is hidden in any way so I'd say it's pretty honest, despite the quote above