Some general questions--ONE DAY AWAY!

[RWood]

I thought I read somewhere that the Sony Reader used an early version of Digital Editions for the PDF part.

[NatCh]

Hmm. I don't recall anything either way on that -- perhaps I need to have another look at the manual that came with it, I seem to remember it detailing what viewers were in the thing ....

[JSWolf]

Does anyone have a digital edition PDF so we can try it?

[RWood]

I have one from Adobe but it is restricted to the PC only. I cannot read it in Acrobat or even get it to come up on the Reader. It seems that they have increased the DRM beyond what it was before.

Here is the Adobe Digital Editions homepage http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/digitaleditions/ where you can get the software and download your own copies of the books.

[JSWolf]

I just tried one of them and no go. Would not even download to the reader when I changed the extension to PDF.

[benn600]

I am wondering why standard 8.5x11 PDFs don't display well (or so I've heard). I get my reader in around 15 hours from now, so I can figure it out then, too...but the question is that since the resolution is quite high, it seems like it could show a complete page, just without the sharpness and everything would be tiny.

I have the iPaq HX4700 and it has a 480x640 4" screen. It can display incredibly small text...almost enough to show an entire page. The reader has 600x800 resolution if I'm not mistaken. Oh well, I guess I'll see soon enough.

[HarryT]

I think you'll find that they don't display at all well. Normal text, sized for an A4/Letter page just can't be read comfortably on the Reader's 6" screen, and you can't zoom in on it. There are some tools downloadable from this forum (which others can advise you on) which do things like chop each PDF page into multiple pages on the Reader, but PDF is best avoided if there are alternatives.

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Sorry - I was in no way at all denigrating Hadrien's stirling work at "Feedbooks" - apologies if that's the way my message came across. Re-reading it I see that it could indeed be interpreted like that, which I certainly didn't intend.

The reason I dislike even "correctly sized" PDFs personally is that you're stuck with the font size that the creator of the PDF thinks is the right one to use. When I use the Reader with the LRF files I create myself, I read most of the time using the "small" font size, but when it's late at night and I'm tired, or I'm reading somewhere with poor light, I switch to "medium" because it's a lot easier on the eyes. I can't do that with PDF!

Wrong. On Feedbooks, you can easily generate PDF with both the font, and the size that you'd prefer. It only takes a few seconds to set your settings and once it's done, you can select "Custom PDF" on every book and also for the RSS/Sudokus/Newspapers.
It's true that you can't exactly resize PDFs on the fly, but there's good sides too: since you can't reflow the text, the flowing itself is much better with hyphenation support, kerning, better justification etc... and that's exactly what we're improving with our PDF right now: better typesetting.
Feedbooks will support reflowing format too in the future, but currently I'm a bit disappointed with the poor typesetting of such formats (seems like some folks feel the same way: http://forum.irexnet.com/viewtopic.php?t=1256 )

[Azayzel]

Originally Posted by benn600

I am wondering why standard 8.5x11 PDFs don't display well (or so I've heard). I get my reader in around 15 hours from now, so I can figure it out then, too...but the question is that since the resolution is quite high, it seems like it could show a complete page, just without the sharpness and everything would be tiny.

I have the iPaq HX4700 and it has a 480x640 4" screen. It can display incredibly small text...almost enough to show an entire page. The reader has 600x800 resolution if I'm not mistaken. Oh well, I guess I'll see soon enough.

If you're comfortable reading PDF's on your PDA, then you shouldn't have a problem on the Reader once the PDF's are converted using one of the methods found in this forum; e.g., PDFRasterfarian or PDFRead. I've converted quite a few using the former, but have been too busy reading regular books to fiddle with PDF's of late. The programs tend to run several filters on the PDF's to make them more easily viewable on the Reader. You'll see when you get it, but might as well have a few test cases available so you can suit to your particular taste. It's the grey-scale thing that really mucks things up, your PDA does 64k color, where this does simple 4-shade greyscale (might not sound too impressive, but viewing photos on the Reader are sweet!).

If you haven't already, d/l BookDesigner and get familiar with it, that way you can format books to your taste and can convert from LIT, RTF, TXT, DOC, etc. to the more useful/native LRF format.

Edit: Forgot to mention about the page differences, the Reader screen is a tad smaller than a typical paperback, so even with margins shrunk, books tend to be 2-3x longer in length than their PB compatriates (most run over 1000 pages, where 300 pages are basically short-stories).

[benn600]

Yea, I realized that right away. I'm reading Moby Dick on medium and it's over 1800 pages! Talk about a long book! I'm also using the librivox audiobook and I must say it works GREAT! I have the Reader on my nightstand with the charger right there.

::I charged it and it still shows 2 bars. I heard Leo Laporte talking about his Reader only showing 1 bar all the time on a Security Now episode. Does it have to be powered on when charged to update the battery display?

But for the book, it's amazing! I start by turning it on at the music player with my current chapter paused. I then play it and in a few seconds can be back to my book. Then, when I'm done, I just flip back to the music player and stop it. It works so well I cannot believe with great sound quality.

Yes, it would be nice if there was a way to pause the audio from the book screen...how about pushing the directional pad--it could pause the audio. And there is a volume control! It couldn't be any better!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by benn600

::I charged it and it still shows 2 bars. I heard Leo Laporte talking about his Reader only showing 1 bar all the time on a Security Now episode. Does it have to be powered on when charged to update the battery display?

It's a firmware bug.

All you have to do is, once it's finished charging (ie when the little light above the power switch goes off), turn the Reader on and, with it turned on, momentarily connect the cable from the wall charger. The battery meter will immediately jump to show 4 bars and will then read correctly (until next time you charge, at least).

I read about an hour a day and only need to recharge once every 3-4 weeks, so no big deal. Hopefully Sony will fix it at some point in a firmware update.

[benn600]

I am quite impressed with the audiobook capability and sincerely predict that they will start working with Audible in the near future. I wouldn't be hugely interested, though, because I already spent so much on the Reader and will work with free books for now.

I'm gonna start a thread about getting content with a poll. RIGHT NOW I am.

[yvanleterrible]

Audiobooks have been available for the hearing challenged since those old 78 records.

Have you tried podiobooks? They're fantastic. I listen to them while working in the shop, of course not when the planer's roaring.

[HarryT]

I'm a huge fan of audio books, but I use my iPod for that. Use the right tool for the right job. Read on the Reader, audio books on the iPod.

[yvanleterrible]

Agreed!

And I have to add that frankly the quality of sound from the reader really stinks.