PRS-650 Just got my new Sony PRS650

[delphin]

Originally Posted by silvercity

As I use the reader more questions pop up. Is there only one font, which is the best for reading? And what do you have your brightness view adjusted to, I find mine dark but maybe it is something I need to get used to? I got a leather case for it but the one without the light, anyone have the case with the light and is it worth it?

Thx everyone.

If you hit the far right 'Options' button while reading, you can select to 'Adjust View'. There are a lot of options, but don't expect to be able to lighten the background, since the eInk screen display isn't back-lit.

I fiddled around a little with these settings, and ended up putting them right back to the 'Original' default setting.

Sony's lighted case is nice, but it is a little expensive, and a bit bulky (it makes the reader's case about an 3 or 4 centimeters wider than the cover without the built in light).

I find that I usually don't need a booklight to read (switching to a larger font lets me read, even in fairly dim light) and didn't want all that extra bulk, so I went with a more compact case with a add-on booklight for those rare occasions where one is needed.

Since you also already have a case, you might just want to look at an inexpensive addon booklight.

Something like the little 'mighty bright' book light.

- or if you want something even smaller . . .

check out the little might bright travel version that works with only a single aaa battery.

There are even cheaper lights available, but most of the really cheep ones either use expensive coin batteries that have lousy battery life, or are bigger and more awkward because they use 3 aaa batteries at a time.

I would also avoid the mighty bright 2 light which seems to be a cost reduced (for them not for you) version that uses 3 batteries like the cheapy lights, but actually sells for MORE money.

[silvercity]

Will look into getting an add-on light for my case.

Today, I noticed that there is a small slant in the screen (sentence doesn't look straight) when reading a book...imagine holding a book in your hand and with the right hand holding it slightly lower. Is this normal for readers?

[SeaBookGuy]

I think I know what you're talking about, although I run across the issue of the text not being quite centered (left - right) if I hold the reader at a specific angle.

[delphin]

Originally Posted by silvercity

. . .
Today, I noticed that there is a small slant in the screen (sentence doesn't look straight) when reading a book...imagine holding a book in your hand and with the right hand holding it slightly lower. Is this normal for readers?

Are you talking about the whole reader, or is the reader perfectly vertical and straight, and the text still looks slanted?

I have the Proporta cover, which holds the reader using clips on the left side.

Because the clip that hold the reader is free to shift slightly, it let's the right side of my Sony hang a little lower unless I support the bottom of the reader on the bottom right.

If the reader is being held absolutely straight, and the text looks a little slanted anyway, then I wouldn't worry about it, it's probably just an optical illusion of some sort.

Reading a book where the right margin is not matched to the left, or is uneven, can cause this type of illusion, but after you use the reader for awhile your eye starts to trust that text on the screen MUST be straight and the effect disappears.

In any case, I wouldn't worry, these eInk screens are manufactured to micro-meter tolerances (they need to be in order to even work), so there couldn't possibly be an error in the screen large enough to make the text look crooked.

Edit:

I just wanted to update this post, because I did think of one situation that can cause you to see text that is not straight, and that is when you are viewing a scanned PDF file that has not been OCR converted.

This is not typically an issue with EPUBs, but you could run into this on some PDF's which were created by scanning physical books.

These scanned PDF files can look like normal text, but are actually just full page images that have been captured and compiled together, one scanned image per page.

If the book was slightly crooked when the scan was done, you may notice that the lines of text in the resulting PDF are not quite straight.

Another sure sign that you are dealing with scanned pages that are bitmapped images, and not pages containing normal text, is that you can't highlight or look up words in the dictionary.

[Pinecone]

BTW, you will need the Sony Reader Software installed on your computer to buy books from the Sony eBookstore.

To get started you can use the Sony software to do everything, but as your collection of books gets larger, Calibre is much nicer to keep things in line.

One caveat, do NOT have both Sony Reader software and Calibre running on your computer at the same time, with the reader connected. You could run into problems. Not serious ones, but annoying ones.