1700 Books, 110 Collections, Reader craps

[Penforhire]

I don't have a "problem" using Sony's software but it is an awfully crude program.

Even stuff like using the "+" symbol to add a collection is stone age. Windows API wrappers to program simple context menus (right click, chose New Collection) is literally child's play in every programming language I've dabbled in. Yet somehow beyond Sony programmers?

A hot tip for the Sony boys -- don't reinvent the wheel.

And what is up with not allowing functions like "delete this book" (or even a delete flag) from the reader itself? Not the end of the world but just how hard is it to sync both ways?

Sony's software annoys in so many ways!

[dhbailey]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

I don't have a "problem" using Sony's software but it is an awfully crude program.

Even stuff like using the "+" symbol to add a collection is stone age. Windows API wrappers to program simple context menus (right click, chose New Collection) is literally child's play in every programming language I've dabbled in. Yet somehow beyond Sony programmers?

A hot tip for the Sony boys -- don't reinvent the wheel.

And what is up with not allowing functions like "delete this book" (or even a delete flag) from the reader itself? Not the end of the world but just how hard is it to sync both ways?

Sony's software annoys in so many ways!

Your complaints are all valid for most people on this forum, but you have to imagine the much larger audience for which Sony is hoping to aim the Reader. If the books could be deleted on the Reader, there would be so many people complaining to Sony simply because they clicked the wrong thing and their book got erased.

The potential market for the Reader goes way beyond people who are comfortable around electronics which are not made foolproof, so my guess is that Sony has left off a lot of things that you and I and others on this forum would love in an effort to minimize the problems for a larger audience.

I can imagine many people eventually using the reader but handing it to a family member or friend and saying -- please order me this-book and that-book and load it onto the reader for me. One family member or friend serving as "tech-support and chief book-loader/deleter" for a wider circle of Reader users.

[BrokenBird]

The problem is not really the number of books, but putting those books in collections. Sony really did a shitty job designing the firmware of this device, instead of just discovering what is in folders it has to keep a (single) file with all the information. So if you have 1500 books, that is 1500 entries in the xml file, and each entry is many lines since the author, date, type, etc... is also included, now if you start adding these files to some collection, then you have one entry per collection, and one more entry per book per collection, no wonder this file get so huge and the reader can't process it anymore.

To me it looks like Sony has a bunch of developpers without a software architect and/or product manager, they do whatever they think at the time without looking further for usability.

[Penforhire]

David, I am exactly that "tech support and chief book-loader" (more like book manager) for my wife's 505. She only knows enough to plug it in to recharge.

Even to a wider audience it is not currently intuitive. The wider audience uses Windows so why reinvent Windows methods? I can see where a technophobe might prefer the Kindle to avoid the whole Sony-altered PC experience.