PRS-600 An hour and 20 minutes start up time!

[Mike_73]

Eric, I'm totally with you. Returning stuff here is mostly only easy if your device is defective. Just because you don't like a specific feature doesn't justify returning a product. The time I bought my first reader, I could only get it online. At least it wasn't an import. I had better luck with my second reader which I could actually test drive at a store. But it was the only brand directly available at stores.
And even if you would have had the chance to know most "insufficiencies" before your purchase, there still would be stuff you wouldn't know about. So as long as you can live with what you got, I would try to adjust to that instead of going through all the hassle. And another reader may not be perfect either.

[eric11210]

Mike, I'm just curious: where are you in the world?

Eric

[Mike_73]

Germany. After spending 3 years in the US, I think that's the place I would want to be. There are certainly advantages and disadvantages any place you go, but from my own person, I think I did better fit in over seas than here (There are many reasons and if you want to know some of them, just pm me).

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by GlenBarrington

I am always surprised when I hear that people have enormous numbers of books on their reader.

I think if I were an engineer designing eReaders, I too would not consider designing for performance when managing Library sized colections of books.

The Sony store advertises, "512MB of onboard memory lets you carry up to 350 of your favorite books at a time and with dual memory expansion card slots, your reading library is virtually limitless."

Why advertise a "virtually limitless" library (which I'll agree is, within the range of ads, accurate--1500 books fit easily onto even a small memory card), if the device isn't actually functional with them?

Since ebook readers first came out, they were hyped as "hundreds of books at your fingertips!" (Well, most of them. The *very* earliest were hyped as "dozens of books at your fingertips!") I'd expect to be obvious to any engineer that a substantial portion of users would want to put their entire digital libraries on the device, and boot time & file navigation should both consider that fact when designing software.

I keep about 450 books on my Sony. When I get near 500, I notice a great deal of slowdown, and purge some, which annoys me. I like keeping entire fanfic series on the device; I can re-read my favorites at will. Some of them are very short "ebooks;" 3-10k word stories. I can combine them into one big book, but that loses the impact of reading them separately.

[Mike_73]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Why advertise a "virtually limitless" library (which I'll agree is, within the range of ads, accurate--1500 books fit easily onto even a small memory card), if the device isn't actually functional with them?

Well, they advertise this because it's possible. They don't indicate that it would it be convenient and they don't tell that there may be something that may be annoying if you do so. They just state the fact that it's possible.
I guess that this is what most big companies call marketing

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Mike_73

Eric, I'm totally with you. Returning stuff here is mostly only easy if your device is defective. Just because you don't like a specific feature doesn't justify returning a product. The time I bought my first reader, I could only get it online. At least it wasn't an import. I had better luck with my second reader which I could actually test drive at a store. But it was the only brand directly available at stores.
And even if you would have had the chance to know most "insufficiencies" before your purchase, there still would be stuff you wouldn't know about. So as long as you can live with what you got, I would try to adjust to that instead of going through all the hassle. And another reader may not be perfect either.

Most of us have to buy our readers online - I've bought almost all of mine that way. But the good news is that they tend to fetch excellent second-hand prices, so you don't lose too much if you decide that you really don't like a device, and sell it on eBay. That's what I've done with a number of mine.

I guess that question I was really asking a little earlier was "if you did know about the library scan problems, would you still buy a Sony Reader?" For me, the answer to that is "no", simply because there are quite a few devices out there which have equal functionality to Sony's devices, but also have the ability to store a virtually limitless number of books, without any issues in doing so.

[eric11210]

When I update my reader in a few years time, I'm sure there will be all kinds of new devices with new bells and whistles and I'm sure there will be some gotcha then as well . It's the nature of the thing. Though by then I hope Israel will finally have them available in stores so I can play with them in person rather than having to buy on the Internet only.

Eric