So where the heck is the Sony Reader's new firmware?!?

[cmacnaug]

Buggy RTF:
Did you create the RTF properly? with a Western Font Script?

Yes the character set was all western ... there was a picture in one of the docs that failed ... would that cause it to choke? I guess I sort of assumed that if the Reader is advertised as supporting RTF then any RTF document would work, but I confess I haven't looked at the docs to look for any caveats.

In terms of large books. Both Anna Karenina and War and Peace were from the Connect store and loaded through the eBook Library. Has any one else had any performance problems with very large books?

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by macgeek21

when did Sony say they would be issuing a new version of the firmware?

During CES 2008. I can't find exactally what they said. I recall them saying spring release though. Also, found this on Adobes blog:

The 1.0 release is available for Mac (PPC & Intel native) and Windows (XP, Vista, and Windows 2000). And today at the O'Reilly Tools of Change conference we are also demonstrating a desktop Linux version that will be in public beta soon. Mobile/device support is also coming, as evidenced by our announcement today that Sony wil be incorporating Digital Editions capabiliities, including EPUB and Adobe DRM support, into the Sony Reader product line.

http://blogs.adobe.com/billmccoy/200..._delivers.html

BOb

[astra]

Originally Posted by cmacnaug

Yes the character set was all western ... there was a picture in one of the docs that failed ... would that cause it to choke? I guess I sort of assumed that if the Reader is advertised as supporting RTF then any RTF document would work, but I confess I haven't looked at the docs to look for any caveats.

Sony Reader does not support RTF with pics. Although I thought that if one loads rtf with pics it will just ignore them, apparently not...

I am curious, how many pages are in Anna Karenina and War and Peace respectfully? I am just cirious.
And have you loaded them into internal memory or on a card?

[cmacnaug]

Originally Posted by astra

Sony Reader does not support RTF with pics. Although I thought that if one loads rtf with pics it will just ignore them, apparently not...

I am curious, how many pages are in Anna Karenina and War and Peace respectfully? I am just cirious.
And have you loaded them into internal memory or on a card?

War and Peace has 3423 pages on smallest font. It's on main memory (I don't use a memory card because of the batter life). BTW it actually took my reader 3min 10secs to open the book (spinning arrow icon with a "Formatting..." message). Pressing zoom to switch to medium font size took 4 minutes and 40 seconds. This behavior isn't the end of the world ... regular page turns work fine. It's only a problem if you want to switch between books or accidentally hit the zoom button. For shorter books performance is reasonable.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by cmacnaug

War and Peace has 3423 pages on smallest font. It's on main memory (I don't use a memory card because of the batter life). BTW it actually took my reader 3min 10secs to open the book (spinning arrow icon with a "Formatting..." message). Pressing zoom to switch to medium font size took 4 minutes and 40 seconds. This behavior isn't the end of the world ... regular page turns work fine. It's only a problem if you want to switch between books or accidentally hit the zoom button. For shorter books performance is reasonable.

If you use Sony's software to add the files they'll be pre-formatted & you won't have to wait when opening the book or changing font size.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by astra

Re: cmacnaug

Why do you need a card? Is not it enough 190M of internal memory to store a number of books that would keep you busy for 1 year at least? But I understand it is a personal thing.

Can't speak for cmacnaug, but I have over 300 titles in main memory & have read them already so have had to add a memory stick as once I add a book to my library I tend to want to keep it on the Reader.


I have found that the memory stick doesn't seem to drain the battery quite as quickly as the SD card I tried, but they could probably do a little better as far as how the cards affect battery life.


Except for glitches where my Reader all of the sudden loses all of my collections & needs to be re-loaded I'm quite happy with it & it does "just work" at least for me (although folders would be nice I think).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by cmacnaug

Perhaps it's just my model, but the first two books I read after purchasing my 505 were Anna Karenina and War and Peace. Both of these books were quite large. Opening War and Peace takes about a minute. Changing zoom level takes about a minute. I suppose you can argue that this isn't a bug but, I wouldn't mind some performance improvements. That said once the book is open it works quite well. In general I'm a big fan of the reader, I just wish that Anna Karenina wasn't the first title in the list since when I show it to someone they almost always attempt to open it ... and they immediately get a really bad impression of the reader.

This is not a problem with the 505, but with how you've loaded the books onto your 505. If you use eBook Library toload the books on your 505, eBook Library paginates and puts the info on your 505 for you. But if you use another method of loading content, then the 505 cannot find the pagination info and thus it has to do it for you when you first open the book and when you change sizes. Opening the book sorts out small. So the solution is to use eBook Library to copy your books to the 505 and that problem won't happen.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by astra

... I thought that if one loads rtf with pics it will just ignore them, apparently not....

It generally does exactly that, but evidently a big enough or complicated enough set of images will crash it. I have personally seen plain RTF files (no images, I mean) that were big enough to make my 500 choke. The 505 is supposed to handle them better, but I guess it probably has its choke limit too.

[astra]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

If you use Sony's software to add the files they'll be pre-formatted & you won't have to wait when opening the book or changing font size.

JSWolf

If you use eBook Library toload the books on your 505, eBook Library paginates and puts the info on your 505 for you.

Guys, he already said eBook Library

[NatCh]

Some things bear repeating.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by cmacnaug

War and Peace has 3423 pages on smallest font. It's on main memory (I don't use a memory card because of the batter life). BTW it actually took my reader 3min 10secs to open the book (spinning arrow icon with a "Formatting..." message). Pressing zoom to switch to medium font size took 4 minutes and 40 seconds. This behavior isn't the end of the world ... regular page turns work fine. It's only a problem if you want to switch between books or accidentally hit the zoom button. For shorter books performance is reasonable.

No, it's not an issue if you want to change books, because it's a "one time" behaviour. Once the Sony has paginated the book for a given font size (that's what it's doing during the delay) its stores that info and opening the book or changing the font size subsequently will be virtually instantaneous.

As others have said, you can avoid the delay altogether by loading the book onto your Sony via the "Connect" software - it will do the pagination for you in advance.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by NatCh

It generally does exactly that, but evidently a big enough or complicated enough set of images will crash it. I have personally seen plain RTF files (no images, I mean) that were big enough to make my 500 choke. The 505 is supposed to handle them better, but I guess it probably has its choke limit too.

The original firmware on the 500 was very flaky indeed with RTFs - all sorts of things would make it crash. Following the initial firmware update, however, I didn't experience any issues. I think, though, that it did still have a maximum size limit for RTFs of somewhere around 13MB - I don't know if the 505 has this same size limit.

[NatCh]

I'd expect the 505's limit to be a bit higher, if only because it has more memory to work with, but I don't know the answer "for real" either.

[astra]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The original firmware on the 500 was very flaky indeed with RTFs - all sorts of things would make it crash. Following the initial firmware update, however, I didn't experience any issues.

My experience too.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by HarryT

As others have said, you can avoid the delay altogether by loading the book onto your Sony via the "Connect" software - it will do the pagination for you in advance.

Is this true for all formats, or just the BBeB books?

BOb