Kindle or Sony PRS-505

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Thanabur

Some concerns I read previously about the fiability of the button on the Cybook are, to me, greatly exagerated. I didn't find any fault with the action of said button, it's very responsive with the kind of assuring «click» we so often miss from those soft touch buttons.

The nav button on current Gen3's - ie the version with 512MB RAM - works just fine. The issue was with the earlier 64MB model, on which it was rather stiff and difficult to press. One tended to develop bulging finger muscles after a few weeks of use .

[Thanabur]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The nav button on current Gen3's - ie the version with 512MB RAM - works just fine. The issue was with the earlier 64MB model, on which it was rather stiff and difficult to press. One tended to develop bulging finger muscles after a few weeks of use .

Thank you for the correction. I wasn't aware the problem was with an earlier model. Like I said I'm new to e-Readers (the hardware ones) and from the first time my interest was aroused some three weeks ago to the actual buying I've been on a kind of crash course trying to pick up on a hundred subjects all at once.

One concern I have with my Cybook is the fact that the screen is unprotected and looks fragile. Guess I must buy a leather cover in order not to scratch it. I thought it would have a thin glass panel but that is not the case. On the other hand I much prefer the plastic case which must make it a lot lighter than the PRS-505.

[HarryT]

The visible screen is thick transparent plastic, and quite resistent to scratches. Under that is a very thin layer of glass - the "screen substate" - which is extremely fragile. It will break if you apply significant pressure to a point on the screen, or a "twisting" force to the whole device.

Do get a case for it, please - I'd regard it as essential, personally.

[toogeeky4u]

Originally Posted by GatorDeb

I have both and prefer the Kindle. Can't explain why, it just feels better in my hands. I've bought 4 Kindle books and 10 Fictionwise Mobipocket (PRC) books. I think the Kindle attracts less dust than the Sony (which is great in Vegas). I LOVE the convenience of being able to use the Amazon store. I'll NEVER be without anything to read (for $10).

Something really cool is MobileReference (enter that as a search term on Amazon and browse their products). Expensive but I plan to get most of them over time (and by expensive I mean a couple at $30 and most of them at $10, but there's hundreds of them).

I use Mobipocket Reader to view RSS feeds - they have the COMPLETE article and I'm up to 1568 feeds (I can give you the file if you want, you can delete the feeds you don't like). It has Time, Newsweek, U.S. World And News Report, The New York Times, USA Today, BusinessWeek, CNN, Slate, Boingo Boingo, Engadget, etc. You click a button (and wait a while, so do this overnight with the Kindle plugged in to the PC and the wall) and it updates all feeds and sends them to the Kindle. With one button. Never be without FREE reading material (and I already did all the hard work for you ). I've gotten pretty much every newspaper and magazine that Amazon.com offers as a subscription and now I'm working on the blogs.

Could you give me a link to the RSS so I can download for free?

Thanks!

[GatorDeb]

Originally Posted by toogeeky4u

Could you give me a link to the RSS so I can download for free?

Thanks!

I just updated it and now it has more than 2000 feeds. Tons of newspapers, magazines, and blogs. I'll post it here when I get home (at work now). You import it into Mobipocket Reader (will take a ton of time and you may have to import it more than once if it hangs... it won't re-import stuff already there) and then delete anything you don't want. The importing only has to be done once.

Something I found is that having tons of feeds drains the battery quickly as the Kindle indexes the files for the search function, so I'd keep it below 10 periodicals or maybe under 100 feeds.

I think I got pretty much all magazines and newspapers available at Amazon (except Reader's Digest which doesn't have full feeds) and tons of blogs. Hours and hours of copying and pasting

Updating over 2000 feeds makes Mobipocket Reader hang a lot and I have to keep restarting, so I'd suggest 200-300 feeds at a time for maximum performance (but would really suggest under 100-150 for the Kindle for the reason explained above). The cool thing is that you can select a particular publication's feeds and just update that one, so one day you might take Time and the next you might take Shanghai Daily.