End of the line for Sony Readers?

[Poppaea]

Originally Posted by Ashjuk

Anyway at least I now know that if the worse case scenario does arise and Sony walks away from eReaders, and my 650 packs up, there is an alternative, even if it's not as good as the Sony.

There is an alternative, but it is not the Kindle, its the new Nook or Kobo, as they have the same screen and IR touch system the Sonys have. And they are epub, too, so there is really no reason to look at the Kindle.

[Latinandgreek]

If Sony stopped making ebook readers, my next purchase would likely be a Kobo. I have nothing against the Nook, but it isn't sold in Canada, and the Kindle seems like a nice device but I have too many epub books at this point to want to switch over to a device that can't read them natively. Also, I quite like the new Kobo from what I've seen of it.

Another thing to consider is that if Sony stops production of readers, it will most likely still have its book store up for a while, perhaps a long while. I'm fairly sure that in the USA, at least, a company has to support discontinued products of this nature for a specified time period.

[Leyor]

I'm relatively new to my Sony, but isn't there a ton of independent bookstores you can use to buy books for your Sony?

I got all my books for my old device through baen, fictionwise, smashwords and Gutenberg.


I don't touch books with DRM, when I buy a book I own it, I don't rent it.

Originally Posted by CommonReader

Nor does Calibre do a perfect job converting each book. I have come across books that looked perfectly fine as mobi files but were full of question marks once converted into epubs by Calibre.

You probably don't know what you are doing. If you use the proper charset most of those problems go away. Occasionally you get an ebook (both mobi and epubs) which have special characters hardcoded into the text. Those stand a good chance of being converted incorrectly. The publisher should always use html to identify special characters, but many don't.

To say that mobi cannot be easily converted to epub is rather naive. You will encounter difficulties even if converting epub to epub, you just have to learn what causes the errors and correct them. Mostly it is due to sloppy publishing standards.

[JSWolf]

Sony isn't stopping eBook readers. They have an advert for hiring a software engineer for eBook software.

[CommonReader]

Originally Posted by jswinden

You probably don't know what you are doing. If you use the proper charset most of those problems go away. Occasionally you get an ebook (both mobi and epubs) which have special characters hardcoded into the text. Those stand a good chance of being converted incorrectly. The publisher should always use html to identify special characters, but many don't.

To say that mobi cannot be easily converted to epub is rather naive. You will encounter difficulties even if converting epub to epub, you just have to learn what causes the errors and correct them. Mostly it is due to sloppy publishing standards.

Well, obviously you acknowledge that it is not always that simple to convert ebooks into a different format. The reasons couldn't be more irrelevant to me as an user. What am I supposed to do? Lodge a complaint with Amazon that after breaking their DRM the book doesn't convert properly because of the publisher's sloppy coding? Spend hours correcting the book to make it usable?

[Poppaea]

Originally Posted by CommonReader

Well, obviously you acknowledge that it is not always that simple to convert ebooks into a different format. The reasons couldn't be more irrelevant to me as an user. What am I supposed to do? Lodge a complaint with Amazon that after breaking their DRM the book doesn't convert properly because of the publisher's sloppy coding? Spend hours correcting the book to make it usable?

[Poppaea]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Sony isn't stopping eBook readers. They have an advert for hiring a software engineer for eBook software.

Now this is good news for a change!

[Leyor]

To jump in joy for one hire.
Means the situation is pretty dire.
But still the good news we'll take.
Even if we think Sony made a big mistake :P

[Ashjuk]

Originally Posted by Poppaea

There is an alternative, but it is not the Kindle, its the new Nook or Kobo, as they have the same screen and IR touch system the Sonys have. And they are epub, too, so there is really no reason to look at the Kindle.

Thanks Poppea, I was not aware that either the Nook or the Kobo was on sale in the UK.
From what I have read I assumed they were US only devices, constant references to Barnes & Noble leads one to that conclusion.

[Poppaea]

Originally Posted by Ashjuk

Thanks Poppea, I was not aware that either the Nook or the Kobo was on sale in the UK.
From what I have read I assumed they were US only devices, constant references to Barnes & Noble leads one to that conclusion.

Nah, they are not sold outside the US or in the case of the Kobo outside the US/Canada/Australia. There is a strong rumour Kobo will open shop in Europe and as they now state prices in Euro for their German books, I think it is liable. But there are the forwarding services. Even bought with a forwarding service the Nook touch is ca. 150€ for me to buy, whereas a Sony 650 is 220€. The Sony is way better IMO and has lots more features, but if it were gone from the face of earth one day, I'd go with either a Nook or a Kobo.

[Ashjuk]

Originally Posted by Poppaea

Nah, they are not sold outside the US or in the case of the Kobo outside the US/Canada/Australia. There is a strong rumour Kobo will open shop in Europe and as they now state prices in Euro for their German books, I think it is liable. But there are the forwarding services. Even bought with a forwarding service the Nook touch is ca. 150€ for me to buy, whereas a Sony 650 is 220€. The Sony is way better IMO and has lots more features, but if it were gone from the face of earth one day, I'd go with either a Nook or a Kobo.

We had better hope that Sony does not abandon us then.

I'm not sure I would be happy buying something that is not supported in the UK.

I have bought cameras etc. from the states but as these are Nikon which is a global company I did not feel it was too much of a risk.

Having to return something to the US if it becomes faulty negates the cost saving in my mind.

[Poppaea]

Don't you think that most of the time the reader will be outdated before there is a need for service? I should think so and thus I'd not worry about buying it from overseas. On the other hand, there will be lots of other readers available until I really need a new one. Buying a new reader in the next three years would be just out of greed/new gadget fever in my case. OTOH, I am prone to those sins

[Blackadder]

Originally Posted by Poppaea

Nah, they are not sold outside the US or in the case of the Kobo outside the US/Canada/Australia. There is a strong rumour Kobo will open shop in Europe and as they now state prices in Euro for their German books, I think it is liable. But there are the forwarding services. Even bought with a forwarding service the Nook touch is ca. 150€ for me to buy, whereas a Sony 650 is 220€. The Sony is way better IMO and has lots more features, but if it were gone from the face of earth one day, I'd go with either a Nook or a Kobo.

The Kobo is sold in the UK, http://tinyurl.com/6doeewn and have an online bookshop for the UK as well