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Old 02-26-2009, 02:29 PM   #46
Alisa
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Personally, I've had and heard about enough bad customer service experiences with Sony to regard them as generally sucky and to not want to buy their products but the Reader division seems about the most benign of their enterprises from what I see here. They have a lot of happy customers. The book prices aren't too bad now (they were egregious before Amazon forced them to be competitive). The quality of the Reader seems pretty good, too. The 505 is pretty barebones as far as features, but it's cheap.
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Old 02-26-2009, 02:59 PM   #47
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Originally Posted by HarryT View Post
Let me tell you about my experience with MY Sony VAIO laptop.

The screen started flickering one Saturday - a problem with the backlight. I phoned an extremely helpful woman at Sony's support centre, who arranged for a courier to call around to my house with a box to pick up the laptop on Monday morning (which they duly did).

Wednesday lunchtime there was a knock on my door, and the same courier was back with my repaired laptop. Two days to ship it, diagnose the problem (a faulty voltage converter for the screen backlight), repair it, and ship it back to me.

I call that pretty spectacularly good service, and that's why I've now bought four Sony VAIO laptops in a row. Good machines, and GREAT customer service.
And the exact reverse of the service I received with my Sony VAIO. Maybe it's because you are in the UK. Perhaps it's only their US service that seems to suck. I couldn't hazard a guess. I just have to go with my own experience of their lack of service to guide me.
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Old 02-26-2009, 06:55 PM   #48
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Customer service is a crapshoot, really. Some places give you better odds, but there is always a chance that the experience will be awful. I just read an article yesterday somewhere that said Apple has the highest approval making among computer makers. Then I read today that the MacBook Airs have a poorly designed hinge, and many people are noticing stress breakages on the hinge. Apple is refusing to acknowledge it as something under warranty, and calling it user damage. If that's the best in the industry, then yikes!

Things can only be viewed as a whole. Individual experiences are highly anecdotal.
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Old 02-27-2009, 01:58 PM   #49
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We are forced, here in England, to buy our ebooks for the sony reader from Waterstones bookstore-web-site. I did buy two Cybook gen 3 readers but both went bad on me. I sent one of them back to Cybook and was told that the screen was broken and this is not covered by the guarantee. I refused to accept this because I am very gentle with my gadgets. The other ebook reader I threw into the garbage-can out of frustration. It cost me more money than I can affored but the horror of sending another one back for repair was too distressing for me to handle. The Sony e-reader is very well made so I've had no problems with it so far. What I miss is mobipocket. They let one download a purchased ebook as many times as one likes too, and they are much cheaper than Waterstones. Waterstons book store only let you download an ebook one time only, and with very little choise of e-books. One thing that I do miss on the Cybook is being able to increas the font to very large indeed which is Excellent for old eyes like mine. This is my problem. I want the Cybook gen3 but in the strong build of the Sony e-book reader. I am just too frighted to take another chance buying a Cybook gen 3 reader. I have read that with Sony's new e-book reader one can increase the font by five times, though it is not yet being sold here in Britain. I would buy one, when it arrives here, if Sony could bribe mobipocket into allowing them to downlowed its e-books onto the Sony e-book reader. Thank you all, Derek.

Last edited by clewley; 02-27-2009 at 02:05 PM. Reason: Bad spelling
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Old 02-27-2009, 02:04 PM   #50
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You can purchase eBooks from Fictionwise, BooksOnBoard, eBooks.com, CyberRead, Diesel-eBooks, and others from within the UK. You are not limited to Waterstones. And if you don't mind breaking the law (in the UK) and breaking DRM, most conversions are simple using Calibre.

I can download in ePub, MS Reader, and Mobipocket, strip the DRM, convert to LRF (ePub can be read as is if I want), and read away. Sony did try to include Mobipocket on the Reader, but because of already having another DRM format on the Reader, Mobipocket said no.

Last edited by JSWolf; 02-27-2009 at 02:07 PM.
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Old 02-27-2009, 02:12 PM   #51
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Quote:
Originally Posted by clewley View Post
One thing that I do miss on the Cybook is being able to increas the font to very large indeed which is Excellent for old eyes like mine. This is my problem. I want the Cybook gen3 but in the strong build of the Sony e-book reader. I am just too frighted to take another chance buying a Cybook gen 3 reader. I have read that with Sony's new e-book reader one can increase the font by five times, though it is not yet being sold here in Britain.
Here's a link to a detailed guide on changing fonts on a 505.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28447

Maybe using different fonts would help?
Like using a larger style font?

After I'm more experienced with my reader, I might try this as
I wish the 505 had more than 3 font sizes.
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Old 02-27-2009, 03:32 PM   #52
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Quote:
Originally Posted by clewley View Post
We are forced, here in England, to buy our ebooks for the sony reader from Waterstones <snip> Waterstons book store only let you download an ebook one time only, and with very little choise of e-books.
Probably depends on what you like to read. I'm also in the UK and am thinking about buying a 505 to complement our two CyBooks just so that we can buy eBooks from Waterstones, as they seem to have a far better selection of what we like to read (novels/current fiction) than other sellers...

Cheers, Pete
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Old 02-28-2009, 02:59 AM   #53
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I'm another one that definitely doesn't think Sony sucks. After much research, I just bought a 505 and couldn't be happier. Yes, the Sony ebook store leaves much to be desired. I figured out how to solve that problem though. I don't rely on it. Don't get me wrong, if there's a book I'm looking for I'll use it for price comparison, and if it's the cheapest I'll buy it there. I'm not crazy. But at the same time, it's not my main source of content and certainly not the first place I'll look. I see it as one option out of many.

To be honest, I don't plan on buying a lot of content. I already own quite a bit, and a lot of what I bought the 505 for would fall under the 'free' category. Info files, articles, etc. that I want to save to read offline when I have the time. This is why I found the 505 appealing, it seemed to be the best at handling generic content. If I was looking at a reader that was going to be exclusively for purchased content, I probably would've gone for a Kindle.

There are some things I will be buying and I did research prices as part of my decision making process. Surprisingly, the Sony store didn't have any of the content I was looking for. Amazon, Fictionwise and Baen did. Fictionwise was a dollar more than Amazon in most cases, and Baen had what I wanted for free, or $6.00, and was not available anywhere else. All of this I could live with to own a smaller, cheaper, device than the Kindle.

Is it the perfect reader? Nope, but from what I can see there is no perfect reader right now and this one suits my needs very well. Would I like a fully featured, low cost, easy to use store? You bet. I would love it if B&N or Borders stepped up to the plate and created a store with the selection and pricing that Amazon has. Or even if Amazon opened up the content to other reader formats. But I don't think that's going to happen any time soon. I'm not going to cry over it though, there are so many other places to shop I'm not tied down and I can find what I want when I want it.
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Old 02-28-2009, 03:12 AM   #54
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I would love it if B&N or Borders stepped up to the plate and created a store with the selection and pricing that Amazon has.
That B&N and Borders sell eBooks is one of my wishes, too. If they're smart, they'd start getting into the eBook business.

Well said, Renaldo.
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Old 02-28-2009, 03:42 AM   #55
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We are forced, here in England, to buy our ebooks for the sony reader from Waterstones bookstore-web-site.
No you're not. There are many eBook stores which sell ADE format books which the Sony can read. Who is "forcing" you to buy from Waterstones?

Quote:
I did buy two Cybook gen 3 readers but both went bad on me. I sent one of them back to Cybook and was told that the screen was broken and this is not covered by the guarantee. I refused to accept this because I am very gentle with my gadgets.
A broken screen substrate is an undeniable fact. Not a matter for "accepting" or otherwise. It's a fact. They don't just "break" on their own.

Quote:
The other ebook reader I threw into the garbage-can out of frustration.
Fraustration about what? The CyBook is a damned good bookreader. Certainly a heck of a lot better than the Sony in software terms (IMHO), although the Sony is certainly better engineered.

Quote:
I have read that with Sony's new e-book reader one can increase the font by five times
No. It has five different font sizes. The largest font is certainly not five times larger than the smallest.
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Old 02-28-2009, 05:04 AM   #56
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I have a Sony 505 and an Amazon K1... and I rarely, very rarely, buy books from either Sony or Amazon.

Fictionwise, Booksonboard, and Baen are my sources for non-free books (and often they have free books too). Get a .lit copy, ConvertLit, and calibre... problem solved.

I just don't see the source of agony over the prices of Amazon or Sony. It is just not a good idea to buy a book with DRM that is not easily circumvented in any case.
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Old 03-03-2009, 12:36 PM   #57
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Make sure you have the latest firmware also. Sony handles other formats. The new firmware handles pdf nicely, (the page flow and resizing problems have been fixed). I have not found a PDF that it won't read and Ive tried all the way back to pdf version 3.
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Old 03-03-2009, 04:15 PM   #58
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While understanding your reluctance to pay $2 more for the same book, I gotta ask.

Did you research book prices before you bought the Sony?

Do you enjoy the reading experience on the Sony?

Is there any other complaint about the Sony beside the added $2?

Have you tried downloading library books to your Sony? This is a great way to read 'for free' until the loan period is over.
Why don't you buy from another eBook source? I do. Buy from B.O.B. or Fictionwise, etc. download and convert (if necessary) through Calibre and then upload to my Sony.
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Old 03-03-2009, 04:19 PM   #59
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I too am very pleased with my Sony PRS-505. I buy books from the US Sony Store via Gift Cards (Thanks to Leaping Gnome for the option to do this) and i am happy with the prices; possibly because i am in the UK and the dollar price seems competitive even at todays exchange rate. I suspect i am also old fashioned in that i don't have an issue with supporting the manufacturers book store and i am not confident enough to use the various conversion softwares. I would like Waterstones in the UK to reduce their costs but imagine their rather high prices are due to economy of scale. Perhaps when/if Kindle becomes available here this will be a suitable lever for Waterstones to be competitive.
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