PRS-350 Mini-Review of my 350 with Photos

[hamfitz]

thanks for the review and addressing font issue. waiting for my 650

[Avex]

Awesome..Thank you for the review..Now, who had already owned 650? I would love to know. Otherwise, i'll just get both then..Hehehehe~

I tested my 350 outside for an hour with the temperature at 90 degrees F, the humidity at 45%, and the heat index at 93 degrees. After about 40 minutes I did notice a slow down in page turning speed, and then used a stopwatch to time it. The page turns slowed to about 1.5 seconds in duration including the finger swipe on the screen. This is about identical to the issue I read concerning the new Kindle 3. No other slow down or erratic behavior was noticed.

My conclusion: At worst, I find this to be a very minor issue. I can live with 1.5 second page turns when in the heat as I will seldom be reading in that temperature. And let us not lose track of the fact that Sony rates the reader for up to 95 degrees F, so we were taking it to the edge of its design parameters. Therefore, we should expect issues at this temperature. And the same can be said for the K3.

[Romiman]

Originally Posted by dordale

...I'm even more anxious to get my hands on a new 650!

So do I with my 350.
Thanks to jswinden!!

[Joshseadog]

Hi, I read my 650 for hours this afternoon, in very bright sunshine in my garden. It was hot enough outdoors to make me perspire even sitting down. At no time did I experience any slow down of page turns or otherwise, the unit performed perfectly. The screen looked fantastic no ghosting, or glare and the print size was S. I could read it perfectly with bright full sun shining directly on screen. Was reading a epub novel I downloaded.

[babyd]

Originally Posted by jswinden

FONT CUSTOMIZATIONS
I wrote a document which gives you all the necessary info in a straightforward manner. I attached it to this post.

...

This is brilliant thank you !! I am a complete novice at doing this and it works like a dream.

Just wondering if you can help with one more thing, as I said, I am very new to this.........I like the default font the sonys use for lrf files, what is that one and where is it stored on the sony?
I would like to use it for my epubs. Are there 4 files for the sony lrf font on the sony or only one? If only one file for the lrf font, then what do I do for the bold, italic and bold italic options, what does the sony do to render these by default in lrf's as I am trying to recreate the default lrf fonts in epubs?
Hope you don't mind me asking


UPDATED: oooh, seems it may be Dutch801 Rm BT Roman.......however I can only see it as one normal font, what do I do for bold, italic and bold italic? Or can I just tell it to use that font for all? Tried it in Wordpad, how does Wordpad change that font to bold, italic etc if it only has one file?

Okay, basically I guess I am asking, if a font only has one file and not four, what to you do for the CSS.......so that you get correct bold, italic and bold italic fonts in the epub?

Sorry, told you I was really new to this lol

I'm not sure what the default font(s) are for LRF files. I assume they would be the same as used for ePubs. The thing about LRF books is that they can come with embedded fonts, so I never really paid much attention to the default font(s) they use.

Some fonts have only a single file associated with them and I believe Dutch801 Rm BT Roman might be one such font. For example, in my Windows/Fonts folder I have a font named Arial Rounded MT Bold (version 1.0.0). If I right-click the font and open the properties menu I see that the file name is arlrdbd.ttf.

However some fonts have multiple files associates with them. For example, if I double-click on the font Times New Roman another folder is displayed showing four font styles each with it's own file, as follows:

• Times New Roman Bold: timesbd.ttf
• Times New Roman Bold Italic: timesbi.ttf
• Times New Roman Italic: timesi.ttf
• Times New Roman Regular: times.ttf

Whenever you replace the Sony standard font you have four styles for which you can substitute another font file. These are like those in the font Times New Roman. The styles (style might not the correct terminolgy) are:

• Bold
• Bold Italic
• Italic
• Regular

So far each of these styles you can substitute a font file. Remember though that you don't have to substitute all four with the same font. You can use an Arial font file for Bold, a Segoe UI font file for Bold Italic, and so forth.

[babyd]

Originally Posted by jswinden

I'm not sure what the default font(s) are for LRF files. I assume they would be the same as used for ePubs. The thing about LRF books is that they can come with embedded fonts, so I never really paid much attention to the default font(s) they use.

Some fonts have only a single file associated with them and I believe Dutch801 Rm BT Roman might be one such font. For example, in my Windows/Fonts folder I have a font named Arial Rounded MT Bold (version 1.0.0). If I right-click the font and open the properties menu I see that the file name is arlrdbd.ttf.

However some fonts have multiple files associates with them. For example, if I double-click on the font Times New Roman another folder is displayed showing four font styles each with it's own file, as follows:

• Times New Roman Bold: timesbd.ttf
• Times New Roman Bold Italic: timesbi.ttf
• Times New Roman Italic: timesi.ttf
• Times New Roman Regular: times.ttf

Whenever you replace the Sony standard font you have four styles for which you can substitute another font file. These are like those in the font Times New Roman. The styles (style might not the correct terminolgy) are:

• Bold
• Bold Italic
• Italic
• Regular

So far each of these styles you can substitute a font file. Remember though that you don't have to substitute all four with the same font. You can use an Arial font file for Bold, a Segoe UI font file for Bold Italic, and so forth.

brilliant, thank you so much for your help. I am learning loads anyway

I finally ran the CSS in epub and used myfont, myfonti, myfontb, myfontbi as the font then I have renamed my chosen font files to match and its working great.
By doing it this way I can change my font choices just by renaming them, rather than having to redo the css and epub files, saves me time and effort and I can change fonts at will till I find one Im happy with. Plus when my hubby puts the books on his 300 he can use the font he wants without changing my epub file.
To mimic the lrf font I used the Dutch one sony use then used the bold, italic and bold italic from Georgia and it looks good, so Im happy Still deciding between that and Grandesign Neue, that is nice too and closer to my Kindle fonts, so great to have the choice without redoing the books each time.

Thanks again, your guide and continued advice was so helpful, thanks for being patient with a css newbie

you are a star!! Sent some karma your way

[llvrl]

Hi All,
1) Does this Font hack also work on the Sony PRS-950?
2) Would it actually work and be sufficient to use/copy the windows7 .ttf files to the PRS-950 and esure they have the same naming to support enhanced character sets (like a ttf file which would e.g support eastrn Europe and Cyrilic characters etc)
Thanks for the feedback.

Originally Posted by llvrl

Hi All,
1) Does this Font hack also work on the Sony PRS-950?
2) Would it actually work and be sufficient to use/copy the windows7 .ttf files to the PRS-950 and esure they have the same naming to support enhanced character sets (like a ttf file which would e.g support eastrn Europe and Cyrilic characters etc)
Thanks for the feedback.

1) Yes, it works on the 950.

2) Yes, you can use Windows 7 TTF font files. I'm not sure exactly what you are asking in the second part of the question. If the ePub is correctly formatted then characters should display correctly, however I've seen garbage due to the publisher not having a clue as to how to format ePubs. I recently helped one MR member correct a bad ePub that could not even display double and single quotation marks because the publisher used unidentifiable characters in the html.