Leaning towards Sony PRS-505 & would like feedback

[Zero9]

Ritoroy, you can find screens of the offer and its details attached to a post I made on this different thread:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...4&postcount=18

Unfortunately, the details do mention the $299 or greater requirement.

[Zapped]

Thanks for following up for ritoroy, Zero9. I think it was your earlier post of your screenshots that prompted me to do the same when I redeemed the offer for myself.

ritoroy - I'm surprised that Sony has explicitly turned you down for the $50 credit. I had to buy the same $298.50 in points to redeem the offer as well. Regardless of any fine print about a $299 purchase, the consumer is being presented with clear instructions on the offer's web page: (1) apply for card, (2) redeem the offer by purchasing the Sony PRS-505.

Refusing to give the $50 credit is clearly fraudulent bait & switch, and if I have to call Sony Rewards customer service, they'll be made to clearly understand these things: that I followed their instructions exactly and was asked to pay $298.50 for the reader, that they owe me the $50 credit, that it's fraudulent to refuse it, that the Texas Attorney General will receive a letter explaining what happened to me, and that they will receive a registered letter requesting their presence in my county's Small Claims Court, where they will be liable for up to triple damages for this low-budget fraud.

$50, *blah*. It's the principle, not the money.

[richman]

I just called SONY rewards card at 1-866-556-7669 and explained that people have been turned down on the 50 dollar sony part, they looked at my account and said that I will be getting mine in 8 -12 weeks from time of purchase and I told her to make a record of our conversation, and she told me she made notes on my account and that I was eligible for the 52 dollars. I recommend you call them ASAP. And straighten it out. Good luck.
I know I would be pissed if sony did it to me.

[ritoroy]

Thank you, Zapped and Zero9, for your help and advice (and apologies for hijacking the thread!). I just got off the phone with a Sony Rewards representative and she said that it would take 8-12 weeks to get the second credit. She also took down the date and time when I had called last (where I had been informed otherwise) and promised to look into the issue. I don't know if calls from other readers on this forum prompted them to change their policy, or if it has been a misinformed representative earlier, but it looks like Sony will be honoring their offer. Cheers!

[Zapped]

Just a quick followup & sorry it's a cross-post. I never called Sony about the $50 credit, but as I mentioned here it did finally arrive yesterday.

[richman]

same here I got the 52 dollars for sony yesterday too.
I still haven't received the 100 dollars from chase yet.

[Wolfgang_HYM]

Hi there,

I just came back from vacation and I had the chance to try out my new PRS-505. I did read a total of 5 books and I am pretty happy with it. The reader does not take a lot of space and it works well. After one week of intensive use (3 books) the battery was still 3/4 full. so very good. The readability under different conditions was very good and the only draw back is the fact that I was reluctant to use it on the beach because of the sand. Other than that the Sony reader was a good choice for my needs. It saved a lot of space in my luggage! One other thing did bother me but this had to do with the books I bought. From the 10 books I bought only one had a summary and 2 had a title page. So the quality of the ebooks should be much better.

Regards

Wolfgang

[geneven]

From the point of view of cost-effectiveness, I don't see how you can beat an apparent life-time free Internet connection for $300. You get that with a Kindle and not with anything else, I think. (I think the Sony Reader only has a wireless connection to a store.) Of course, there is a certain danger that Amazon will suddenly say, "well, experiment over!" but I think that won't happen for awhile, if ever.

I find the amply spaced keys much more comfortable for typing emails than many other ways I've tried typing them, such as the Nokia N800 or N810.

[DrMoze]

Originally Posted by geneven

From the point of view of cost-effectiveness, I don't see how you can beat an apparent life-time free Internet connection for $300. You get that with a Kindle and not with anything else, I think. (I think the Sony Reader only has a wireless connection to a store.) Of course, there is a certain danger that Amazon will suddenly say, "well, experiment over!" but I think that won't happen for awhile, if ever.

I hook up my Reader to a pc every 2-3 weeks to charge it and load borrowed e-books, and maybe add some more books I've picked up to my growing stash on the Reader. Clearly, the capability of borrowing books from a library (including many current e-books) is more "cost-effective" than having to purchase these same books on a Kindle, even if they can be downloaded wirelessly.

[geneven]

Originally Posted by DrMoze

I hook up my Reader to a pc every 2-3 weeks to charge it and load borrowed e-books, and maybe add some more books I've picked up to my growing stash on the Reader. Clearly, the capability of borrowing books from a library (including many current e-books) is more "cost-effective" than having to purchase these same books on a Kindle, even if they can be downloaded wirelessly.

If that was the choice, but it's not. You can download kazillions of books for the Kindle without "purchasing" them, as you specified. And you can download them for free. I've downloaded 20 or so books from Project Gutenberg totally for free on my Kindle 2 since I got it a few weeks ago.

It sounds to me like you don't understand that.

As for borrowing books from the library, sure, that's a benefit you don't have on the Kindle. If you think that's worth more than being able to browse the web for free anywhere you can use a cell phone, have at it.

I do get books from Overdrive, and it's nice, but nothing like being able to browse the web for free from, say, the train.

And let me repeat that, because I have a feeling some Sony people won't understand it. Yes, you can download books totally for free, with no charge for putting them on your Kindle wirelessly, none whatsoever, zero.

[Zapped]

I purchased my Sony PRS-505 when Chase/SONY were offering $350 in credits, so I have no regrets at all about getting a reader for free. But about your Kindle you wrote:

Originally Posted by geneven

I do get books from Overdrive, and it's nice, but nothing like being able to browse the web for free from, say, the train.

The last time I checked, Amazon stated that their Kindle was able to browse Wikipedia via Whispernet. You're able to "browse the web" from your Kindle, meaning visit any site you like, or watch a youtube video? Tell us more about this.

[Goblingoddess]

Quite soon, like around this year's Christmas season, the Kindle will no longer corner the market on wireless available of books. Sony is coming out with a new reader just in time for the holidays with wireless capability. It will run approx $400 and I am considering it. I have the 505 and I love it over the Kindle because it can read all my pdf files which was a major sell point for me. I like the idea of saving all my personal writing files as pdf's and I can take them with me instead of a huge chunky binder.

Btw, I'm curious, but what's Calibre? I've heard about this but I'm not sure what it is.

[Wetdogeared]

Originally Posted by Goblingoddess

...Btw, I'm curious, but what's Calibre? I've heard about this but I'm not sure what it is.

From the MobileRead wiki calibre.

[emellaich]

Originally Posted by Goblingoddess

Quite soon, like around this year's Christmas season, the Kindle will no longer corner the market on wireless available of books. Sony is coming out with a new reader just in time for the holidays with wireless capability. It will run approx $400 and I am considering it. I have the 505 and I love it over the Kindle because it can read all my pdf files which was a major sell point for me. I like the idea of saving all my personal writing files as pdf's and I can take them with me instead of a huge chunky binder.

Btw, I'm curious, but what's Calibre? I've heard about this but I'm not sure what it is.

The short version is that it is a library management system for keeping track of your books on your PC, and then sending them to your book reading device. There are many features that it provides.

First, a caveat. Many of the options assume that your books do not have copy protection (DRM). Calibre can actually re-publish the books to update them and this only works if your books don't have copy protection or if you are willing and able to remove the copy protection. Anyway:

1) Fixing the book meta-data. Many of my books, including some of the older books from Baen have missing or incorrect meta-data. For example, my Kindle expects books to store the author as Lastname, First even though it displays it as First Lastname. If you want it to sort correctly you may need to correct the author name.

2) Changing the title. I have quite a few book series on my reader. It is quite a pain trying to figure out which order they are meant to be read in. I usually go to wikipedia and figure out the sort order and retitle them. For example, someone here (mountain bear??) pointed out the free continuing time series by Daniel Keys Moran (google his web site). I had read this many years ago so I rushed to get it in ebook form. Any way, I prefixed each title as shown- CTime 1: Book title 1; CTime 2: Book title 2. This helps me keep track of them and ends a lot of frustration.

3) Format conversion. I also have a book reader on the way for my son. His reader doesn't handle the same formats. However Calibre can convert easily from one format to another so he can read all of my books. Or some authors only publish their free works in pdf, so you need to switch them to a format that is more reasonable for an e-reader.

4) Clean up. If you are a bit more adventurous, you can use Calibre to clean up books. When I get a poorly edited or formatted book I can switch it to epub format. This is a zip file that includes HTML. I can then open the file(s) in my favorite plaintext editor (Notepad ++) and directly edit the book itself. Finally I reconvert the book back to my reader's preferred format.

5) Newspapers, magazines, RSS. I don't know too much about this since I prefer to consume this type of stuff on my computer. However, many folks use their reader to keep up to date on the news. I understand you can use Calibre to set up automated downloads from certain web sites. It is then easy to quickly update your reader with a 'book' that is the current news.