Should I buy a Sony?

[Djehuty]

Greetings,

I've been perusing the information on these forums and the Wiki, trying to decide upon an e-book reader, and I think the Sony PRS-505 is the right one. Maybe. Unless I'm wrong. Which I often am. So I'm seeking advice.

I'm a graduate student, currently in the US but soon to be attending a university in Canada. I recently purchased and returned an Amazon Kindle 2, which was a pretty nifty device, but which is not compatible with Canada. I need decent PDF support, as I would like to keep journal articles in e-book form; because many of these PDFs can't be reduced from full-page size, a large screen would be nice, but isn't absolutely essential. I don't particularly care about many of the bells and whistles. I don't need wireless, don't need automatic dictionary lookup (that annoyed me on the Kindle; any time I wanted to move the cursor, I had to wait for definitions of every word it passed before moving it onward). I do need reliability, ease of use, and a crystal-clear display.

The iRex readers seem nice, because of the large screens, but as I understand it they're slow, heavy, difficult to navigate, and poorly supported. I've taken a look at the BEBOOK. I like that it supports both Mobipocket and ePub, but the interface seems a bit clunky, and overall it looks as if it might not be very well constructed.

Am I right in thinking the Sony is the best choice? If it's the best choice now, is there perhaps something better on the way?

[igorsk]

Dump a bunch of typical files you want to read on an SD card and visit a nearest SonyStyle or Borders (or some other electronics shop if they have Reader) and try it out.

[dordale]

The 700 has a little better PDF support than the 505, so that might be a consideration for you. The 700 allows you to zoom in on pages without using "reflow". (The reflow option is also available.)

As I'm sure you've read here, the screen on the 700 isn't quite as crisp as that on the 505. I have a 505 and my husband has a 700. There is a definite difference, and I'm happy with my 505. My husband doesn't mind the screen on the 700, though--and it works better for him, because he has a lot of technical PDF documents on it and he appreciates the zooming capabilities.

I agree with igorsk-- if you have a chance stop by a Sony or Borders store with copies of your books and try them in both readers to see which you prefer.

dordale

[frabjous]

Djehuty,

Definitely follow their advice of trying it out at a local store. Then even have a working PRS-505 model at many Target stores, and I tried one out there with a bunch of .PDFs on a card.

I'm an academic (a professor) and use my 505 for reading journal articles and other academic pieces all the time, and have been pretty happy with it. My only complaint is that there's no ability to add comments, as with the 700. Bookmarks are often a good substitute.

A lot of people will tell you that .PDFs aren't the ideal file format for reading on a 6" screen, and they're right. However, there are a lot of tools available here at MobileRead for making them easier to read, e.g.:

PDFLRF
Rasterfarian
PDFread
SoPDF
PaperCrop

With one or more these, along with Acrobat, I've been able to get almost every published academic piece I've wanted to in fine shape for reading on my Reader (I use SoPDF and PDFLRF the most) even if the original file has stuff like tables and mathematical symbols that complicate things.

But overall journal articles aren't as tough as unpublished manuscripts or papers that peers or students send you. Professional type-setters know that you shouldn't make pages/lines of text too wide without putting in columns to break them up, but non-professionals don't, and then, a PDF becomes very difficult to get into the right shape. (However, then, you can often request the original word processor document instead, change the paper size, repaginate and convert.)

[weateallthepies]

Originally Posted by Djehuty

Greetings,

I've been perusing the information on these forums and the Wiki, trying to decide upon an e-book reader, and I think the Sony PRS-505 is the right one. Maybe. Unless I'm wrong. Which I often am. So I'm seeking advice.

I'm a graduate student, currently in the US but soon to be attending a university in Canada. I recently purchased and returned an Amazon Kindle 2, which was a pretty nifty device, but which is not compatible with Canada. I need decent PDF support, as I would like to keep journal articles in e-book form; because many of these PDFs can't be reduced from full-page size, a large screen would be nice, but isn't absolutely essential. I don't particularly care about many of the bells and whistles. I don't need wireless, don't need automatic dictionary lookup (that annoyed me on the Kindle; any time I wanted to move the cursor, I had to wait for definitions of every word it passed before moving it onward). I do need reliability, ease of use, and a crystal-clear display.

The iRex readers seem nice, because of the large screens, but as I understand it they're slow, heavy, difficult to navigate, and poorly supported. I've taken a look at the BEBOOK. I like that it supports both Mobipocket and ePub, but the interface seems a bit clunky, and overall it looks as if it might not be very well constructed.

Am I right in thinking the Sony is the best choice? If it's the best choice now, is there perhaps something better on the way?

I can't comment on the Sony but I recently bought a BeBook. I was pleasantly surprised with the build quality, the photos of it available don't really do it justice. It is quite solid and not nearly as cheap and plasticy as some of the images online suggest.

[ddave]

frabjous,
Thanks for the information on PDF related programs to allow reading on an ereader device, like a sony. I've been leaning towards the Sony 700 because it can handle PDF's (either zoom or resizing the text) and I just wanted to know how best to process all the technical/scientific articles I've been trying to find time to read. I'm especially interested in which program works well with embedded equations and graphs.
thanks.

[frabjous]

Originally Posted by ddave

frabjous,
I'm especially interested in which program works well with embedded equations and graphs.
thanks.

When there are equations and graphs, any text-based conversion of the PDFs is risky. However, with the exception of SoPDF, all the programs I suggested above actually convert the original PDFs to images, and then do some processing on the results, like removing unnecessary whitespace, dividing columns, and spanning a single page over multiple screens. Equations and tables should look exactly the same as they do in the original PDF. I've had the best luck with PDFLRF overall; the only real problem is that it sometimes cuts a line of text in half vertically, but you can set it to do overlap, so if you get half the line on one screen, you should get the whole line (not just the other half) on the next.

The downside to image-based files, however, is that they can dramatically increase file size. With an SD card and file rotation, that doesn't bother me much.

SoPDF doesn't convert to images unless it begins with an image-based PDF already (e.g., from a scan), but it leaves things in PDF format, so it should still preserve the structure of equations and charts, at least if you don't do reflow, without increasing file size. I use it to remove margins/whitespace, and fit to page width (minus margins) landscape, spanning the height of the page over multiple screens. Acrobat can remove the margins/whitespace too, but SoPDF is much faster.

So I mainly just use PDFLRF or SoPDF depending on the original. Occasionally I might use PaperCrop or Acrobat if the original had more than two columns on a page (PDFLRF works fine with two) or some greater TLC is required.

[Djehuty]

Thanks for the advice!

I'd go to a Sony store or Borders, but there's nothing of the sort near where I live. And the local Target is useless.

It does seem as if the 505 is the best choice currently available. I'm going to ponder it over the weekend, but unless someone points out a much better alternative which I haven't noticed yet, or which is due out soon, I think I'll be buying one.

Many thanks for the assistance!

[ficbot]

"Not compatible with Canada." Heh, I love that. It makes Canada sound like an operating system

Fwiw I am a Canadian with a brand new Sony 505 and I love it so far. Calibre makes it very easy to get content onto it. Being a Mac user, I cannot use the Sony store, but I can buy new books from Fictionwise and download some of the many painstakingly formatted labours of love available on this site. I have 200 books on my Sony right now and no signs of running out of space...

[Djehuty]

I'm looking for a good price on a PRS-505, and of course I started with Sony's website, where I noticed something odd. It lists the only DRM e-book format for the PRS-505 as BBeB Book. The Wiki here also lists ePub, as well as a variety of others not in the specifications from Sony.

Was this just an oversight? Or have they removed ePub support?

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Djehuty

Was this just an oversight?

YEs, that's wrong.

[Djehuty]

Thanks, that had me rather worried.

[tekkiegurl]

sony has a good reputation with its product.

[Mrgauth]

No Walmart? You can order one online at walmart.com and have it delivered to your local store and they will call you and you go pick it up. At least doing that you get all three color choices and the price is $20 cheaper than retail.

[Renaldo]

Look in the Deals section here, Sonystyle.ca has some kind of special going for Canadian residents getting $25 USD credit in the Sony bookstore when they order a reader from them.