PRS-900 First impressions from new user

[Ben Thornton]

Hello all

Received my PRS-900 from B&H Photo last Friday, delivered to the UK via UPS. If anyone is thinking of importing one to the UK, it cost $50-something dollars to UPS in postage, plus £60-something pounds in VAT and mysterious hadling fees from UPS. Their website is very poor for letting you know what the process is, but my experience was that they pay the VAT and then want COD, unless you phone ahead and pay over the phone (but they don't prompt you to do this). All-in-all it's cost me about £350 (cf. £250 for the Touch and £150 for the Pocket locally). The power supply will take the UK voltage, so only needs a plug converter (e.g. from Maplin, about £15).

This is my first eBook, so my comparisons are with other eBooks in shops - I've seen the PRS-300 (Pocket), which has higher contrast, and the PRS-600 (Touch), which seems about the same (I didn't do a side-by-side comparison). Compared to previous handheld computers, the contrast reminds me of LCD displays - like Psion organisers for example - but of course the screen is much bigger.

I can understand the different views that have been expressed about the screen. In some lighting conditions, it can be difficult to read. Under sunlight or a halogen light, it looks great. Under a low power bulb it can look a bit muddy. That said, I've managed to read a lot over the last few days and, on balance, I think I would choose the touch screen over a bit more contrast. The dictionary feature in particular is convenient with a touch screen. I've ordered a clip-on LED light from Amazon.co.uk and will post how I get on wth that.

The acid test is whether it's any good for reading books. I downloaded some on Friday and have read "A Journey to the Interior of the Earth", "The War of the Worlds" and am now reading the second D'Artagnan romance. So far, perhaps 1000 page turns and it reads very comfortably and naturally. I soon forget that I'm reading a "device" and read the book instead.

Full charge before use, now showing 3 bars on the battery, but I'm taking that with a pinch of salt having read various comments about the battery meter calibrating itself. My plan is to see how long it goes before it runs out.

I got the free 100 classics (there are actually 125 because there's an extra set) from Sony, but in most cases a better formatted alternative can be had here on the forum for the same price. Alice, for example, has the famous wiggly mouse's tail formatting in the version on this forum, plus Tenniel's illustrations, while Sony's version has neither. The hand-crafted versions here are much more pleasant to read so far.

One noob question: when finding typos (or scanning errors etc.) in eBooks, what is the etiquette in telling people about them? Post a fixed version, PM the poster of the book, comment on that thread, or what?

All told, I'm very pleased with the device.

[HorridRedDog]

Originally Posted by Ben Thornton

Hello all

One noob question: when finding typos (or scanning errors etc.) in eBooks, what is the etiquette in telling people about them? Post a fixed version, PM the poster of the book, comment on that thread, or what?

All told, I'm very pleased with the device.

Welcome to the club.

I have the 600 and reading on it has become natural to me too.

As far as the typos I have heard two things - No book is without atleast one typo. And that the reason for that is that it was used as a marker incase someone copied your book.

Now days though it is simply because they (most of them anyway) are just lazy. Paper pages are scanned in, maybe OCR'ed (computer translated to text), and then sold. In otherwords - not much, if any, proof reading.

Things will get better with time.