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My fling with a Sony Reader
Gordon Meyer | Nov 11 2007
So there I was in Las Vegas, flush with cash and giddy with excitement. Seduced by the sleek lines, thin profile, and promised efficiency of the PRS-505. Call me “Sony Reader,” I imagined it purring, “and together we will travel the world.” It spoke to both the bibliophile and gadget hound that live deep within my soul. How could I resist? The flight home to Chicago was our first outing. I didn’t have a computer with me to add my own text files, but little PRS-505 was thoughtfully pre-loaded with abridged classics and its manual. The screen; so crisp and readable! I danced from book to book, turning page after page, sampling everything like a starving man at the Bellagio’s buffet. I soaked in every step of every task in the French version of the user’s manual, not caring that I only speak English. About midway through my flight home, I “accidentally” jostled my armrest-hogging seat mate awake; waving the Reader non-chalantly as I muttered my apology. I wanted him to see my futuristic, productivity-enhancing device. I think my ploy worked—the heavy breathing that soon followed revealed his unspoken envy. Yes, life was good. The next morning, I connected Miss PRS to my iMac, grinning as its proxy icon popped onto the Desktop. I quickly copied over a half-dozen PDF files and smoothly slipped loose the connection. A moment later, the Reader sprung to life and started cataloging the new additions. I could hardly wait. Oh how I wish that I had waited. If I had known that those were my final moments of consumer satisfaction and gadget nirvana, I would have savored them. But I didn’t know, and soon there was no turning back. I eagerly pressed the button that would open the first of my PDFs. I barely recognized it. The page was squished. The text gray and hard to read. I remembered a word from the user’s guide—“paysage.” I held down the “+” button to change the display to landscape mode. Ah, that’s better. A little less distorted. But. Still. Illegible. Fuck. None of my PDF files were remotely close to being readable on this thing. I turned to the ‘net for a solution. Someone reported that using Acrobat to convert the PDF to RTF would help. “I have Acrobat Professional, I’ll try that!” I nervously drummed my fingers, had lunch, and made a phone call while Acrobat launched. Yes, the resulting RTF file did produce readable text on the Sony Reader, but its mangled formatting and oddly-broken lines turned my stomach. Or maybe it was the tuna sandwich. Regardless, I couldn’t live with it. I read MAKE’s tips on How to Optimize PDFs for Sony’s Reader. Good advice, provided that you have the document source and can create a whole new PDF just for use on the Reader. But what I have is over a thousand scanned documents from my paperless office. I can’t re-format those to the 3.5 x 4.8 inch dimensions that the Reader requires in order to avoid its page There’s a bit more to the story, but does it really matter? I could write about the 100 free classic books (in “BBeB” Reader-optimzed format) that Windows users can download using Sony’s iTunes-on-Meth online store. I could make fun of the way it handles RSS files or complain how the Sony website implies that the Reader can search the contents of books. (It can’t.) But all that sounds like sour grapes. The bottom line is that I decided to take the Reader on one more trip. This time to the ‘burbs where I ditched it at the Sony Style store in Skokie. Leaving behind my shattered dreams and a 15% restocking fee. So long, little PRS-505. We’ll always have Vegas. POSTED IN:
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I feel your pain.
Hey Gordon,
Tell me about it. This thing is sooo close, yet so un-PDF friendly. This is the woe of the eager e-reader: a few devices that are almost there, just enough to tantalize but not fully accomodate us. I’ve experimented with both the Sony Reader and the iRex Illiad, and neither of them are quite yet suitable for the tasks you describe.
I share your complaints about the Sony. It’s great in most respects, but frustratingly worthless for the thing that I really want it for: the ability to read all my PDF books and PDF exports of blog posts.
The Illiad displays much more legible PDFs (thanks to its larger screen,) but is sensationally expensive (like $700 expensive), takes a full 60 (!) seconds to boot up, and has a tremendous lag just to change from one page to the next.
I keep waiting (and checking the internet every month or so) for someone to come out with a suitable e-paper device that displays PDFs properly and is half-usable, but thus far the wait has been frustratingly fruitless.
Do keep us posted on your own search! :)
Re: I feel your pain.
Thanks for that, I had briefly considered the Iliad, until I saw the price. Ugh. Hope springs eternal.
In a world with the iPhone...
I wonder if — now that the iPhone has changed standards for handheld computing — we’ll soon see a new generation of handheld computers and e-bookreaders that will handle the job and do it well.
People are rapidly becoming accustomed to a totally finished product that is sleek, elegant, intuitive and powerful, and they won’t stand for anything less much longer.
I’m surprised no one
I’m surprised no one mentioned Rasterfarian from http://asianfanatics.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=439917 which does batch conversion of documents and is commonly used to convert PDF to LRF format. Still, it would be nice for Sony to either fit some native PDF support in there or do the conversion behind the scenes. They KNOW PDF is the de facto standard, and introducing a new (redundant) format like LRF does not help consumers.
libprs500
Hey Gordon
Did you try out libprs500’s any2lrf converter? By all accounts it works quite well…
thanks for the tip
Hey, interesting. This didn’t turn up in any of my searching, so I’m glad you mentioned it. I’ll check it out, and now that the link is here, perhaps it will save someone else from the fate that my Reader suffered.
Still a long way to go...
I have high hopes for E ink/ePaper technology, but the Sony Reader is a loooong way from perfect. The PDF issues are a huge turn-off, and with approximately 415 ugly buttons, the device itself doesn’t have the style or simplicity that I’d want out of such an incredibly expensive piece of luxury geek-tech.
If I were to buy today, I’d probably go with Bookeen’s Cybook Gen3. It looks nicer, it loads faster, and while I’m not sure about the quality of their PDF support, it can’t be worse than Sony’s.
http://www.bookeen.com/ebook/ebook-reading-device.aspx
For now I’ll stick with my old friend the eBookwise Reader, crossing my fingers that the iPhone/iPod touch will get an awesome reader app next spring. If ePaper technology catches on, and more impressive, less expensive devices come out in a few years, I’ll be here waiting.
irex iliad
As it happens i’ve bought an iliad ebook reader two days ago, and I can recommend it to everyone. No trashed pdf’s even small-font two-column scientific papers are quite readable (and there’s always zoom of course). Plus, the firmware is open and the community is really active.
Now wait a second!
I happen to agree with you that the PDF reading thing of the PRS-500 and 505 are pitiful. I was greatly disappointed with that when I first got my 500. My beef with your post is that it makes it sound like this feature alone makes the reader useless. This is simply not true. With both the native tools and with libprs I have been able to enjoy a number of books, web sites, blogs, and RTF/Word documents on my reader. I’ve had it since they first came out and have probably read over 100 books on it. Is it perfect? No. Does it do a good job of presenting books to users? Yes! I highly recommend this to any book fan.
Subjectively, of course
For me, this does make the Reader useless. Glad it’s working out for you, though. Thanks for your note.
The problem is with PDF not the Reader
I’m on my 2nd Reader - I used the first edition until I could get my hands on a new silver 2nd edition. I have all my companies send me .doc files that I can convert into .rtf easily. No problems here. Blame the stupidity of PDF, not the Reader IMHO.
prs is good for reading old books.
Project Gutenberg combined with the BBEBinder program provides you with tons of reading material. (20,000+ books)
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page http://code.google.com/p/bbebinder/
I do wish it would be more useful for reading some of the computer manuals I have in PDF format though.
I have read approximatly 100 books from PG using my prs-500 it is extremely nice to read from
Amazon's Kindle - will this new device scratch your itch?
Apparently it can search, hold up to 200 books, connect to EVDO for buying more books or downloading newspapers & magazines hot off the press, doesn’t even require a computer to sync content to… and in consideration of your PDFs: if you or a friend sends a word document or PDF file to your private Kindle e-mail address, it appears in your Kindle library, just as a book does.
It is just shipping now - if someone gets it, let us know what you think…
broken DRM reader vs. a flexible mini computer
I just want to test the new OLPC, its a great idea on good hardware (read: 200dpi display - (see the OLPC hardware specs))
You can write software for it - its open. Its flexible (its not only a ebook reader) - and its not “crippled” with DRM stuff. A sony special, btw, see the early one-way “usb-minidisc-player” - this was my Miss PRS until I tried to download an interview to my computer. On an OLPC, i can read a pdf and I have a small real computer for checking stuff and making notes. (An maybe also for recording)
Or wait for the apple subnotebook-tablet if you don’t like the green color :) pdftoppm could also be a solution for broken readers, if they have a picture viewer on board.
Cheers, DA
What PDFs are for.
PDFs are intended to encapsulate exactly how a document is to be presented. The fonts, colors, and layout are supposed to be exactly the same regardless of what device opens the file.
So how is it a problem that they don’t display correctly on a device with a screen that is the wrong size? How could it be different?
The solution isn’t the break the PDF format and take away the one thing that creators of PDFs take for granted: uniformity of display. The solution is to use some other format.
Perhaps intelligent conversion of PDFs to more display-neutral formats isn’t there yet. But that’s the solution, not devices that mangle and corrupt PDFs.