My fling with a Sony Reader

gordonmeyer — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 14:00:29 -0500

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 ~~mangling~~ scaling algorithm.

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.

”My fling with a Sony Reader” was written by Gordon Meyer for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 11, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

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My fling with a Sony Reader