[furball]

Anyone has one? What are you opinions on the reader? How is the screen. Is the battery user replaceable? How large of a memory card does it take?

I have tons of eBooks in txt and Word format, and it is not always convenient to drag my laptop along to read them. Plus, staring at the laptop screen causes too much eye strain over a prolonged period of time.

Sony Connect supports txt, Word, RTF and a few other formats besides its proprietary format. That's the main reason why I am thinking about picking one up. Amazon's Kindle doesn't support standard formats, it only supports its own proprietary format.

 

[Teraflame]

If you have a PSP, I suggest using the Bookr program to read ebooks.

 

[marvin]

I have one (PRS-500) and my dad got one after using mine for a few days (PRS-505). If you're going to get one used, I highly recommend the PRS-505 over the older model. The PRS-500 is certainly usable, but the PRS-505's faster screen changes and higher contrast are significant improvements.

The screen is easily readable for long periods of time as long as you can get past the screen inversion every time the page flips. I barely notice them any more. Text quality is sharp, though not quite as good as real paper. Coloration is fairly close to newsprint with the somewhat greyish background. Screen size is close to paperback size.

As for format support, as long as poor native PDF support isn't a big deal to you, the Reader works great. The poor PDF support is a size issue that probably won't be solved until Reader type devices come in 8.5x11" formats. Straight text documents work fairly well, though I prefer to print to PDFs formatted for the reader screen so that I have my choice of font and text size.

 

[furball]

How much do you find yourself using the ebook reader? Is it worth the $300 price tag?

And what about the battery? Is it replaceable?

And the screen inversion. Does the Amazon kindle also have the screen inversion when you refresh a page?


I am not a gamer, otherwise I would have picked up a PSP a long time ago.

 

[marvin]

E-Book useage for me is fairly regular. I go through a novel or so every two weeks. 75% of the time it's E-Book use.

The battery is replaceable, though it's not easy. You'd have to crack the case and replace it yourself. Sony does sell replacements for ~ $80. Battery life is long though, even at a quarter life, a full battery is good for over a thousand pages.

All E-Ink devices currently display screen inversion when refreshing the display. The Kindle uses the same 4 shade display as the PRS-500, while the PRS-505 features the improved 8 shade display.

My only issue with the Sony Reader is DRMed book selection. A whole lot of new and popular content is in the eBook store, but back catalog sucks and there's always the fear of format failure ala HD-DVD.

 

[the_rangdo]

How about a PDA instead. I've been using an Ipaq 2210 for the past 4 years and just picked up an Ipaq 210.

480x640 rez and cleartype make this new one superb, can read just about any format (not tried anything from Sony's library yet but I've got plenty of LIT, PDB and PDF to keep me going) and you can use it for other stuff too

 

[furball]

There are lot of free ebooks floating around on the net.

For example, project gutenberg (I hope I am spelling the name right) has put out many thousands of classics in txt and a bunch of other open formats. Just do a search.

Plus if you look hard enough, there are also more recent works in open formats.


As to the PDA, the backlit LCD screen gives you a lot of eye strain after staring at it for a long time. The e-ink technology is really quite amazing, just like reading newspaper.

I really hope Sony will support Microsoft's LIT format. It is a nifty format.

 

[bassoprofundo]

I love my PRS-500. I snagged it for $50 with the Sony credit card deal about a year ago, and I use it daily. I have a pretty large unprotected library stemming back from my days of reading on a Palm m505, and the screen is just a godsend after years of PDA reading. Easy on the eyes, decent contrast (better on the PRS-505, though), and it looks sharp. The only problem with it is that every time I dig it out on the bus to read, people start asking me about it!

 

[onyu]

I love my PRS-500. I've tried reading on my psp, it goes but it hurts after a while, with the reader you can go on for hours, it feels just like reading a real book (or manga).