Sony eBook Reader

I bought a Sony eBook reader (PRS-505) in December to use as part of a seminar that explores how people read on different devices. In general I have been very pleased with the Sony eBook reader, which works well with the Macintosh even though Sony does not officially support the Mac. (More on how to use it with a Mac below.) Its size is particularly convenient, since it fits easily into a jacket pocket much like a paperback.

Today I finally loaded the Sony software onto my wife's Windows machine so that I could complete the registration and could download the 100 free books. The experience was frustrating in the extreme. Merely to register the machine I had to run a CD in the Windows machine, load an .exe file, and launch a special program. It also took three or four tries to fill in the required information and every time it decided that it did not like some answer, it wiped out my password.

I had to launch another program to use the Sony store and had to register again for that -- apparently Sony did not link product registration to Store use. The ad at the left told me there were only four steps necessary to retrieve the 100 free books I was promised when purchasing. Step three was to verify that the credits had been registered to the account, but never told me how to do it. I finally just decided to try selecting a book from the list to see if the credits were there. Apparently they were not, since it tried to charge me $1.99 for a book that I could get for free on Project Gutenberg. In fact all of the books that I could get with the credit appeared to be books I could get for free from Gutenberg, so I gave up. What was the point?

The book selection for more recent works (ie not in Project Gutenberg) was like what one would find in a very bad airport bookstore -- nothing of substance. Does Sony think its customer base consists mainly of people wanting mindless entertainment? I also discovered that access to the store only works via that one computer. Perhaps people with more than one machine can register on more than one, but it is not clear. The only real value to registering seems to be getting firmware updates for the reader itself.

For those who want to avoid the Sony software, there are some simple steps. On the Mac at least, you can attach the eReader as a storage devide and simply copy RTF or PDF documents to the books folder. RTF works best, because the eReader will reformat the text automatically to fit the screen. I generally make the font 14 pt or more for easier reading. I also like to put a space between paragraphs.

When taking a book from Project Gutenberg I load it into Open Office (MS-Word works too), and replace all of the line breaks with spaces so that the paragraph is continuous. Then I insert blank lines between paragraphs (or insert tabs), increase the font, and save. On the Mac I switch to Text Edit, change the properties to have the correct author and title, and resave. Text Edit creates a more compact file. Then I simply copy it onto the eReader.

If I create a PDF, the A5 size seems to work best and the font size really needs to be 14 or larger.

Visible neighbors

Life in a highrise means that we see the people in the neighboring building regularly. We do not know their names and would probably not say hello to them in the street, but we cannot help but know a great deal about their private lives.

One youngish couple (in their 30s, I would guess) have the television on almost constantly. It is a large screen machine (though not quite so large that I can see what it on) and occasionally one or the other will dance in the living room. The movements may be part of an exercise program, but it looks like dance. The man in the apartment above them walks back and forth in his bedroom whenever he has a phone call -- which happens quite often. Three people live in the apartment we looked at in that building. They come only on week-ends. I think it is a couple and their teen-aged daughter. They often cook together, though the kitchen in that apartment is significantly smaller than ours.

Presumably they can see me equally clearly. All that they see, however, is a person sitting at a large dining room table working on a laptop. Occasionally there are dishes on the table if I have just been eating and often there is paper mail on the table that I have not opened but am under orders not to throw out. Why do people send paper in this electronic age?

Winter may now be past -- temperatures in the last week remained consistently above freezing and the last remains of the snow have melted away. Nonetheless the snow was pretty -- at least for a maximum of ten minutes, after which I wanted it to melt away again. The picture above is of the garden outside our building.