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.
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.
posted by Michael Seadle at 12:42 AM
1 Comments:
Sony is remarkably bad at making the user experience seamless. I encountered some really easy to fix absurdities on their Website the other day while shopping for a video camera. The site was trying to shunt me away from sony.com to sony.de (fine) but the links and mechanisms for doing so did not work at all in FF and only halfway in IE.
Sometimes all the fancy stuff companies like this try to do just gets in the way of a simple user experience. Not sure why this is so hard to bear in mind.
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