sony ebook reader

poodlehorse

http://www.johnlewis.com/230619642/Product.aspx?source=35079

Thought this was a good price for this product, everywhere else I have seen it has been over the 200 mark. I see the red version is 199 for some reason

dmg24

Might be worth actually stating the price? It is £169.

Nilrem

That is an amazing price for it, I bought one before Christmas for £195, and it's been up to as much as £220 since then.

If anyone buys this, i'd recommend the Calibre software to manage your ebook library (it's more versatile than the Sony software and actually runs on Vista 64), then have a look at Baen free library for a selection of free to download (legal) ebooks, generally they are the first/parts of series from authors who have a deal with Baen, then go to their sister site Webscriptions where you can buy DRM free ebooks (mainly sci-fi) cheap either individually or as part of a bundle - for example they do a pack every month of 4-6 ebooks for $15, or packs based on a theme (either general theme, author, or series) where you might get 6-10 ebooks for as little as $20, or individual ebooks from about $4* (average price for a single book seems to be about $6 at Baen).
Another good site for out of copyright books (although you may need something like Calibre to covert them to the best formats for the Sony reader) are the grandaddy of ebook sites Gutenberg, or another site with some good free ebooks is Manybooks.
Tor.com, which I beleive is vaguely related to the publisher of the same name, but doesn't just promote their authors, also often has ebooks, or short stories available free to download to registered users (they also have some nice wallpapers etc - last week they were doing wallpapers of the Hugo award nominees for cover art from memory).

Also various authors seem to be putting some of their books up on an individual basis either as a "thank you" to readers, or as part of a promotion (say give away book 1 in a trilogy).

The three downsides of the reader are that it can be fairly slow to update once you've loaded books onto it, especially if you've got a lot of books on it (my one has about 700 or so loaded at the moment and can take 3-5 minutes to refresh itself after i add more or charge it from the USB port), and they can take a minute to open up a "book" when you change titles (page changes tend to take about a second, but once you've opened a book if you put it down it'll turn off after an hour, but resume where you left off within about a second of being turned on).
The second is that in the UK we are generally being screwed on Ebook pricing - the UK ebooks from the likes of Waterstones (who still haven't got a decent search engine on their site for them, despite being the launch partner) and WH Smith seem to have limited selection and overly high pricing - often more than the cost of the paper version on Amazon (or even on their own sites).
The US store is much better but you need either a US credit card, or gift voucher.
And finally, annoyingly it will not charge from a USB charger - it must charge either from an active computer USB port (IE you can't just use a USB wall/car charger, or USB hub that isn't connected to a computer, it actually requires two way communication with a computer to charge via USB), or the proper wall charger (which I think is the same as the PSP used) which costs about £20.

Having said all that, I love my reader as it's let me catch up on a number of classics (it came with 100 on CD, and Gutenberg etc has let me pick up many more), and i'm thoroughly enjoying a lot of the books from Baen/webscriptions (I got hooked on one of the free Honor Harrington novels, and got the lot for the reader, and with the price of some of their bundles i'm willing to risk a tenner to get 1 or 2 books in a "webscription" pack that I want, and try the others to see if I like them).
Milage will vary a lot however depending on what sort of books you like and where you get them from.
I'm also finding the battery life is pretty close to the claimed 4k page turns, as i'm getting about 2.5k of read pages between charges, and i'm often flipping back a page to reread a paragraph where i've missed something or turned the page a bit too soon
It's probably the best bit of tech kit i've bought, as it's light, very easy to read (my dad has bad eyes and has trouble reading a lot of books - with the ereader he's managing it fine as he can hit the "text size" button to make the text larger if need be**), and really nice to handle.

I think there is meant to be an updated version coming out later this year, but from what i've heard it's not quite as good for the screen as they added a touch sensitive layer to allow note taking etc (which reduces the contrast a bit), and will probably be considerably more expensive than this model.
I think Amazon may also be looking to introduce their ebook here in the next year or so, and there are a couple of other units on the market, but personally I really do love my Sony reader and wouldn't be without it (or one like it) now, a situation that surprises me a bit as when I bought it i'd done weeks of research but didn't know if i'd use it enough/get on with it.



*Baen also sometimes to a CD with first edition hardbacks of their books, usually including any ebooks in the series so far and related ebooks (for example I beleive they have put a CD in some of the Honor Harrington books by David Weber with all the books leading up to that one on the CD).

**He borrowed mine for 5 days whilst he was on holiday, on day two of his holiday he rang me up to tell me to "order me one would you, this is great"

PDC

Thanks for the heads up.

-TangleFoot-

Once that Sony Reader goes back to its usual price, might the Cool-er be worth considering?

Nilrem

-TangleFoot- wrote: »

Once that Sony Reader goes back to its usual price, might the Cool-er be worth considering?

That looks pretty good, the screen should be identical to the Sony (IIRC there is only one Eink display in common use*), and it's a good RRP as well.



*Certainly most of the models use the same basic display from the same supplier, with just the coatings/top layers changing (to allow for things like touch screen or side lighting).

rsykes2000

20 quid cheaper at 149.99 from play http://www.play.com/Electronics/Electronics/4-/5261015/Sony-E-Reader-PRS-505-SC-Digital-Reader-Book/Product.html

ashcarrot

I recently went to try and fix this for a friend, it really is a pain personally i think, i takes quite a while to load, that battery didn't seem very good and we never did manage to sync a few of the books for it (which assuming your getting the legally come wtih DRM and are in some case more expensive than the paper version) personally I wouldn't bother unless your certain you want it. Besides your not gona worry too much about leaving a book by the pool (stolen / ruined) but thats just an opinion

andyathers

You can use a DS lite in exactly the same way,and there is a huge amount of books online for free.

Nilrem

That £149 is insane.

Re the DS, the problem with the DS (and all such "ereaders" with LCD screens) is that they tend to have poor battery life and can be very tiring on the eyes due to the nature of them (backlit lighting, as opposed to reflective like paper).

Ash that sounds like a possibly faulty unit, both the ones i've used (albeit with the Calibre software as opposed to the official software), have great batter life and no problems syncing, except that they can look like they've crashed if you're transferring a lot of books to them (they can sit with no change in display for a minute or more), something that caused me to think mine had crashed the first time I did it.

seth

here http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=23013193

Perhaps the mods can merge?