E-book Reader Report

[morethmusing]

How do I like the Sony PRS-600?

A lot! Oh, yes indeed! I now have over 150 books on it. (Okay, maybe 120 of those I already had in one format or other because they were in the 'free' starter pack: Shakespeare for instance. I do now have Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall' and Charles Darwin and, of course, about ten more new novels I would have bought as

Comments

[surgicalsteel]

I dragged and dropped Pandë's 'Apprentice' onto my PRS-700 as a Word file (.docx) - no problems with losing italics for me. And I know about the not saving money thing. I'm eyeballing a potential purchase at the moment.

[morethmusing]

I suspect it's an issue with the RTF format - and the exact RTF format varies depending on what application you saved it from and... life's too short to worry about it much ;P I converted to EPUB and it worked fine :)

To be fair, I haven't bought anything that I wouldn't have anyway. And the idea was to save space - because otherwise we're looking at a rolling-stack in the garage! That's lots of books I can buy before I hit that cost limit...

ETA: How have you found the Sony software, or do you just not use it?

[surgicalsteel]

I use it. For some reason my husband the IT geek finds it considerably more obnoxious than I do. I've actually found it reasonably easy to use, and he struggles with it every freaking time. He does the same with his iPod. ;)

[chaotic_binky]

I am tempted to buy one when my Sony ereader dies - which I hope is not for a long time yet. I like the idea of note taking. Like you I do not use the mp3 facility.

The software for my mp3 player and the ereader is crap - Sony really should get writers who can streamline everything and make it less unwieldy and faster to use. I lost my temper with it very early on and used drag and drop until my son told me about calibre.

I charge my ereader via my PS3 :D

Hugs Binky xxx

[morethmusing]

I lost my temper with it very early on and used drag and drop until my son told me about calibre.

I beat it to death with work-arounds... but yeah. Great hardware, crap software. What is their issue?

I just charge by USB on the PC. It's so energy efficient that works fine :)

Thanks for the pointer to Calibre - nice piece of software!

[chaotic_binky]

Sony could have written something like Calibre.

[indy1776]

Between Ithilwen talking about the iPad and you about this, an ebook reader is becoming more and more tempting… (Can't afford one, which is likely the one of only things that's holding me back from buying.)

[morethmusing]

It's an excellent little device. I love it. But yeah, thay are not cheap... unless you compare them to buying bookshelves, which aren't cheap either!

[lissas_elves]

I'm glad you're enjoying your e-book reader; it really is a very clever invention. :-)

The software/PC interface is definitely the weak spot in these things, although I don't think bebook's is that bad, but then you've obviously tested extensively whereas I haven't loaded that many books yet and therefore the lacking organizing features hadn't bothered me.

Calibre sounds interesting. Free soft-ware, you say? Think I'll check it out (tomorrow - it's been a long day!). The features you mention are great, but it's surprising that the manufacturers of the readers couldn't have thought of all this stuff themselves.

[morethmusing]

You can find Calibre here: http://calibre-ebook.com/

As is normal with free-ware, it's less shiny but has more functionality. You need to import all your books to it (Oh, how I wish there was a reverse load - 'Look at my reader and port books across to the library' - but there isn't.)

It doesn't have the facility to unlock digitally restricted material, so you need to use Adobe or your proprietary sotware for that.

[lissas_elves]

Thank you so much for the link, Moreth. :-)

(and I don't care about shiny and fancy, as long as it WORKS! *g* )

[rhapsody11]

Sweet, besides the firmware updates being assy then. Score!

[morethmusing]

Indeed :)

I can work around the software... it's not a deal breaker :D