Sony Reader PRS-505 review (on Mac OS X)
Today the Sony Reader PRS-505 launches in Germany for 299€ (US$377, £269). Due to the fall of the pound, we already bought ours at the Sony Center in the London Heathrow Airport for only £194 (216€, US$273), so that would make it a 28% discount for us. At that price, we couldn’t resist. We would certainly have preferred a Kindle, but they’re only sold in the USA, and despite being in California last week, all Kindle’s advantages are due to their Sprint whispernet coverage (cell phone data network, through a proprietary North American protocol) which won’t work in Europe.
Sony Reader displaying PDF file with magnified text
(Full-sized image taken on my iPhone 3G using the Clarifi close-up lens)
Look and feel
As for this device itself, it looks great! Above you can see it viewing Tournament Poker: 101 Winning Moves, an ebook in PDF format with magnified text. You can also view files in landscape mode (by holding down the magnifying button for 5 seconds), which helps to be able to view most PDF files, although some will still have very small print using this method. Page turning is easy with two places to turn pages and you’ll never accidentally flip pages like I hear happened on the Kindle 1.
The advantage of an eBook reader over a laptop is that it uses electronic ink, thus making the experience almost that of looking at regular paper. This means no eye-strain, but also that you will need an extra reading light if you want to read in the dark.
Getting your files on the Sony Reader
As a Mac user, you’ll have to connect your device using USB and then copy your books into the /database/media/books folder. For Windows users, you install their software as use that which from what I understand works similar to iTunes. I’ve found that native LRF files (proprietary Sony Reader format) and ePub files (open ebook standard) work best on the device.
Downloading/Buying ebooks
Note that the Sony Reader PRS-505 comes with 192 MB of internal memory with two slots for Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo and SanDisk cards (up to 16 GB). Most LRF and ePub files are relatively small (The 3423 page War and Peace is 4.7 MB in LRF format). It came with a 100 Classics CD when I bought it in London, but it looks like that doesn’t come with it in Germany.
Unfortunately from what I’ve seen, everything at the official eBook Store from Sony is North America-only Windows-only DRM. Talk about restrictions! UK customers can buy from Waterstones, but with Adobe Digital Editions DRM (Mac and Windows) from what I can tell. I’d be curious to hear if anyone has had success buying ebooks and loading them on their Sony Reader with a Mac.
Update: I am very happy with how Fictionwise is very open about DRM, geographical restrictions and in what formats they have books. When I’m ready to buy ebooks, I think I’ll start with them.
Specifically in Germany, I’ve found that Thalia and Libri sell ebooks in Germany, but their prices are the same as regular print books, which I guess comes from the old-fashioned German law where all new books have to be sold at their retail price everywhere.
So, that leaves books in ePub format. For an excellent selection of ePub books, I’d highly recommend epubbooks.com. The most impressive source for free ebooks has been feedbooks which has every book in their 3000+ collection available in ePub format which will display nicely on a Sony Reader PRS-505. You can also use their service to convert RSS feeds to ePub. They also have software to sync your feeds to your ebook reader, except it’s Windows-only. grrr
PDF files work ok, but not great. No article on ebooks would be complete without mentioning Project Gutenberg. This is a collection of 27,000 free books in various electronic formats.
Charging
Due to its use of electronic ink, an ebook reader generally only consumes power when it changes a page unlike a typical monitor. Thus, these devices typically show power consumption in terms of page flips. The Sony Reader’s battery is good for 7500 page turns (read War and Peace twice on a single charge). It takes 4 hours to go from an empty battery to a complete charge via USB.
Conclusion
As a Mac user, I’m quite happy with the Sony Reader as long as I stick to ePub files and classics. I’d like to buy ebooks, but the way things look now, it looks like I’m left to what I can get for free, since I refuse to buy DRM-content. Well, except for iPhone apps, but that’s because they will only work on an iPhone anyway. If I buy a book or music, I’d also like to be able to use that on my computer as well as an external device. Also, I’ve only had this for 5 days, so if you see any errors in this blog post, please feel free to comment so I can correct them. Happy reading!
Hey Chuck,
thanks for the article, most of it sounded familiar to me after re:publica
Still have one question, though: Have you ever tried reading non-fiction ebooks? I’m wondering what images or graphics look like on the Sony Reader… any pictures of that?
Cheers,
Nina
I’ve read some of the iPhone SDK Application Development and it works pretty well. The worst part is that the example source code occasionally goes off the screen, so you can’t read it. I’ll send you pictures by email.
If you want to use any file you’ve dl’d with your Reader check out Calibre, a free, open source porter. It takes a little finangling but it’s worth it.
http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/download_osx
Also, leaving a message on your website got me IM spam in 20 seconds. GG.
Hi Anon,
I also wrote up a whole post on using Calibre with the Sony Reader. You’re right, it’s awesome! http://www.chucksmith.de/?p=131
As for the IM spam, are you sure it came from posting on my blog? In any case, I hope it wasn’t too annoying.
Hey Chuck,
Just wondering if you ever managed to get Esperanto specific characters to display correctly on the reader without embedding them in a pdf etc.?
I’ve tried using PRSC to flash the reader using the unicode font support ( and the custom font support with a DejaVu ttf ) but to no avail.
It seems that no matter what I try the Reader simply refuses to display ĉ, ĵ, ĥ, ĵ etc. merely replacing them with a “?” character. I don’t suppose you managed to crack the problem?
…graham.
Hi Graham,
I spent about 2-3 hours trying to hack it, but never managed to get it to work. Sad really
Chuck
Hey Chuck,
Good news! I managed to get the Esperanto characters to correctly display on the Reader.
It turns out that something strange seems to happen during the Calibre conversion process which corrupts the special unicode characters in the resulting ePub / LRF files. If you simply use UTF-8 encoded TXT or RTF files directly with the Reader without conversion the characters display without any trouble.
You’ll have to flash the Reader with PrsCustomizer using the “Unicode” font option to add support for the additional Latin characters beforehand.
If you’ve any problems getting this to work just leave a message here and I’ll run through the complete procedure with you.
Cheers,
…graham.
Bone, aliaj esperantistoj kun e-libroj havas saman problemon! Mi ne estas sola…
(Good, other Esperantists with e-books have the same problem! I am not alone…)
Hi Graham,
I just read your post about the Esperanto characters. I have just bought the reader and the books I read have roman translitertion of sanskirit so it looks like this:
yaṁ hi na vyathayanty ete puruṣaṁ puruṣarsabha sama-duḥkha-sukhaṁ dhīraṁ so ’mṛtatvāya kalpate
What would I have to do for the reader to recognise the special charecters. Would using the PrsCustomizer and selecting unicode solve the problem. Or will I have to add additional fonts? I am scare of adding additional fonts incase I brick it.
Thanks
Lalita