Archive for September, 2009
Sony partners with Smashwords no comments
Thanks to DigitalBeat for reporting this. Smashwords has formed a distribution agreement with Sony to distribute its ebooks via the Sony eBook Store.
Smashwords currently has around 3,000 titles available, mostly indie and self-published authors. They also have distribution agreements with Barnes & Noble and Fictionwise. Stanza can be used to read their ebooks on the iPhone.
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How will the iRex DR800SG eReader Compare with the Sony Daily Edition and the Kindle DX? 1 comment
This week iRex announced that its new and unfortunately named DR800SG ereader will be coming to a Best Buy store near you at the end of next 
month. The new ereader will have worldwide wireless connectivity provided by Verizon Wireless. Barnes and Noble and NewspaperDirect will be the partnered content providers for the DR800SG.
Because of its price of $399 and a touch screen with a size of just over 8″ it looks like the DR800SG will primarily draw comparisons to the Sony Daily Edition and the Kindle DX
Some of the features of the DR800SG:
- 8.1 inch e-Ink based display
- 3G wireless connection provided by Verizon
- Supports a number of DRM and open based formats, including Adobe PDF, EPUB, Newspaper Direct, Fictionwise, eReader, TXT
- Touchscreen
- Weighs 10 ounces
- Note taking will be added later with a free firmware update
- Comes with a pre-installed 2GB SD card (holds up to 1,500 ebooks); can be user upgraded to a larger capacity SD card
- Comes with a leather cover
- Battery is replaceable by user
The DR800SG ereader has a rather minimalist design. Some will find this refreshing as an ebook reader’s purpose should be to read books; the less distractions caused by the device itself the better. On the other hand, if you like to have ereaders in all colors of the rainbow to choose from and lots of hard controls to mess with you may not be taken with iRex’s design choices.
Some thoughts on how the iRex DR800SG, Sony Daily Edition, and the Kindle DX ereaders compare (realizing, of course, that neither the DR800SG or the Daily Edition ereaders are out yet to get an actual hands on with):
Wireless connection:
- iRex DR800SG will only let you connect to purchase ebooks and periodicals. No internet. Initially free, though iRex has left open the possibility to charge for airtime later on. The DR800SG will use Qualcomm’s Gobi 3G module and service should be worldwide.
- Sony Daily Edition only lets you use the wireless connection to connect to the Sony eBook Store.
- Kindle DX lets you connect to the internet or do things like check your email in addition to downloading ebooks and periodicals via the wireless feature.
Kindle DX is a pretty obvious winner here, but only if you live in the US.
Touchscreen:
- iRex DR800SG uses technology similar to a Wacom Tablet and a magnetic resonance stylus to avoid the glare and poor contrast issues of more conventional touchscreen technology. The iRex’s touchscreen is meant to be used with the stylus and not your finger.
- Based on what we’ve seen with the Sony PRS 600, the Daily Edition will have glare and contrast issues. The newer Sony ereaders seem to have less of these issues than the PRS 700 had, but they are still there. You can use either your finger or the stylus on Sony’s ereader touchscreen.
- Kindle DX of course has no touchscreen.
Probably the iRex will be the winner here. Glare and poor contrast are too distracting when you are trying to get lost in a good book. We will have to wait and see how well the touchscreen controls are implemented.
Content:
- It appears that the DR800SG ereader will be at home with Adobe Digital Editions as well as Barnes and Noble DRM’ed ebook formats. This would mean that you would have the same ebook sources as the Daily Edition ereader plus Barnes and Noble’s eBook Store. This gives you another outlet to shop for your desired titles and hopefully find lower prices. Newspapers and periodicals can be purchased from NewspaperDirect, which has 1140 newspapers from 87 countries in 41 languages in their original layout.
- Sony Daily Edition allows you to buy DRM’ed ebooks using Adobe Digital Editions. This means you can shop from several online ebook stores in addition to the Sony eBook Store. However, many of these shops seem to have pretty much the same titles at similar prices.
- The Kindle DX, of course, with access to the Kindle store offers many more titles (if you don’t count Google’s public domain titles at the Sony eBook Store and B & N), and in most cases offers Kindle format ebooks at a lower cost than you will find the same title in ADE format for.
I think the Kindle store makes the Kindle DX
Brand Recognition:
The average American shopper walking into Best Buy has probably never heard of iRex. However they have heard of Phillips Electronics, of which
iRex is a spin off. If said shopper has done any prior research into ereaders they will of course know that iRex has been making a series of higher end ereaders targeted primarily at the business user for some time and sold mostly in Europe. Also, I think that over the past couple of decades we have become increasingly used to finding our electronic devices made by new and upcoming manufacturers. Nevertheless, Sony no doubt has the advantage here, followed by Amazon.
In the end I think that Sony has the most to worry about with the introduction of the iRex DR800SG, but it should help make for an interesting holiday season in ereader land. I am looking forward to having a closer look at the new iRex ereader.
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Reading PDF Files on the Sony PRS 600 no comments
I’ve been experimenting with several PDF documents on the Sony Touch Edition ereader, and I have to report mixed results.
The default display mode for PDF pages on Sony’s new ereader is to display the whole page on the screen. This makes the font so small that it is impractical to read on the PRS 600′s 6″ screen. You can zoom, of course, but this worked a little differently on each of the three documents I’ve tried so far.
First of all I tried a text only PDF. As should be expected, reflow worked fine on this: I could use the font size keys to enlarge the text and there were no chopped off words, etc. Reading this file was pretty much like reading an ebook in any other format.
Things were not so easy when I moved on to an aeronautics text with schematics, charts and equations. First of all, if I used the font size keys on this document most diagrams and equations where not shown at all or were Sony PRS600 Touch Edittion PDF Zoom and Panmessed up. Also words were chopped off at the right margin and unceremoniously finished on the next line. The best results were acheived with this file when I used the
zoom-in feature with the screen in landscape mode. You can see this in the short video I made.
In the zoomed-in mode diagrams and equations were shown as intended, and being able to use your finger on the touch screen to pan around is quite cool. Being able use the stylus to annotate PDF’s on the Sony Touch makes for a great study tool; but you cannot annotate or make notes while you are zoomed in. Another annoyance is that when you turn the page your zoomed in setting is reset and you have to zoom in all over again for each new page. This will probably work fine for a limited number of pages, but I cannot imagine having to read a whole book like this without the process becoming exceedingly tedious.
The last PDF I tried was a Google scanned book with drawings. The font zoom keys had no effect whatsoever on this file. The only way to enlarge this one was to use the zoom-in feature, which worked fine, but again you have to redo the zoom for each new page.
I think that the PRS 600 ereader just has a screen that is too small to work with a lot of PDF files that are filled with diagrams, etc. It is, however, fine for text only files where you can use the font zoom keys, or if you just need to view a few pages with schematics, etc. at a time. On the other hand if you need a portable device to view your PDF files while on the go, then this ereader may well be a good choice for you. If the feature set stays the same, the Daily Edition will be somewhat more practical for graphic rich PDF files because of its larger 7″ screen. The Daily Edition will purportedly cost around the same amount as the upcoming iRex DR800SG and a little less than the Kindle DX though, so it will remain to be seen how those three ereaders will compare when it comes to working with PDF documents. The Kindle DX has a 9.7″ screen and also has 16 gray scales, which means that graphics look better than with the Sony’s 8 gray scales. The iRex DR800SG will come with an 8.1″ display.
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New iRex eReader no comments
According to an article in the NY Times, iRex Technologies will announce its new iRex DR800SG ereader later today. The device will have a wireless connection provided by Verizon and an 8″ touch screen. The new ereader should become available sometime next month, with an expected price of $399. Best Buy will carry the DR800SG.
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Refurbished Kindle 2′s for Sale at Amazon no comments
Amazon has begun selling factory refurbished Kindle 2′s
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Borrowing Library eBooks on Your Sony eReader no comments
One of the new features that Sony proudly announced when they officially unveiled their new ereaders was the ability to borrow ebooks from your local public library, providing your library uses the Overdrive system. This seemed like a really good idea, and one that someone should have thought of a long time ago. In reality how good is it?
I use the Los Angeles County Public Library, which as you can imagine is quite large and has a lot of holdings. In spite of its size, the LA County Library only has a little less than 230 ebooks available for download at this time. Of these, 50 are fiction and the rest are nonfiction. The library only has a fixed number of “copies” to loan out, so almost all titles have a waiting list. After putting yourself on one of these waiting lists you will be notified by email when your requested ebook is available for download. Your newly borrowed ebook will be usable for a period of 21 days, after which time it will be deactivated. I was mainly trying to test the process so I found an unloved nonfiction ebook that I could download immediately and give a temporary home to on my Sony ereader.
First you will need to install Adobe Digital Editions on your computer, which went pretty smoothly in my case. Make sure you use the same email address to register it as you used to register your Sony ereader. After installation, ADE found my Sony PRS 600 by itself with no problems. It was a simple matter to then drag and drop my newly downloaded ebook onto the ereader in the Digital Editions window. The process, once you have the software installed, is comparable to purchasing and installing an ebook onto your reader using the Sony eBook Library, except you use a library card instead of a credit card.
The system seems to work pretty well and is a good feature. I was a bit skeptical when I first heard Sony was integrating this ability into their ebook readers. The last time I tried to download digital media from the library I could never get it to work because of some kind of DRM conflict. That was a couple of years ago though, and the system appears to be much more usable now. You will need to live near to a library system that has digital media provided by Overdrive (many do) for this to work for you. You can go to Overdrive’s website and search for any compatible libraries near you.
While being able to check out ebooks from public libraries and read them on your ebook reader is a really good concept, I wouldn’t let it sway your decision about which ebook reader to purchase. The number of titles available at this time is just too limited. You will probably find a few titles that are on your reading list, but you will have to get in line before you can read them.
Probably we will see our public libraries carrying more ebooks as time goes on and as ebook readers become more and more popular. Hopefully too we will see compatibility with more ereaders than just Sony’s.
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Sony PRS600 Touch Edition eReader Review 1 comment
I finally was able to get my very own Sony Touch Edition e-reader a few days ago. I had hoped to have one last week so that I could do a review last weekend, but it was not to be.
The Sony Touch Edition has apparently been selling well in the two weeks or so that it has been out, at least judging by the short supply that it seems to be in. I tried to buy one from my local Sony Style store last week but they were out of stock. In spite of recent talk on the internet about how the retail price of ebook readers needs to drop to $50 (?) to reach mass acceptance, the Pocket Edition which retails for $100 less at $199 is still in stock at most outlets that I’ve checked; so maybe it’s not selling as well as the Touch Edition is at $299? No way to tell without knowing the production and sales numbers. Amazon
You will see in the pictures that the Sony PRS600 is packaged with a USB 
cable, a Neoprene slipcase and a quick start guide. What you will not see is an AC adaptor. If you want that you will need to pay another $30. Maybe this is not such an issue as the battery in e-Ink based ebook readers lasts for so long; however it does mean that you have to have your computer on while charging your e-reader with the USB. A full charge over the USB cable takes about four hours. The slipcase, while being a nice gesture, is pretty flimsy and does not look like it will provide any serious protection. Probably a good cover is advisable.
No software cd is included or needed. There is a brief startup process on the PRS600. I also noticed that there are about twelve books and excerpts pre-loaded on my new ebook reader. These include a work by Stendhall, The Three Musketeers by Dumas, and even a short story by Stephen King. Curiously, several of these were in German or French instead of English. I bought my ereader in North America, and in the setup I choose English; shouldn’t the pre-installed books be in my chosen language? If Sony wants to prove that its ebook reader can handle other languages, all they have to do is put it in the specs – I’ll believe them.
Now to actually buy, download and read an ebook on my new ereader. I’ve recently read the first installment in the Rachel Morgan series by Kim Harrison. If you have not read it, it is kind of like Kinsey Millhone with magic and….well… with pixies. And vampires. Anyway, it’s fun, I like vampires; not that I’ve actually met any and lived to tell about it. To start off, I want to see what the competition, in this case the Kindle store, is doing so that I have some kind of reference point. The second book in the series, “The Good, the Bad, and the Undead”, is available for the Kindle for $5.49. Good, now over to the Sony Store. …Uhmmmm….$13.49. More than double what Kindlers are paying. Never mind, Sony’s e readers have embraced openess and we are now compatible with Adobe Digital Editions, so I can buy from another store in that format. So I’m off to other ebook stores to see what the best price I can come up with is, and ….uhmmmm….well, so much for openness. After wasting 15 – 20 minutes price checking I’m dragging my mouse back to the Sony eBook Store, as $13.49 is the cheapest price that I can find. Yes it is nice to be able to buy your ebooks from any store you choose. But unless your cousin works at one of them, what’s the point if the prices and selection are almost the same at all of the stores and epecially if the prices are more than double that of the main competition? You are probably starting to wonder why I didn’t just buy the paperback version for less than $5.
Anyway, the Sony eBook Store software is pretty easy to download and install. It’s just a matter of entering your credit card number and then drag and dropping the downloaded file to your e reader after you activate it. There was also a firmware update, which I installed with no apparent problems. I don’t use Mac, so I can’t test Sony’s newly compatible software with that.
Sony’s PRS700 ebook reader was notorious for its glare, which is caused/made worse by the touch screen. I was worried that the PRS600 might share the bad genes, so I have tried it in several different lighting conditions. Actually, in direct sunlight I found the ereader to be very readable, and contrast was very good in the bright light. Great for the beach. Where I had problems outside was on my patio, which is partially covered and provides a dappled shade. This is bad, as it is hard to find an angle that doesn’t show varying degrees of glare across the screen, which is most distracting when trying to read. Indoors I had problems reading beside a lamp (for example in bed with a side table lamp). It was somewhat distracting to find a comfortable angle to avoid the glare from the lamp.
The touch screen in general is good. It does make navigation easier. On the other hand it does reduce contrast and there is some glare, though less than I had feared. Sony definitely could have done a better job of implementation. To make notes or highlight you must first tap on a hardware button and then an icon to activate that ability. Too many actions. The page turn is the worst though. To accomplish page turns, you either use a finger swipe on the touch screen or use the hardware button at the bottom of the e reader. It seems hard to get the pressure right for the finger swipe as if you don’t press hard enough nothing happens. I then found myself becoming afraid that I would swipe too hard and scratch the screen. This wouldn’t be such an issue if Sony had placed the page turn hardware button on the right and left edges of the bezel about halfway up the sides of the ereader; but no, they put it at the bottom. It is very hard to hold this ereader with one hand and turn pages while, say, lying in bed. Distractions like this make it harder to get lost in a good book.
Actually, I’ve had a couple of touch screen phones that I’ve read books on and have had the same problems with the page turn swipe. It seems to me that the correct amount of pressure required for this action on most touch screens is not an intuitive one, and is hard to file in one’s muscle memory. Maybe that’s just me, but I would ask any ebook reader manufacturers that use a touch screen on their ereaders in the future to please also include page turning buttons that can easily be thumb-pressed when the ereader is being held in either the left or right hand only, in lieu of the finger swipe if one so chooses.
All in all I’m enjoying my time with the PRS600. I have to admit to not being a huge Sony fan. Not all of my experiences with Sony products have had happy endings. Maybe Sony got it right this time though. The new ereaders (and this includes the PRS300) are attractive and appear to be well made. I like the aluminum case much better than the plastic one some ereaders have. I find myself really wanting to like the PRS600. There are two major issues though that make the Sony Touch Edition take second place to the Kindle 2 in my opinion, however.
The greatest shortcoming is the lack of content compared to the Kindle family’s ebook store. If you discount Google’s public domain titles, the Sony eBook Store has somewhere around one third as many titles as the Kindle store has. In the price comparisons that I’ve done the Kindle store is also usually less expensive. Most bestsellers are $9.99 pretty much everywhere now, so if you mainly read current bestsellers or the Google public domain ebooks you will probably be satisfied with Sony’s offerings. If, however, your reading taste falls somewhere between these two poles you may end up spending a lot more in the long run for your reading and have less to choose from. Yes, with the newly added support for Adobe Digital Editions you can shop around, but most of the ebook stores seem to have pretty similar prices and selection.
Sony’s UK ebook store appears to have even fewer titles than its US counterpart; one wonders how Sony’s ebook readers can seriously expect to challenge Amazon when the Kindles are introduced there. Of course it remains to be seen how many titles a Kindle UK store would launch with.
Wireless connectivity, of course, is the other area in which the new Sony ebook readers come up light when weighed against the Kindle. Yes, Sony has announced the Reader Daily Edition, which is supposed to come out in the next few months with a wireless connection provided by AT&T. According to the specs we’ve been given so far, however, that will only connect you to the Sony eBook Store. The Kindle’s Whispernet adds much more versatility to Amazon’s ereaders. If you need to you can browse the net, though admittedly the Kindle browser is not going to be anyone’s first choice when it comes to accessing the internet. But if you need it, it’s there. Same for being able to check your email or researching something you are reading about on Wikipedia. The business world is finding new applications for the Kindles all the time. If you work in the field and must carry several hundred pages of frequently changing documents how easy would it be for your office to email new and updated docs to your Kindle email address from whence they would be transmitted wirelessly to your ereader? To me the wireless connection is a more valuable feature than the touch screen.
I’ve only used my Sony Touch Edition for a few days now, but so far I think it’s a great ebook reader. The thing is I think the Kindle 2 is the better choice at the same price. On the other hand, if you really like Sony or if you don’t like Amazon for some reason, or if you would rather have the touch screen than Whispernet, then I don’t think you will be disappointed with the PRS600.
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Wheel of Time to be eBook’ed 2 comments
Thanks to TeleRead for this. Macmillan has announced that the Wheel of Time series will be released as ebooks and will include all of the original illustrations and maps. The last volume in the series “A Memory of Light” will be broken up into three books, the first of which, “The Gathering Storm” will be released on October 27th.
Sadly, WOT author Robert Jordan passed away in 2007, so Brandon Sanderson, author of the Mistborn books, will finish the series based on Jordan’s notes and partially completed text.
Wheel of Time is one of my favorite fantasy series, as it is for many other readers. I look forward to reading the conclusion, though it must be intimidating for Mr. Sanderson to follow in Robert Jordan’s footsteps.
If you are a WOT fan, you might also want to check out the “Sword of Truth” series by Terry Goodkind if you have not done so already: it served as a good holdover for me in between Wheel of Time book releases.
Update: Until 10/26 Barnes and Noble has a pre-order discount for the hardcover version of The Gathering Storm: Pre-order The Gathering Storm, book 12 in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, and save 40%
