I don’t want to call this a review, because the opinions I’m going to express are personal and relate mostly to my trials, errors, and experiences. In the spirit of full disclosure, I received this ebook device as a gift from my workplace. It is a Sony eReader Touch PRS-650.
Upon first playing with it, I found it a bit slow in response time, and my boss (who was testing the office device) expressed a displeasure at the black screen flashing when the pages were turned. I actually didn’t mind that, at least it was some indication that the eReader was doing something.
When I started to click into the settings and books, I experienced a huge lag time between the touch and the action being completed. By “huge” I mean 4 or 5 seconds. But by today’s standards, that’s quite a lot. I would often touch the screen again thinking it hadn’t registered the first one. This would make me select something inadvertantly on the next page as the eReader stored my clicks.
I hooked the eReader up to my computer (MacBook) to charge it (as it didn’t come with a wall charger) and to install the Sony Reader Library software. I did not have a fun time with this software! The PRS-650 has 2 GB of memory space, but as I tried to sync my ebooks to the device, it would freeze. I thought that perhaps I had filled the memory (with the 14 free books I’d downloaded from Gutenberg).
When I Googled it, I discovered Calibre which most people suggested for the Mac/Sony eReader relationship. I used Calibre successfully, but a couple weeks ago it prompted me to upgrade. I had forgotten I’d intentionally installed an earlier version of Calibre because I have an older MacBook (4 years old). Once I’d upgrade Calibre, I wasn’t able to run it on my Mac (doh!) which was totally my fault.
In the mean time, I’d gotten a free holiday gift from Chapters-Indigo for two books — The Bishop’s Man and Oryx and Crake if you’re curious. When I downloaded them, they wanted to open via Adobe Digital Editions. So I downloaded Adobe Digital Editions and started playing with it. It had a decent way to organize my eLibrary and I liked that I could make different bookshelves.
I then checked Adobe’s list of supported devicees to see if the PRS-650 was supported, which it was. Score! Then I looked to the help section to find out how to transfer my books to the device. I followed all the instructions but Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) didn’t recognize my eReader. I knew it wasn’t my computer because it was showing up on my desktop as a separate drive.
After more Google-fu, I discovered that ADE and Sony syncing doesn’t work on a Mac. My exact thoughts (after searching for more recent comments about the relationship): Fuuuuuuuuuuck you. Please excuse my language, but in total, I have spent at least 5 hours messing about with this damn device. That is precious time that I could have been reading a paper book.
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December 19, 2010 at 9:02 am
I enjoyed your review. I’m interested in digital readers though I only have an iPad myself.
I was curious about syncing. One of the things I’ve LOVED about the digital book experience using Kindle on my mac/iPad and iPhone as well as iBooks is that everything stays in sync and super easily. If I read up to a certain part of a book on my iPad and then go out with my iPhone, it will sync to the last read place. It’s very handy.
I miss the feel and smell of paper books, but the benefit of what can be carried around in one package as well as the ability to read in almost any light situation makes doing digital so worth it. The lower price of digital books doesn’t hurt either.
December 19, 2010 at 11:36 am
Fair review. I am happy with my Nook, so I’m not in the market, but I also need to sort thru the whole pdf to Nook thing. It seems simple enough – as does using my Blackberry as an MP3 player – but I haven’t made time yet to try.
December 19, 2010 at 2:39 pm
I had some initial problems getting my nook to sync up with Adobe Digital Editions and my computer. I also thought that was really annoying, and the problem was only solved through some forum posts, not any official help docs from Barnes & Noble or Adobe. It’s frustrating you’ve spent so much time messing with this – I hope your experience improves!
December 19, 2010 at 9:18 pm
Being that the only thing I’ve ever tried to do with my Kindle is to 1) read 2) buy something to read, I can’t comment on all the other stuff. I am enjoying the free downloads available! I find that it turns pages very quickly and moves from menu to book and back quickly, too. I have only one complaint; I like tables of content, and most of the e-books I’ve downloaded don’t have them Humph!
December 22, 2010 at 11:27 am
Sad to hear that Sony still doesn’t know how to do software. I had a Sony minidisc player back in the day, and the software that came with it still holds the record as the worse user interface I have ever used. Sony is also the company that thought installing hacker rootkits on PCs was OK.
I have a friend with an older Sony eReader and Mac. I think he puts everything on PDF and moves it back and forth via Thumbdrive.
My sister-in-law seems to like her Sony, though. She has a PC and mostly gets her stuff from Smashwords, that might be the difference.
February 27, 2011 at 12:51 pm
Most of the documentation and forum posts I’ve found for Sony seems to agree that a PC is easier to sync with.
December 22, 2010 at 11:28 am
What’s a “PC” :-)
January 11, 2011 at 11:18 am
I had considered the Sony ereader as well, until I read of Marie at Boston Bibliophile’s problems with the device and her MAC computer. I still haven’t gotten an ereader, and I’m not sure I want to.
February 27, 2011 at 8:17 am
Wow. I’m a Mac owner as well as an owner of a Sony PRS-650 and my experience has been very different. The page turning on my device is quite speedy — 1 second if that. The only time I’ve seen a lag in the page turns is when I’m standing on the train platform in sub-freezing temps. And I’ve never have any issues using the (admittedly poor) Sony eReader app, the Calibre software or Adobe Digital Editions. I’ve probably read 20 or more books on my SONY device (including ones that I’ve borrowed from the NY public library) since obtaining the device in October.
February 27, 2011 at 12:52 pm
I’m glad to hear that it isn’t a wide-spread issue. How old is your Mac? I think that was part of my problem… my Macbook is at least 4 years old so it doesn’t even support the latest Calibre software.
I may consider getting a Kobo (the ereader by Chapters/Indigo in Canada) since the Adobe Digital Editions worked fine on my laptop.
That’s awesome that the NY library does lending. I think it’s a smart step forward!
May 7, 2011 at 8:48 pm
I too have a Sony reader and a Mac, and have had a very different experience. I started with a PRS-500, back when there was no Mac compatible software to the device. Everything I read online told me it probably wouldn’t work, but it did. It appeared as a mass storage device, and I simply dragged and dropped ebooks into it. Bingo, they were there, and they opened fine. If I took the time to edit the metadata using Calibre, which I discovered later, they would even appear in the correct author order.
Since they introduced the mac compatible software, I haven’t been hugely impressed. It’s quirky software, with odd responses to mouse movements. I only use it to purchase ebooks. Then I move them into Calibre as quickly as possible and use that for management.
I was doing this on a 2008 MacBook Pro, before I bought a 2006 iMac as a media center computer for my house. I have Snow Leopard on it and my PRS-300 still works just fine, even on the older computer.
I have set up my ADE account, and keep it on my dock and it too seems to work fine. But honestly, beyond authorizing it so I can read purchased ebooks, I see zero point in using ADE for ebook management. Calibre is just so much better. And having the Calibre forum to ask question where the developer answers personally within hours is awesome.
My gripe, for which I Googled and was lead here, is the extremely slow response time for selecting “home,” or when selecting an ebook list, such as author or title. My PRS-300 sometimes takes as long as 5 minutes to execute one of these commands, unacceptably slow in my mind. Although I have not maxed out my capacity yet, I do have over 70 ebooks on my reader which may have something to do with the response time. When connected to the computer it may take up to 10 minutes before it recognizes that it is connected. Ridiculous.
I have discovered a handy app for my iPhone, Bluefire Reader, that allows me to load my Sony purchased books onto it. I have used Stanza for this, it’s the most celebrated it seems, but I got tired of it’s also VERY slow response time when loading books. Bluefire uses the iTunes, add files window, which some people refuse to use, but I find works very fast and reliably. So there are many times that the time it takes to load a book on the reader is too long, and it’s just faster to load it onto my iPhone instead. For that reason I am considering going the iPad route, as much as I have loved my Sony readers.