![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
The e-reader is dead, long live the e-reader
I bought my first e-reader a few months ago, a Cool-ER from a company called Interead which went bust the week after I bought my toy *sigh*. It was basically a clone of a Netronix-type of reader, so similar to the Cybook. It died this week; the screen is "cracked" internally and although you can see it's still trying to work, about three quarters is covered by a black blob that makes reading impossible, and it isn't refreshing properly. I feel a bit of a fool; I was carrying it in a soft cover to protect the screen from scratches, but in hindsight I should have used a rigid cover to protect it from physical damage. With the vendors out of business I very much doubt I'll be able to do anything about this.
So I went and replaced it with a Sony PRS-505 from trusty old eBay. It was being sold by an Owd Goff who had covered with skulls and roses. Since I have tendencies that way myself, this made it more appealing to me, but less appealing to the general public, so I managed to get it for £65 (just over $100). I have named it "Wanton Rose", since all my computers are named after G&S references and that seems to fit very well.
Both readers can handle a wide variety of formats including epub. This was my main priority in choosing those brands over any of the rivals, and in particular I rejected the Kindle from the first.
The Cool-ER was appreciably lighter. It's very slimline, pared down, and blatantly aiming for an iPod like aesthetic. It weighed less than a typical paperback, and I didn't notice it in my handbag. The PRS-505, with its cover, is much heavier, weighing about as much as a small hardback and making me slightly hesitate to put it in my handbag if I'm not certain I'm going to need reading material. This is actually a major downside, because the whole point of having an e-reader for me is that I want to be able to carry it with me all the time and never again be in that horrible situation of having to wait somewhere without a book to read!
The navigation on the PRS-505 is much nicer; the page turn buttons take exactly the right amount of effort to click, whereas the button on the Cool-ER was really stiff. There's a choice of buttons on the right-hand edge, or on the left at the base; right-handed or left-handed, you can reach to turn the page without in any way needing to change your hold on the device. That's a great improvement for me.
The page-turning is just a little slow on the PRS-505. The Cool-ER was faster (though not lightning-fast), but this advantage was outweighed by the annoyance of often having to make several attempts to press the damn button!
I am not so keen on the way the PRS-505 organizes files; it alphabetizes books by authors' first name, which sets my teeth on edge. It also doesn't show up as a removable drive when I plug it in to my computer. Or rather, it shows up as 3 or 4 different removable drives, and I have to guess which one is functional, and even then I can't see all the files which represent books easily in Windows. I think I shall get round this problem by organizing stuff in Calibre, and using the "collections" feature to sort them in a more sensible way. The Cool-ER was pretty much just a USB drive, its onboard organizing software was really minimal. I liked it that way, because I am happier organizing things my way, but I can imagine this would make it less appealing to a non-geek market, people who want an e-reader to be as easy to use as a traditional codex book. The PRS-505 is more intuitive to navigate while actually in use, I will definitely say that, but it's accomplishing this end by adding a lot of gubbins to the file manager.
Both devices have similar screen size and resolution. The PRS-505 has fewer settings for text size, and also does an odd thing where it doesn't quite reflow text at larger sizes; if a page takes up more than a single screen, it leaves a big gap between pages. In spite of that annoyance I find the text clearer to read, and its handling of pdfs is better than the simpler e-reader.
For $100, though, I'm very satisfied with my new toy :-)
So I went and replaced it with a Sony PRS-505 from trusty old eBay. It was being sold by an Owd Goff who had covered with skulls and roses. Since I have tendencies that way myself, this made it more appealing to me, but less appealing to the general public, so I managed to get it for £65 (just over $100). I have named it "Wanton Rose", since all my computers are named after G&S references and that seems to fit very well.
Both readers can handle a wide variety of formats including epub. This was my main priority in choosing those brands over any of the rivals, and in particular I rejected the Kindle from the first.
The Cool-ER was appreciably lighter. It's very slimline, pared down, and blatantly aiming for an iPod like aesthetic. It weighed less than a typical paperback, and I didn't notice it in my handbag. The PRS-505, with its cover, is much heavier, weighing about as much as a small hardback and making me slightly hesitate to put it in my handbag if I'm not certain I'm going to need reading material. This is actually a major downside, because the whole point of having an e-reader for me is that I want to be able to carry it with me all the time and never again be in that horrible situation of having to wait somewhere without a book to read!
The navigation on the PRS-505 is much nicer; the page turn buttons take exactly the right amount of effort to click, whereas the button on the Cool-ER was really stiff. There's a choice of buttons on the right-hand edge, or on the left at the base; right-handed or left-handed, you can reach to turn the page without in any way needing to change your hold on the device. That's a great improvement for me.
The page-turning is just a little slow on the PRS-505. The Cool-ER was faster (though not lightning-fast), but this advantage was outweighed by the annoyance of often having to make several attempts to press the damn button!
I am not so keen on the way the PRS-505 organizes files; it alphabetizes books by authors' first name, which sets my teeth on edge. It also doesn't show up as a removable drive when I plug it in to my computer. Or rather, it shows up as 3 or 4 different removable drives, and I have to guess which one is functional, and even then I can't see all the files which represent books easily in Windows. I think I shall get round this problem by organizing stuff in Calibre, and using the "collections" feature to sort them in a more sensible way. The Cool-ER was pretty much just a USB drive, its onboard organizing software was really minimal. I liked it that way, because I am happier organizing things my way, but I can imagine this would make it less appealing to a non-geek market, people who want an e-reader to be as easy to use as a traditional codex book. The PRS-505 is more intuitive to navigate while actually in use, I will definitely say that, but it's accomplishing this end by adding a lot of gubbins to the file manager.
Both devices have similar screen size and resolution. The PRS-505 has fewer settings for text size, and also does an odd thing where it doesn't quite reflow text at larger sizes; if a page takes up more than a single screen, it leaves a big gap between pages. In spite of that annoyance I find the text clearer to read, and its handling of pdfs is better than the simpler e-reader.
For $100, though, I'm very satisfied with my new toy :-)
no subject
no subject
Author firstname/lastname issues (of non-DRM'd ebooks) can be fixed in Calibre, but involves re-uploading.
I'm told the plugin "PRS+" will make my PRS-505 show folders, and I'll be able to sort ebooks that way. So far, I've been too nervous/lazy.
The 505 starts having problems when there's more than a few hundred ebooks in its memory; reading the books is fine, but the initial bootup time after connecting to the computer gets long. Mine has about 500 books; boot time is 2-5 minutes depending on how full the battery is.
AFAIK, none of the current ebook readers are really happy with collections in the thousands. They all have the capacity for it, but none of the software is designed to allow easy navigation of a list of 3+ GB of ebooks.
no subject
Have you, perhaps, a Daft Madge? Crazy Meg? Mad Margaret? Poor Peg? :D