Another PRS-T1 review by me

[babaca]

I posted it on my journal, but since I crossposted my earlier grumble, I may as well post it here. There are pictures:

Okay I've had the reader a few days now, and the cover with the light arrived on Friday. After fixing my initial bugs with the reader and my sd card life is fine. I took this photos on my camera and am way too lazy to resize them. Maybe I'll do it later. Okay, I couldn't stand them so large. They have been resized. If they still look huge, just click the reload button on your browser. So apologies in advance.



Without the cover this reader is incredibly light. You don't get tired holding it like some of the other readers that have a bit of heft do. It's plastic and easily scruffable. The top of my device looks a little scratched and it's a dust magnet. It's scratched looking from me rubbing away the dust and lint it seems to love to fine on my duvet.


The cover is also plastic. It is really more like a case you click the reader in (because there are no holes to plug it into a case. So if you have a cover you thought you could use with this... forget about it. The light is pretty good (there is only one setting unlike the one for the 650 that had high and low light. There is no assigned place for the stylus. I just clip it on the spine of the cover because there is no other place for it. (I miss the days when the stylus fit inside of the reader).





Software experience:

I hate the new software for the PC. It's not easy to do anything. It's all very pretty but functional? Hell no. I've learn to bypass it by just plugging in the reader and going to the sd card via Windows Explorer and putting the books I want on it there. Using the Sony Software will only be a lesson in frustration because it takes forever for it to recognize your reader and your sd card. The old reader software (which stays on your machine because it is saved in a different folder on your computer will not recognize your reader, but it will see your sd card. Go figure. Calibre users won't see their reader appear either because the folks who write the program don't have a new Sony reader yet.

Reading experience:

The screen is like the 650. Nice sharp ink, faster turn rate than before. You can resize your font 8 different sizes and there are 7 different font types you can use. It's pretty smooth experience.






Here are pictures of the home page:




When you do a long-press on a word, not only does it give you the definition at the bottom of the page but it also offers to let you look the word up on Wikipedia, Google, Add a Note, Highlight it, or just Search.


Mind you the down sides are this books does not recognize Word doc or rtf files. You can search for them, they don't show up at all. However if you save them as txt files they will appear on your reader.


WIFI experience:

Once you have the wifi set up, it's pretty easy. Be sure to turn it off when you aren't using it to save on battery life, although it will go into standby mode if you haven't used it for five minutes.

I tested buying books (I went for free books) on a few sites. Of course the Sony Reader Store was smooth with no issues. Mind you I did buys some books from Dreamspinner but it wouldn't download the book to the device. I went to kobobooks and I could download directly to the reader there.


I tried the Public Library link. Austin for the longest time didn't have any libraries on this list, but they do now. I have to remember to get a library card from the library near me so I can use this.

Web browsing. It's adequate but not if you go to a busy website. I had gone to Silver Publishing and the page on the reader just kept flashing so much as it kept trying to load the page that it was unreadable. CNN.com will take you to their m.cnn.com page (for mobile devices). I fear some places may have to come up with a mobile version that is not so flashy.


I doubt I will have the wifi on all that much but it is nice to have.

So overall my experience has improved greatly. As long as I avoid using the Sony software on the PC (they are bound to fix the slowness on that)

Comments

[elf]

I've been ignoring the reader library for over a year; I use drag-and-drop to load books. I care about the firmware on the device; don't care about Sony's library program 'cos I'm not going to bother. (I don't do DRM at all, not even for freebies.) I bounce between 3 computers currently and that's likely to be 4 soon (work is assigning me a laptop), and the registration issues are too much to bother with.

I might look at a 650; I'd been looking forward to the web browser. My daughter has a Kindle that she uses pretty much exclusively to read Fanfiction.net.

I might consider a 350; I prefer the 5" screen. (But that doesn't have the memory card slot. Gah.) Or I'll just keep waiting for one of the smaller companies to hit on the right combination of features; my PEZ is working just fine, and it's not like I need 24/7 web access mixed in with my books.

[babaca]

Oh... Only the T1 or the 950 Daily edition would have a browser. Hmm... I'll have to start reading Fanfiction.net on the reader. It never occurred to me. Great idea.

But I tend to drag and drop books on my reader rather than using the Sony software to do it also. Thus I haven't really bothered with the new reader software very much.