the sony reader
Oct. 13th, 2006 16:37![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
piranhai could have sworn i posted about this when i first heard they were about to release it, but can't find it now.
anyway, sony has released its electronic book reader, ever so originally called the "sony(r) portable reader system". the price tag is too steep for me as yet at U$350, but this is the first of all the ebook readers that seriously tempts me. and the really good news is that they're backordered already until end of november, so it sounds like interest is higher than expected (or maybe sony is being an ass and trying to hype it by making it harder to get?).
it's still far from ideal, but it's starting to really aim in the right direction:
- large, daylight-readable e-ink display (6" diag, 170 ppi)
- changeable text size
- awesome battery life (7500 page-turns; page display itself uses hardly any charge)
- memory capacity for hundreds of books (64MB internal, can use SD memory and memory stick (tm))
- lightweight (about 9oz), about the size of a paperback
- can read txt, pdf, rtf, word (via conversion), and sony's proprietary ebook format
- graphics support at 4 levels of grayscale (jpg, png, gif, bmp)
- audio support (mp3, aac)
no subject
on 2006-10-13 23:58 (UTC)no subject
on 2006-10-14 00:12 (UTC)no subject
on 2006-10-14 02:35 (UTC)http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/12/technology/12pogue.html?ref=technology
I'm still trying to think what I'd find this useful for -- I write in all my books. A lot.
@%
no subject
on 2006-10-14 08:33 (UTC)i no longer write in my books. but clearly this would not be the ebook reader for you then. have a look below, where a link is presented to the rocket ebook reader, which does allow note taking.
no subject
on 2006-10-14 07:00 (UTC)I don't know about this new one, but the Rocket lets you add your own notes to the text using either an on-screen keyboard or a system something like Palm's Graffiti.
By the way, I've never bought content; I usually just grab something from Project Gutenberg.
no subject
on 2006-10-14 08:31 (UTC)for a moment there i thought you were that other guy. :)
i don't recall now why i didn't jump right on the rocket way back when; i remember i wanted to. but then something kept me. did the company threaten to go bankrupt or something? damn, i wish my memory weren't getting so poor.
anyway, i am in love with electronic paper, but really, the rocket is a nice little reader. and wow, that price is excellent -- i could buy one for the paramour and myself, and still come out ahead of the sony. though i don't really care to read by the romantic glow of the screen; my eyes need extra indirect lighting anyway. and it's a bit heavier. the notes feature might be something i ought to point out to zemblan up there; me, i no longer write in my books. the hyperlinking, now, that is nice.
content is at this point sort of irrelevant. eventually (once on the boat) i will want to buy new fiction, but i figure maybe the publishing industry will have worked things out sufficiently by then. if not, i'll buy whichever format what i want to read comes in and use whatever hacks exist to pull out the data and convert it into the format i need. i've never actually looked at it, but considering some of the noisy exchanges on usenet, ebook hacking is quite the thing out there.
hm. something to think about. i shall have to read up on the precise specs. holding one of each in my hands would be nice too. thanks for pointing at it in any case!
no subject
on 2006-10-14 10:27 (UTC)Something like that. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but it was a mess. As of about a year ago the original company was officially dead. I'm not sure where the new company came from or what relationship they have to the old company.
no subject
on 2006-10-19 06:09 (UTC)