Sony Reader goes open, will be able to work with other booksellers

While Sony's Reader has never received the enormous press or enjoyed the supposed whirlwind sales of Amazon's Kindle e-book, and is certainly lacking in, erm, EV-DOness, the Reader is about to get one trick the Kindle doesn't have yet: openness. Sony will be shooting out an update on Thursday to allow the Reader to use purchased books in the protected EPUB format from whoever is peddling them, instead of being tied to the Sony's e-book store, or just DRM-free text and PDF documents. That openness should help Sony beef up its selection -- which is lagging behind Amazon's -- and will hopefully mark a bit of a turning point in the e-book market to more standards and, more importantly, more books.

[sam1am Posted Jul 24th 2008 6:17PM]

Sony, the company that is notoriously CLOSED, proprietary, and uber-annoying has released one of the most open, accessible book readers on the market. I mean, it shows up as a mass storage device, and you can drag book onto it. It runs Linux. It's a departure from everything Sony has every stood for in the past.

Amazon, who pioneered DRM-free music downloads, releases the most closed book reader on the market. Complete with obtrusive DRM, nickle-and-dime-ing usage restrictions and a closed, closed operating system that is more difficult to hack.

My how the tables have turned.

[matthew2 Posted Jul 24th 2008 9:27PM]

Where are you getting this garbage from? The Kindle format is DRM, just like every format that's used online. You don't have to use Kindle formatted ebooks though.

The Kindle shows up as a mass-storage device just like the Sony. It runs on Linux just like the sony. You can download the source code from their website if you want. Of course it doesn't read ePub, it wasn't a popular format until very recently. Hopefully this announcement will get Amazon on working on a firmware upgrade for the Kindle as well.

[johnpombrio Posted Jul 24th 2008 8:46PM]

I have the SONY Reader and love it. I have read literally dozens of books on it. In perspective, I PREFER it over a paperback for readability but not as good as a hardcover.
It is terrible for PDF's of magazines or textbooks as it is just too small to read and has no color.
For complete acceptance, we will need two readers, one a little larger for plain text books. Another at the size of a sheet of paper and in color for magazines and textbooks.
As for the price of books, there are converters out there that changes e-book formats (With BookDesigner 4.0, I can generate thousands of books to the SONY format) and there will soon be ways to crack the DRM. . That will make them easily swapped and available. Libraries will be able to download them to your reader for free.
It is INEVITABLE that, like music now, like TV is going, books will eventually move to completely digital. A library full of books on a hard drive. Think of it.

[beezle Posted Jul 24th 2008 9:25PM]

@Mike

Firmware update? HA.... maybe in the year 2525

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 25th 2008 11:30AM]

The update makes PDFs very readable. Yes, before the update, there was no use in loading pdfs. I just converted them to word and saved them as RTFs before but now, even non-DRM'd PDFs look great.

Gotta get on the Library's website and download a few books in Adobe DE and see how they do.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 27th 2008 5:52AM]

"There are tons of devices you probably already have that have LCD screens and can display text files, but a true e-book reader is a completely different experience. It really isn't comparable."

You're quite right. It won't fit in your pocket. The display is woeful. The page turn is painful. It's riddled with DRM. It's *horrifically* expensive. No .prc? FAIL.

Yuk.

When these are properly open format, and when they'll fold up and fit in your pocket, I'll think about one. Until then - Kindle sold on pure hype, Sony are their usual arrogant selves, and e-ink is STILL not up to the job. I'll stick with my £10 PDA on which I can read any format, kthx.