As it turns out, those Sony Reader
leaks from earlier this week were spot on. The company just went official with the PRS-300 and 600, which will more affectionately be known as the Pocket and Touch editions, respectively. The latter (pictured left, not to scale) is the 6-inch resistive touchscreen model replacing the PRS-700, with Memory Stick / Duo and SD card slots. The backlighting layer from its predecessor has been dropped to improve touch responsiveness and to alleviate concerns of glare. It also comes packing a stylus and a digitized copy of the Oxford American English Dictionary and will be available in red, black, and silver. The Pocket Edition, on the other hand, is your standard fare with no touchscreen or expandable disk port, and palettes including blue, silver, and rose. Both models have USB 2.0, 512MB internal memory, and no WiFi whatsoever -- Sony assures us a WiFi version is coming and there'll be news on those coming soon, but this isn't it. There's also Mac compatibility, a first for the series, that's trickling down to older models via a firmware update. Touch and Pocket will be available by the end of August and will retail for $299 and $199, a substantially more competitive price point than its previous generation. Speaking of which, as of tomorrow, the Sony's e-book store is dropping the prices of its bestsellers from $11.99 to $9.99. A win all around, but will it be enough to make a dent in
Kindle's stronghold? Things are certainly getting more interesting.
posted August 4th 2009 6:11PM
Looks like the official Press Release is available:
http://news.sel.sony.com/en/press_room/consumer/computer_peripheral/e_book/release/41163.html
Why d'ya all need 3G or WiFi? Is clicking on "copy" and "paste" so hard?
Considering the price of flash memory, I agree that 512 is a bit stingy. 1GB would have looked really "attractive", but in reality there are few who need to have over 400 books all the time on their reader.
I agree with you on the WiFi. I really couldn't care less about getting books wirelessly.
But as PDF are better rendered in these devices it will be used for more than just casual reading. Think of working in the tech industry where you can have hundreds of tech help books at your grasp and be able to do searches on them. Even when you just consider Microsoft technologies, you have a whole lot of different facets that one simply cannot memorize. Having the tech books with you would be a great help and the more space the better.
It looks pretty good, and surprisingly open for a Sony product.
I wonder how useful the doodle capability is. . . If they could incorporate some sort of hand-writing recognition into it (perhaps the one Microsoft uses in their tablet editions of Windows) it would be great. I could make notes on PDFs, have those notes be searchable . . .
Is it me or does the red one look like a Magnadoodle?
Wow. I thought tech savy people would be smarter. Both Sony and Amazon devices have such harse DRM that you cannot even obtain millions of titles on either device due to the DRM issues. Millions of titles guys. I am sorry, but I am not allowing Sony or Amazon to control what I can and cannot read.
Apparently, you don't know that the Sony supports lrf, epub, pdf, rtf, ADE for library e-books, and with Calibre, all sorts of other formats (and even Microsoft lit can be de-drm'd). The only place where DRM becomes an issue is if you buy a Sony-DRM'd ebook. It can only be read on Sony devices and a PC. And the Sony can't display azw.
Maybe you shouldn't impugn the intelligence of tech-savvy people until after you do the research.
Sony isnt controlling the content. Sony ebook readers are open format, however the book industry does use DRM and therefore they are not free. If you have a book that you can download without DRM Sony ebook will read it.
I would be all over the 600 if I wasn't waiting for the plastic logic reader to come out early next year. Rather carry a larger screen around for reading biz docs as well as books...
This was around at least 6 years ago in all Palms, if not longer before that.
Now if only you could get rid of the margins in pdf's, then you could actually read a pdf properly on an electronic device
I, for one, am happy to see a "sexy" electronic device that doesn't necessarily have an Apple logo on it. Ever so slowly, electronics developers are beginning to realize that we want a bit of visual appeal with our utilitarianism. I'm not into eReaders, and don't plan on buying one, but I do have to give Sony a tip of the hat - I think these look pretty cool.
I just bought the PRS700 2 weeks ago and I have noticed the glare problem. I'm kind of upset that I just bought it and now a better model of the touch will be available at a better price. I bought it online at bestbuy.com. Anyone have experience with Best Buy and returns? Do you think its worth it for me to return it so I can get the newer model?
Sony and Amazon are all the rage today, but what about the e-book reader pioneer Hanlin (Hanlin V3, Hanlin V5, etc)?
I bought a Hanlin V3 about 1 month ago. It is a great gagdet. Recently, I became a Hanlin agent and am selling it on ebay at good prices. (Anyone insterested? Look here http://shop.ebay.com/wangfaweishi/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=
"The Sony Reader is amazing. Just found out you can use Shortcovers eBooks on it as well.
Super easy process!
http://bit.ly/FsI77"