Why My Next E-Reader Will Be A Kindle

Safe As Houses, Ma!

E-Readers And Why I Bought Them.

1) Sony PRS-505 after the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books Test Drive.

2) Sony PRS-505 as a gift for a family member.

3) Amazon Kindle 2 as a gift for a family member who uses Audible.

4) Sony PRS-300 as a gift for a family member.

5) Sony PRS-300 as a gift for a family member.

6) Sony PRS-350 for myself.

7) Amazon Kindle with Keyboard given to me.

8) Sony PRS-350 as a gift for a family member.

You can see I have been a Sony loyalist. Amazon and I have a bit of a history. (It's sort of like the whole Matlin / Carville thing but with less procreation.) Events transpired this week to flip me over to the Amazon loyalist side which fit nicely into my prior comments about service dominating an industry where price is no longer a primary consideration. First, Sony created the opportunity. You may recall that the stylus on the PRS-350 broke after 3 months of use. Sony does not consider it a warranty item and wanted over $65 to send me a new stylus. I've been making do without one.

Since I got the K3 as a gift I've used multiple readers. There are things I like about the K3 and things I dislike. I am very attracted to Sony from a design angle and (stylus aside) they have been quite durable for me. Recently I heard an odd sound when taking my Kindle out of it's case. Apparently I bent or dropped it and the screen was broken internally. While the bottom corner of the screen refreshes normally, the rest of it appears to have delaminated (for lack of a better term) leaving a permanent mixed media of graphics and lines. This section of the screen does not refresh. I called Amazon. Amazon apologized and is sending me a new Kindle by 2 day delivery.

I asked Amazon if they understood that I almost certainly broke the Kindle myself.  My customer service agent not only understood, he asked if 2 day service was quick enough as I was still under warranty and the screen was completely covered. A few seconds later I had a return address label for the broken unit. A few hours later I had a tracking number for the new unit. Cost to me? Nothing. Nada. Zero dollars and zero cents. While I am still attracted to Sony from a design sense, it would be the height of foolishness for me to purchase another product from them. Obviously, with price removed from the consideration and features being roughly equal, buying a Kindle is a no-brainer.

It really is all about the service.

Apples To Apples: Taking The Sony Reader Off The Table

I'm not going to even talk about the Sony Tablet or the T series reader. I'm going to completely change my prior stance (that Sony is the elegant reader while Kindle is the clunky cousin). I still believe Sony offers a nicer design (so does Amazon, they appropriated it for their new line) and I prefer the versatility of vendors e-pub offers. These things haven't changed. Moves by both companies in the last few weeks changed my buying habits.

Amazon kills Sony at customer service. It's not even close. My aunt's year old refurbished Kindle broke. Amazon's response was to replace her unit with a brand new one. My daughter's three month old Sony PRS-350 had the stylus tip snap. Sony's response was to completely ignore her. We contacted three different customer service points with the issue and only one answered. That one directed us back to the other two non responsive contact points. After three weeks, I went searching and found I could order the replacement stylus (a small thin piece of plastic) for almost 70 USD. Seriously. Over 65 bucks. The unit was 90. We're using a Nintendo DS stylus that Nintendo sent me for free as a thank you for my loyal patronage. Sony didn't respond to an issue we had with her Bloggie camera either. Sony and I have to break up now. I have options, I don't need Sony telling me otherwise.

I sent the PRS-505 to a new home, told the family to use the PRS-350 until it breaks and began carrying the Kindle With Keyboard. Kindle has changed their software to support an easier method for building collections. If they ever tweak the software to allow me to partition my accounts or give me parental controls on the Kindle's abilities to download & view prior purchases, I will be buying three Kindles the next day. Having moved closer to Sony's design sense, Amazon has paired their better service experience with a better visual for their devices. Then they added library support directly to your device. One more tweak and I will take one of each of the above. Ozy and I still hang out together - he flows a PDF with more flair than Amazon (though they're trying). It's the K3 in my handbag, and soon in the backpacks as well.

It's not me, Sony. It was you. And your stylus.

Apples To Apples: Why You Care About DRM

This is an easy one. I've assumed through this that you already understand DRM, or Digital Rights Management. In case you don't, we're going to break that down. See that candy? (Right now, I could totally go for one of those fat frogs in the lower corner.) Imagine you've bought a big old bag of it. Maybe you've been opening the bag and eating a piece here and there. Maybe you've been saving it up. Whatever, it's your candy and you want to eat it. Now imagine that you take a piece of candy out of the bag, put it on a plate, and someone hits your hand. "That's not your candy." Of course it's your candy. You bought it. You saved it. It's yours. "No, it's not." That is the DRM experience, right there.

When you purchase a book (or the right to read a book, actually) it is encoded with security software designed to keep you from giving the file to 100's of your closest friends. Because of that, you cannot change the format of the book. If you buy EPUB (for Sony) or AZW / MOBI (for Kindle) you are locked into that choice forever. Deciding to change readers means buying all of your books over again. Because of DRM, you may find yourself unable to read your books even with that reader attached. Forget a password, have a computer clock error, there are literally dozens of ways your candy will be taken from you. It's absurd. DRM is a far greater impediment to legal book purchasers than it is to book thieves. As long as people make money off DRM, then DRM will be suggested as a helpful tool to publishing, data be damned. Removing DRM is either Not Cool, Illegal, or A No Brainer depending on who you're speaking with. (This issue is going to fall under personal choice.) Adding insult to DRM injury is a little thing called Agency Pricing. We used to call it Price Fixing and it used to be illegal, but now it just means that publishers can charge you the exact same price for a book at every outlet. If a retailer wants to offer you a discount or incentive? Too bad. They can't. Want to buy the book at Target? They can sell it to you for a penny if they want. In e-book format? Full MSRP with no ability to resell or give the book away and no promise that DRM won't (at some point) keep you from reading it. Attractive, huh? Of course there are publishers who do not practice Agency Pricing, and there are publishers who do not use DRM (Carina Press, that means you!). You could stick to their books (or free books) and live a perfectly happy (if restricted) e-reading life. But we both know you won't.

I'm not going to explain DRM removal to you. That's on you to find out, should you choose to do so, because I don't need the legal hassles. I can give you an example of a situation where you might choose to remove DRM even if you feel you would never want to do so. There's a Kindle owner I know who was reading a multi book series. All but one of the books was for sale as MOBI. One volume was inexplicably unavailable. She could buy it elsewhere in EPUB, or she could download it from a pirate site. She chose to buy it in EPUB, strip the DRM, convert it to MOBI with Calibre and load it to her Kindle. She jumped through 5 hoops to make sure the author was paid and she paid a price far above a used or new paper copy. I promise you that was no deterrent to piracy. (Her kid said they would have just picked up the pirated copy since it was less hassle.) So let's assume that you have decided not to lock you (and your books) to one device. Keeping track of your books is light years easier with a program called Calibre.

Calibre is a means to store your books. Think of it as your virtual bookshelf. You can (on DRM free files, files with DRM cannot be changed) modify a cover, assign tags for easy organizing, rate the books or arrange them by series. Calibre will convert whatever format the book is in to whatever format you need it to be in. Step on your Kindle and break it in half? Calibre will convert the AZW file to EPUB for your iPhone to use until you replace your reader. Here is another place your choice of reader is important. Files from iBooks are locked into Apple's DRM tighter than tight. Hope you don't run into any technical problems (On a computer? When does that occur??) because those books are not currently strippable. If you order from Amazon, you shouldn't update your software. When Amazon improves their software they tend to also improve their DRM restrictions. New hoops for the paying consumer. (I just want to eat that frog, I don't want to play Frogger.) When it comes to freeing your file, the big A's are not your friends. However, if all of this gave you a headache, my advice is to go with a Kindle and don't buy more candy than you can eat in one sitting. Make a wish list of stuff you might want to read and buy one book at a go. (It will minimize your losses, even if it doesn't maximize publisher profits.)

Did we cover everything? If we didn't it's going to have to wait. I feel downright fragile from all this thinking. My Courtney Milan Fan Girl card and I are going to spend some quality time with Unclaimed. I'll let you know how that turns out.

Apples To Apples: Which E-Reader Should I Buy?

I think we've established that there is (at least not yet) One True Reader to rule us all. If you don't mind reading on a backlit screen and don't mind the weight, I prefer using my iPad. I only use my e-ink devices as backup. (It's sort of like having an extra  house key in your wallet.)

That said, I wouldn't buy from the iBookstore unless you are 100% sure you are selling your book reading soul to the iThings forever. (We'll get into why I keep harping on DRM in the next post, just know that I'm using my iPad with files from other vendors.) So, iPad for me for the win, but it costs a bajillion and three dollars, weighs a ton, attracts attention, and gives most people headaches. Back to the Other Ones. Obviously I didn't discuss Kobo, Nook, or any of the other readers on the market. (If someone wants to give me one I will be happy to share my thoughts. I already know I kinda hate B&N, so I doubt we'll be talking Nooks soon.)

I Don't Like Using My Computer / I Want To Use A Lot Of Audiobooks / I Like To Knit Cats - Probably the Kindle is going to work for you. (Do you really knit cats? Because I think a knit cat would be kind of awesome. I saw a knit dissected frog once and I was going to give it to my cousin as a wedding gift but... right. E-reading.) Kindle owns ease of use, you don't have to get a computer involved. The only reason you might want to rethink is if you're not willing to use a Kindle forever. Kindle is second only to Apple in aggressive protection of DRM. Unlocking Kindle books requires you to partially cripple your device. If you side-load your Kindle with other retailers books, you won't get the full benefit of the product. That's sad. Kindle is also a great choice for Audible subscribers and low volume readers.

Should I Wait For The Kindle Tablet? That's a price point choice. I don't think the KT is coming out swinging at the iPad, I think it's going for the Nook. Either way, I expect Kindle 3 is going to end up practically free when the KT hits. You might want to wait for that holiday price drop and decide if the KT offers enough Touch to tempt you.

I'm Richie Rich, Bitch / Status Matters To Me / I Want A Multi-tasking Unit - Go ahead, take your bed self out to the Apple store for a shiny new iPad. Actually don't. Buy a refurbished one directly from Apple. Every refurbished item I've gotten has shipped directly from the factory in China and looked brand spanking new. All of them perform like champs with the same warranty and a lower price. Throw Apple Care on there if you're nervous.

Should I Wait For iPad 3? No. Are you kidding? That's in March of 2012 and you're not the kind of person who can wait for things. Buy it now, sell it later and eat the loss. That's kind of how you roll.

I'm Not Ready To Sell My Soul / Baby Needs A New Pair Of Shoes / I Gotta Get Touched / All My Furniture Comes From Ikea - Don't bother reading on any iThing but the iPad. You'll just break your thumb and spend the money you saved on electronics in healthcare. Get the Sony PRS-350 and call it a day. You might have trouble finding one, honestly. The 350 had a better reputation for reliability than the 650 and given the somewhat fussy attitude of my 350, that's quite a statement. With the new models coming out, these are scarce but can be found for under $130. With the Sony you're gaining public libraries and better book ownership, but you're losing WiFi and 3G book loading. (For now.) As of yet, Sony hasn't been too interested in playing DRM reindeer games so liberating your purchased file isn't exceptionally difficult.

Should I Wait For The Sony T-1? Yes. While the full specs of the upcoming Reader haven't hit, the T-1 could break into the Amazon experience by offering their own version of WhisperSync and computer free loading. If the price point rumors are true, Sony may have realized that positioning themselves at the top of the price market wasn't working. You could end up much happier by waiting. I can't tell you how much happier, Sony isn't calling me. (If you see Sony, could you tell them Angela and I don't want our two dollars back. Just them.) Hey, Sony! Over here! Let's have a play date! I've got cookies!

Brokie McBrokerson Is In The House / Touching Is Not For Me / I Rock My Atari 2600 On Date Nights - The Sony 505 is a perfectly respectable option. While we're probably nearing the battery failure point on some more heavily used units, my refurbished one is still going strong. (Actually, I just kicked Baby to the big curb. That's right. Baby's living at my inlaw's place now. Somebody had to go! It's like the moonwalker at the fair - first in, first out.) if you can pick a Sony 505 up at a decent price, it's probably worth getting. If the price is low enough, it might be a good entry point into deciding if you want to deal with e-reading at all.

Should I Wait For More Information? How should I know? I can show you where the trigger is but you've got to decide when to pull it. I think that e-reading is here and it's here to stay. While I do know a few who have tried e and gone back to p (paper, that is) I know far more who have embraced the e and never looked back. Readers who were telling me just ten months ago that they would never read a book they couldn't huff are sniffing electronic cases happily. (Of course I say I told you so, are you kidding me?) The choice has to be yours. You've been hanging out here long enough. You're curious. Give it a go!


Tuesday(ish) - All About Calibre, or, What Is DRM And Why Won't You Shut Up About It?

Apples To Apples: Reviewing The Kindle 3

Are we still doing this? (How can we still be doing this?) Ok then. Here we are. Drumroll for the big dog in the fight, the Kindle 3.  The Kindle 3 is the reader you buy your grandmother. Ordered from Amazon, it's ready to go out of the box. Picked up at Target, it just takes a few minutes to authorize. The Kindle has some serious weight behind it, so let's talk about it's limitations first. The Kindle has a visual design only it's mother could love. Let's be real, it's ugly. Grey may be my favorite color but carrying a keyboard around at the bottom of my reader... all I can think to compare it to is tying a fanny pack on a chubby teenager. That keyboard is not doing Kindle 3's styling any favors. Adding insult to that injury,  the letters are going to wear off the keys fairly rapidly. Sony is correct to place the page turn keys on the base of their units. While the Kindle buttons are smoother to operate, having them on the sides is cumbersome. There's no great place to hold a naked Kindle. Although it is extremely light, I haven't found a position that is both stable and enables one finger swiping of the pages. Mostly I hold it in one hand, hit the button with the other. That's way too much effort for someone like me. (It's probably my tiny mutant hands, but I need some buttons rearranged.)


Other than that, Kindle could eat everyone else's lunch and still have room for dessert. Yes, it's cumbersome not to have Touch after experiencing it with other e-readers and yes, there are some serious limitations in the Amazon interface, but let's not kid ourselves. WhisperSync makes up for a lot. The selling point of the Kindle is that buying and loading books is ridiculously easy. This is true. You want it, you click on it, you have it. There's no need to get out your USB cable, there's no need to shop around. Click. Read. Done. Additionally, if you forget your Kindle on the bus or in your other handbag or at the office, just pull out your iThing or your laptop or whatever you've loaded your Kindle App to and resume reading where you left off. Click. Read. Done. Amazon doesn't need to make the changes that would ensure it's dominion when it already holds that power. No other reader can follow you from device to device at this time. For sheer ease of use the Kindle cannot be beat. While it's plastic case is more prone to breakage than other units,  Amazon's customer service handles that easily. Broke your Kindle a day before the warranty ran out? Odds are good you're getting a new one. Day after? I still like your chances. Amazon recognizes that the real value of the Kindle is not the unit you're holding in your hand but the consumer relationship between your wallet and their store. Suddenly remember you forgot to order Aunt Seraphina's 80th Birthday Gift? Use the web browser to connect to Amazon and hook that up before resuming your read. It may not be an elegant or quick browser but it just saved you from having to leave the Lazy-Boy.


Click. Read. Done. and WhisperSync are so attractive that I would leave the better designed Sony product behind if Amazon would make a few changes to it's software. Kindle files everything under The. While you can make collections, it's cumbersome and annoying to do so. Instead of a fetishist joy, building collections is a root canal. You know the longer you put off getting started the worse it will be, but you still avoid it. Making things worse is the lack of WhisperSync for non-Amazon purchases. Did you sideload your previously purchased (now unlocked and converted) Sony library to that Kindle? No WhisperSync for you. Amazon only wants to maintain the library you paid it for. (It's a little ironic that Apple and Amazon are currently facing off over whose closed system can be the tightest. Both of those guys need to loosen up so we could fit more money in their pocket.) The other thing keeping me from Kindle is it's lack of locks. With the Sony and iPad systems I know my companions are too lazy to get a USB cable out and teach themselves how Calibre looks. I can load a reader with the books they wanted, hand it off, and call it a day. While Kindle has the (awesome!) option to link up to six units to one account, it does not let me partition which Kindles see which books. This means your four year old early reader can accidentally download your Erica Jong collection. You can't buy Puppies On Parade without Uncle Joe noticing. You can't even have a special folder marked YOUR BOOKS ARE HERE for when your partner (who still doesn't want an e-reader) borrows your Kindle (again) and asks who needs 360 books in their Archive. (As we all know this leads to said partner researching How To Delete Books From A Kindle Archive and tossing half your books out in their effort to 'help' you find 'things' more easily.)

On paper, Kindle is the perfect lover. In the flesh, it's easy to notice Kindle needs to floss more. I'm not sure what's going to happen to mine. I could de-authorize it and establish a separate account for another user, but that creates needless partitioning issues for my computer and iThings. I could hand it off to another user and tell them not to even think about messing about with the Archive. I could give up Touch and accept only some of my books will be both WhisperSync'd and automatically delivered on release. I'm completely on the fence. If you plan on only buying from one source and you don't like sharing; if you think organizing your books easily is for sissies or buy only a dozen books a year, the Kindle will never make you cry. With it's ease of use for Audiobooks and insanely simple text scaling, it is a huge hit with the older members of my clan. It is not an accident Amazon is dominating this market, but they haven't done so in a way that makes me stop looking at Sony.


Points Of Awesome

• No Cable Needed. WiFi or 3G Load Options
• Elementary Interface
• Customer Service Out The Wazoo
• Backed By Internet's Largest Store
• MOBI Also Sold Elsewhere
• Insane Battery Life
• Automatic Loading Of Pre-orders
• Limited Loaning
• Easy Gifting
• Lightweight & Pleasant To Hold
• Best Screen For Clear Reading
• Built In Support For Audible Books

Points of Bummer

• Keyboards
• Cumbersome Navigation For Large Libraries
• Lack Of Locks
• Must Jailbreak To Lose Ugly Screensavers
• Lack Of Support From Most Public Libraries
• Ugly As Shame
• Feels Kinda Cheap
• Only Fully Supports Amazon Purchased Product

Monday(ish) - So What Do I Buy? 

Tuesday - Why Calibre?

Apples To Apples: Reviewing The Sony PRS-350

I don't care if it's sex or it's cookies - there are some things in life that are very hard to refuse if you've said yes in the past. Touching your e-reader is absolutely in that category.

My Sony PRS-350 was a true impulse buy. We were planning 6 weeks of travel with a location change every few days. Ordinarily I would have taken the iPad for myself and the Sony 505 for my companions. Events transpired (cue doom and gloom music here) in such a way that I found myself traveling with a lifting restriction. One pound. No more. The iPad itself weighs more than that, never mind adding my passport, the iPad case, my wallet... you get the idea. I decided to borrow a second 505 from my sibling. Because our lives are an O'Henry story, my sibling sold it to make rent. Enter the Sony PRS-350. It fit two criteria; it was lightweight and it was in stock. OK, three. I already knew how to use it. My intention was to sell it after the trip and take whatever loss there was as a rental fee. I still have it. It's (I would say my precious but I absolutely loathe Tolkien) in my handbag as we speak. During our trip I found that my previously beloved 505 felt cumbersome and outdated after using the iPad. Having to press buttons and choose from text selections and all of that was soooooo much work after the ease of the iPad experience. Between the included stylus (that it took me a week to notice, I'm slow like that) and the ability to search my books by cover, the Sony PRS-350 was kicking my 505 to the curb. While not quite as crisp as a Kindle screen, the PRS-350 offered much better resolution than my 505. (Previous touch editions were too fuzzy for my comfort.) Rather than having to buy a pricey cover for the 350, it fit easily into the larger of a Tokidoki for Sephora Passe Pouch set. A selection of which, and I know this will shock you, I already had.

Loading the PRS-350 is the same as a PRS-505. Sony made some welcome improvements to the Reader Store in support of the device but the basic mechanics are unchanged. This is a USB street. My 505 charger didn't work with the PRS-350, but Sony did sell a dedicated charger for wall use. The unit may be significantly smaller than the 505 but the screen is large enough that I never felt like I was reading on an iPhone. It seemed like a mass market paperback, easily held in one hand. While my initial impressions of the touch mechanism were that it was balky and less refined than the Apple experience, part of that was simply needing an adjustment period. By the end of the trip I was at ease with the touch mechanism and reading smoothly. (In many situations I did find it more comfortable to use the navigation buttons for page turns.)  Having mechanical controls as well is wonderful when you're in a situation that makes using the touch screen unwise (Powdered sugar happens, ok? It happens!) While initially concerned that the raised edge / curved edge design would make it uncomfortable to use (I'm a lefty) the fit was natural and well balanced.

Design is where Sony excels. Even with the removal of the 505's full metal case (the 350 is made of several materials) the unit feels solid and expensive. The slightly rubberized back reduces slip while the brushed front reduces fingerprints. These are units people thought about. Although the PRS-350 lacks the memory card slots of the larger units, there is more than enough memory for casual use. I loaded around 200 books to mine without filling it up. Aside from a lack of WiFi or 3G support, Sony's main downfall is it's hang time. If you want to delete the notes you made about a book (or anything else) the spinning arrows go on for far too long. Suddenly your beloved partner is some ancient relative screaming "I'm thinking, ok? Keep your pants on!" instead of rushing to meet your needs with the joie de vivre of youth. You may hover between fear that the system has crashed and the knowledge that if you don't wait it out you could trigger a crash where none was occurring. PRS-350 moves at it's own pace. Sometimes that pace suddenly slows to a crawl. The page refresh is not invisible, but fast enough that you quickly become accustomed to it. (Page refresh is when you move to the next page, the screen flashes dark for a moment then returns to normal with the new text.) My PRS-350 is playful. It likes to play a game called Hide The Battery Charge. Sometimes it will tell me the battery has drained and it needs to go to sleep even if I have just fully charged it. Nothing works until I plug it back into my computer. Within moments it laughs and says just playing. We good. Full battery on board. Hey, let's get a snack. While this is rare, it's only fun for one of us and that one is not me.

I believe this is what keeps 350 from overtaking the 505 in people's hearts. Still, because we've gone Touch we can't really go back.  Even with it's little quirks, the 350 shoved 505 out of my life. The crisper text, the ability to navigate by finger swipe, the note taking and highlighting ease all combined to make 350 my dominant travel reader. Then someone gave me a Kindle. WHAT WILL HAPPEN? (A really long and certainly boring review of outdated tech I still own, for one thing.) Oh, it's go time around here. With four readers sharing real estate on a desktop meant for a maximum of two, someone is going to hit the curb. It won't be iPad, he's the 800 lb gorilla in this gang. Also, Steve Jobs would beat me up. I know he's super sick and all, but that guy intimidates me. I'm pretty sure his turtleneck hides super secret weapons from the future. C'mon, iThings AND Pixar? No way that's natural.) Hey! This would be a good place for a segue! I know I said we'd talk the upcoming Sony T-1 talk today, but as it's an Android based unit and Amazon is talking about it's Android based Kindle upgrade, I think we're going to talk about them together and later. Probably under What To Buy. (I love spending other people's money. Ask anyone who's stood near me with a wallet.) Also, I asked Sony if they'd pretty please consider giving me one because I am super extra special and they didn't call me back. I think I had the right number. I mean, it's not like Nook answered or something.


Points of Awesome

• Small Size Without Sacrificing Reading Experience
• Lightweight & Elegant
• Good Storage Capacity
• Long Battery Life 
• Touch, Not The Bad Kind
• Note Taking, Highlighting
• Custom Lock Screens
• EPUB (Public Library) Compatible

Points of Bummer

• Must Be This USB Connected To Use
• Can Be Fickle
• Super Extra Slow Compiling Issues
• Discontinued Product
• Lacks Flavor When You Lick It
• Sony Charges $65 For A Stylus

Sunday(ish) - Kindle, All That Or What?

Monday - So What Do I Buy? 

Tuesday - Why Calibre?

Apples To Apples: Reviewing The iPod / iPad Reader

I understand there are people who read on their iPhones or iPods. I do not understand these people. I've read two books on the iPhone and both times I thought it was great for repetitive stress injuries of the thumb. If you're basing your opinion of e-reading on your iPhone experience, stop. It's not fair to either of you. Reading a book on the iPhone is akin to eating with a single chopstick. (You know, last night this dude was telling me that people used to hook up multiple Nintendo Gamecubes into a hybrid home computer. There are things you can do and there are things you should do.) When I was given my shiny iPad I didn't expect to be replacing my Sony 505. The iPad is cumbersome to carry around on errands, difficult to balance in one hand, and impossible to use in direct sunlight. I also expected it to cause eyestrain, headaches, a return of the Salem witch trials and psoriasis. (While I still don't know exactly what psoriasis is, the trials thing is totally happening!)

I'm a night reader. I do 85% of my reading in bed or on the sofa so not needing a light source made the iPad a much better option than the Sony 505. People in my home (who are very, very sensitive to peas no matter how many mattresses you lay atop them) claimed the click of the Sony 505's page turn was impossible to sleep through. Pretty soon I found myself doing most of my reading on the iPad and just leaving the Sony 505 in my bag for emergencies. Reading on the iPad is a whole entire thing. Depending on which model you purchase an iPad will either store half a gazillion books or a gazillion and three. The iPad also offers the previously undreamed of ability to display books in color. This means cookbooks, comic books, magazines, all sorts of media that isn't very exciting at scaleable e-ink greyscale is super extra sexy on the iPad (as long as you stay indoors, clean your screen fairly frequently and make sure any ambient light isn't causing your face to reflect into the center of the page). While the iPad is crazy heavy compared to other devices, it's roughly the same as an average hardcover book. The page refresh is faster and feels more natural than the page refresh of an e-ink device. You flick your finger and the page moves - your brain is used to that.

The first choice a reader using an iPad has to make is which app to use. There are more reading apps than there are petals on a dandelion. Kindle will transfer your Amazon e-books directly to your iPad with all of the glorious ability to browse by full color cover intact, but categorizing them can be cumbersome and annoying. iBooks will give you a fairly easy interface to categorize your books (again, full color browsing intact) but it isn't very elegant. Once you get your permissions to agree (if you're working with DRM) it's a decent no-frills option for your EPUB and PDF files. Don't confuse iBooks with using the iBookstore. The iBookstore is the single worst place to buy a book in the history of books, even including German train stations. The iBookstore is so bad it makes me think Apple wants to hurt me. Friends don't let friends shop at iBookstore. Even after I switched to reading on the iPad I kept buying books from other sources. (I don't even download free books from iBookstore.) Granted, the iBookstore interface has greatly improved since launch. Adding it to the iTunes store was tempting, but Apple's extra special DRM is more than I care to deal with. Books purchased in the iBookstore cannot be transferred to my Sony devices. Books bought from Sony or Amazon can be transferred to my iPad. Holy no brainer, Batman.

Picking your reading app is a lot like picking out your shoes. Put some on your feet and see what you think. For me, using Calibre to load my books and Sony or Amazon to purchase them has been the best solution. Frankly, I buy from Sony (or various publishers directly, or Books On Board) far more than I do from Amazon. The Amazon ease of use is offset by a weird increase in typos or editing errors. For some reason conversions to MOBI are less carefully proofed than conversions to EPUB. (Download a few dozen free book samples and you'll probably run across this.) Another pitfall with the iPad is everything else it can do. Hit a boring chapter? Suddenly you're on Twitter or surfing the internet or playing Tetris and it's an hour later. An abundance of choice can lead to a scarcity of consumption. Still, if iBooks were DRM free and I never needed to read outdoors, the iPad would be a strong contender for the One True Device. Browsing books by cover and turning pages with a finger flick is a very natural reading experience, making it easy to forget you are not holding a paper book.

Points of Awesome

• No Light Required
• Large Capacity
• Natural Page Turns
• No Buttons, Swipe With Finger
• Supports Kindle via WiFi
• Loads From iTunes
• Color Screen
• Large Format

Points of Bummer

• Much Shorter Battery Life Than Alternatives
• Cumbersome
• All Those Distracting Apps
• Super Sucky DRM Issues
• Avoid Direct Sunlight (And Garlic)
• Pricey McPricerton
• Not Handbag Friendly
• Causes Eyestrain In Some Users

Tomorrow - The Sony PRS-350 & T-1 Thoughts

Sunday - Kindle, All That Or What?

Monday - So What Do I Buy? 

Tuesday - Why Calibre?

Apples To Apples: Reviewing The Sony PRS-505

In the Apples to Apples comparisons I'm going to keep it pretty straightforward. Don't worry, we're not talking "This is based on Linux" serious, let's not get crazy. More of a "Here's how we use this bad boy" instead of "Sony 505 and I make sweet, sweet love while looking at pictures of puppies." (Oh c'mon. Like you've never sneaked a peek at the puppy cams.)

Sony  launched the E-Reader in the early 90's with the Data Discman. (I distinctly recall seeing it in the store and saying "Cha-yea-right. Who's going to read books on a screen?" This is why I am not living on my own private island. That and I never met Richard Branson.) You would think Sony would own the market, but some key choices put Amazon on top. (I'll get to all that when we talk Kindle.) The Sony PRS-505 has held up as the gold standard for E-Reading. Despite being replaced by multiple updated units, the 505 still commands roughly $100 USD on ebay. Consider it the fetish piece of current e-readers. While a generation behind the most current e-ink screens the 505 offers a reading experience close to a printed mass market book. (Let's not kid ourselves, some of those paper pages are downright fuzzy). This was the first e-reader with a high enough resolution to make me consider jumping into the e-book world. From a design perspective, this is the Mercedes to other e-reader's Yugo. Brushed metal cases are well fitted with smooth and responsive buttons. The two memory card slots (I have a 4 GB SD card in mine) are nicely recessed to avoid trapping dirt. The 505 can be finicky on occasion - mine has crashed twice. Both times a hard reset brought it back, but without connectivity a hard reset means waiting until you can access your computer to reload your books.

Here is the 505's Achilles Heel - The Loading of Books. Angela James of Carina Press has been open on Twitter about the Sony Reader Store software refusing to install on her Mac. A major editor for the ebook only branch of a major publishing firm can't use your software? That's a (major) problem. When I obtained my 505 it didn't support Mac. We had some growing pains at first. After the Mac update, it was pretty smooth. I don't find the Reader Store software particularly versatile. I found myself switching to Calibre for file management. (Let's make file management it's own entry, since that is like, omgsoboringIwanttodie and all. For the purposes of these posts you have DRM free files that you maintain with Calibre. Ok? Ok.) The Sony 505 requires a USB connection and the ability to navigate (with DRM) Adobe, the Sony Reader Store, and basic file loading. This won't work for your 87 year old grandmother who pounds on the keys wondering why the laptop won't change the television channels. (Not your grandma. She could totally sudo my root tree, I give you that. Some other dude's grandma. My bad.) Without DRM, it's plugging the 505 into your computer and having Calibre feed it lots of yummy noms. Until the memory runs out.

The PRS-505 has the attention span of, well, me. You're going to need that SD card. Once you are using an SD card any category of books (ie tags you've given your files - like That Junk My Sister Reads or Books Where Everyone Dies And I Cry A Lot) that is also being used by a book in your main memory will duplicate itself. This means you will have 3 books in Super Hawt Reads About Puppies listed and right below that the same category will have 1 book listed. This is crazy annoying when your partner opens the collection labeled Here Is YOUR Stuff On MY Reader Because YOU Keep Saying You Don't Want One LOSER and complains they can't find the book they just loaded. (Pro-Tip: It's in the collection on the next page, the one with the same name.) An easy workaround is to give up the storage in the main memory and put all your books on the SD card. Do not fiddle with the SD card. If you lose it on the bus and find yourself stuck in traffic without any books in the main memory you will cry silent tears of regret. People will think you're the crazy homeless person that rides all day and drop nickels in your tote bag. It won't help.

Ok, so we've loaded our 505 via USB cable from the computer, we've checked out our library books or purchased them from a friendly e-pub seller near us, we've organized them into easy to find collections and tossed a few pictures onto the 505 for custom screen saver action. Now what? Now nothing. You're done. The battery life on this thing is insane. You can charge the PRS-505 roughly once a month (sometimes less) via the USB cable or a wall charger. Sony sold a charger for way too much money so I use a third party PSP wall charger that works perfectly. I've dropped it, set things on it, tossed it to rattle around the bottom of my purse and handed it off to my kids. The text navigation is easy to use and the learning curve ends with Get My Freaking Books To Open Class (also called DRM 101). It's workhorse nature is why the 505 lives on after it's been taken out to pasture and shot as a product line. This is a well designed reliable reader. So why did I kick it to the curb? (Ok, the tween's backpack, but still.) Stay Tuned.

Points of Awesome

• Reliable
• Expandable Memory
• Long Battery Life
• Intuitive Controls
• Many Public Libraries Support Format
• Beautiful Design
• Decent Page Refresh Time

Points of Bummer

• Must Be At Computer To Load
• Requires Adobe
• No WiFi / 3G Support
• Internal Memory Small
• Loading From The SD Card Slower
• Discontinued Product

Tomorrow - iPod or iPad?

Saturday - The Sony PRS-350 & T-1 Thoughts

Sunday - Kindle, All That Or What?

Monday - So What Do I Buy? 

Tuesday - Why Calibre?