SONY READER

The Sony PRS-500 'Reader' is an e-book reader for the U.S. market. It uses an electronic paper display developed by E Ink Corporation, that has 166 dpi resolution, four levels of grayscale, is viewable in direct sunlight, requires no power to maintain the image, and is usable in portrait or landscape orientation. The reader uses an iTunes Store-like interface to purchase books from Sony's Connect eBook store. It also can display Adobe PDFs, personal documents, blogs, RSS newsfeeds, JPEGs, and Sony's proprietary BBeB ("BroadBand eBook") format.
The Reader can play unencrypted MP3 and AAC audio files. Unlike its close cousin, the LIBRIé, the Sony Reader offers no way for the user to annotate a digital book due to lack of a keyboard.
The digital rights management rules of the Reader allow any purchased eBook to be read on up to six devices (at least one of those 6 must be a PC). Although you cannot share purchased eBooks on other people’s devices and accounts, you will have the opportunity to register five Readers to your account and share your books accordingly. At this time Sony has no plans to introduce time-expiring books in the U.S.
The Reader was announced in January 2006. By September 2006, it was available for order from the Sony online store. It competes with other Epaper devices— the Irex iLiad and the Jinke Hanlin eReader.
Since 1 November 2006, Readers have been on display and for sale at Borders bookstores throughout the US, according to posts at MobileRead.com. Borders had an exclusive contract for the Reader through the end of 2006. As of April 2007, Sony Reader is sold in the US by multiple merchants, including Fry's and Best Buy. The Sony Connect eBook store is only available to US residents. However, if you imported the Sony Reader yourself and have received the standard Sony credits, you will be able to use the credits for books at the Sony Connect eBook store, even if you are not a US resident.

Contents

Specifications

Formats supported

Operating system

See also

External links

Specifications

★ Size: 6.9 x 4.9 x 0.5 in (17.5 x 12.4 x 1.3 cm)

★ Weight: 9 oz (250 g)

★ Display:

★
★ size: 6 in (15.5 cm) diagonal (approx 1/4 area of letter-sized page)

★
★ resolution: 166 dpi, four-level gray scale (the 4-level gray screen will not be produced by E Ink anymore. This will be replaced by a 8-level screen branded vizplex)

★
★ portrait: 90.6 x 122.4 mm (3.57" x 4.82"), 600 x 800 pixels | effective 4.54 x 3.47 in (115.4 x 88.2 mm), 754 x 584 pixels

★
★ minimum font size: 6 pt legible, 7 pt recommended

★ Memory: 64 MB standard, Memory Stick (Pro Duo High Speed ''not'' supported. Normal memory sticks are only supported up to 4GB, despite Sony compatibility claims 1) or SD card expansion up to 2 GB (some non-SDHC 4GB cards may work)

★ Rechargeable lithium-ion battery, up to 7500 "page turns" per charge

★ PC interface: USB port

Formats supported

'DRM-free Text': BBeB Book (LRF), PDF, TXT, RTF, DOC. Typefaces in PDF files formatted for 8.5 x 11 inch (216 x 280 mm) pages may be too small to read comfortably. Such files can be reformatted for the Reader screen size with Adobe Acrobat Professional, but not by Adobe Reader software. The Reader does not directly support Microsoft Word .DOC format. The 'CONNECT Reader' application uses Word to convert the .DOC files to RTF before sending them to the Reader.
'DRM Text': BBeB Book (LRX); Titles from major publishers and most small publishers can ONLY be read in Sony's proprietary format (BBeB); For example, such copy-protected ebooks in Adobe format cannot be read on the Sony device as of 17 February 2007
'DRM-free Audio': MP3 and AAC
'Image': JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP (Loading an animated GIF will freeze the Reader)
'RSS': Limited to 20 featured blogs such as Engadget and Wired, no ability to add others and no auto-update (as of December 1, 2006)
The Reader supports TXT and RTF documents with Latin character set only. Other character sets (such as Cyrillic, for example) are not displayed correctly. Sony customer support confirmed that units sold in US only work with Latin characters (as of March 2, 2007). (Unofficial fix allowing to properly show cyrillic characters is available in Russian [1].)

Operating system

The Reader currently does not officially support connection to the Apple Macintosh or Linux operating systems. However, users of alternate operating systems can write files to SD cards which can then be plugged into the Reader. The third-party tool Docudesk PRS Browser for OS X allows Macintosh users to easily manage content on the Sony Reader. Users can also use the free software library and utility libprs500 written by Kovid Goyal to communicate with the Reader and manage their digital library. This utility has both a command line and graphical interface, and is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
An examination of the operating manual reveals that the operating system for the Reader is MontaVista Linux Professional Edition.

See also

★ Sony LIBRIé: the precursor to the Reader, sold only in Japan.

External links

'Official'

★ Sony: Product page at Sony

★ Sony Reader Guide to creating PDF files for the Reader
'Forums'

★ MobileRead Discussion forum, includes access to developers.

★ Slashdot article: Slashdot discussion of the Sony Reader
'Third Party/Tools'

★ libprs500: A library to use the SONY e-book reader with Linux and OS-X.

★ Readerette News Transferrer: Commercial application to download news, blogs, and pod casts to the Sony Reader

★ Docudesk PRS Browser for OS X: Free Mac OS X tool for manipulating files on the Sony Reader.

★ Bookpac's Biblioskop: Software solution (Mac OS X and Win XP) for organizing, tagging, searching, archiving and sharing everything you read: eBooks, weblogs, newspapers, web sites, papers or office documents

★ unofficial Russian language instructions: how to show cyrillic on the Sony Reader
'Reviews/Press'

★ Slate.com: ''Gizmos: The Latest Gadgets and Toys''. October 13, 2006

★ New York Times: Review tied in with e-book industry notes. October 12, 2006

★ TIME.com: Gadget of the Week. October 11, 2006

★ MobileRead: Detailed hands-on review. September 26, 2006

★ MobileRead: Another detailed hands-on review, during a visit at Sony HQ. September 26, 2006

★ PC Magazine: In-depth video review of the hardware. July 24, 2006.

★ Register Article: Register Article on Sony/Borders deal. April 3, 2006

★ Wired: "Screening the Latest Bestseller". January 20, 2006

★ SpicyGadget.com: Sony Reader Review by Iron Cook. November 20, 2006

★ Daily Giz Wiz: Daily Giz Wiz review of the Sony Reader. April 19, 2007

★ The Weekly Standard: Switched-On Book: Is the Sony Reader the library of the future? April 2, 2007

★ AFmag: sequential arts (comics and manga) on the Sony Reader. June 24,2007

★ compatibility issues with SD-cards and memory sticks