Sony Hosts MobileRead (and others) on "Blogger's Day"

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by Slava

Natch,

thank you for review. I have one question, do you know if Reader supports Unicode? Can one read non-english books/documents?

Thanks!

Hmmm. That's a good one. I'm sorry, but it just didn't occur to me to try it. Wish it had....

[lordvetinari2]

Amazing review, simply amazing. Thanks to Sony for this showing off and thanks to you for a very detailed review. It feels like when Apple releases the first minutes of a movie for a trailer. Too much of a teaser for me, I think I should hit the official meditation thread pretty soon! All you need is Ommm!

Pity not checking about Unicode, but I already counted on it. I expect it to work, though. At least in PDF & RTF, if not in TXT. The Reader should have at least Western coding, as I hear Spanish is the second language in those parts (specially in California, Texas and Florida, right?), and might hurt sales otherwise.

Any chance of asking if the batteries are from Sony as well? I would not like them to burst in flames, you know... I hear no Sony laptops are caught up in the battery blaze (looks like they kept the non-exploding ones for them), but better to be on the safe side.

It's a bit surprising that you would need an adaptor for Sony memory cards, and not for SD, but... BTW, nice to know MMC cards work (I have a spare 256 Mb one).

Thus sprach NatCh:

The standard cover seems the best choice for the addition of large, friendly letters

Oh dear, my nipples explode with delight! That's a very good idea!

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by Xtremegene

Small question in regards to your unprocessed & processed RTF experience. Did the Reader itself also make a cache file when opening the unprocessed RTF for the first time (in effect, making it processed)?

Sorry I missed this before -- too much happening at once, my bad.

Yes, the Reader does make a cache file for RTFs, the file I attached is from one of my memory cards, as it happens. It's just a whole lot faster to let the PC do it rather than the Reader.

After I opened a file the first time, and it did its thing on it, that file would open right back up each time after that.

@ lordvetinari2: I think that's what they call an overshare.

[Xenophon]

And if you did, which format did you use? Since the vast majority of my eBooks come from Baen, I'd sure like to know how that works out.

Also, did they say anything farther about Mac support (or lack thereof)?

Xenophon

[lordvetinari2]

Originally Posted by NatCh

@ lordvetinari2: I think that's what they call an overshare.

If you mean the "nipple" part, it's a Monty Python quote: Dirty Hungarian handbook sketch British humour, you know?

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

And if you did, which format did you use? Since the vast majority of my eBooks come from Baen, I'd sure like to know how that works out.

Also, did they say anything farther about Mac support (or lack thereof)?

Yes, I used RTF, worked like a dream.

They didn't really say anything more about Macs. All I've got in my personal bag of tricks is an old rumor (a couple months ago, maybe) that they might be considering it at some point.


@ lordvetinari2: Yup, that was it. Reminds me of Schwartzenager doing "Hamlet" -- "Ho, I'm going to make a speech. But first, I'm going to rip through a wall, and flex my nipples!"

How did I get dragged into this conversation?

[gozel]

Hi! Thanks for the post, it was very informative. I am looking into buying the reader and was wondering something very specific. I am a die-hard linux user with no thoughts of switching so the connect software wouldn't work for me. I wonder, though: can I simply transfer PDFs and txts onto an SD card and slap it into the reader? If I could, I can still use it in linux (sorta). Thank you so much!

[NatCh]

Yes, you can read files directly from a memory card. There is some processing overhead as the Reader indexes the card upon insertion, and the files the first time they're opened. The Connect Software does the same file indexing for you much faster on the PC than the Reader can with its slower processer, but if you're willing to accept that trade off, you're good to go.

[Andy Baird]

I'm coming in on this a little late, but having just ordered a PRS-500 Reader after reading NatCh's extremely helpful review, I wanted to say thanks!

[NatCh]

Welcome to MobileRead, Andy, and thanks for the blast from the past -- I haven't seen this thread for quite some time!

I'm glad that you found it helpful, and congratulations on your impending arrival. Stick around, there's lots and lots of great info on the site, and a growing number of books nicely formatted for the Reader.