Tips, tricks & just plain cool stuff.

[NatCh]

Hey, all,

I wanted to start a thread to share interesting & helpful things for our new toys, it doesn't really fit in any of the sub forums, so I'll just throw it out in the main one.

I've got a couple of minor things to get the ball rolling:

1) Not sure if you flipped the power switch all the way or not? Click the Mark button -- if the blue light comes on, the Reader is on and powering up the screen, if not, you didn't get the power switch flipped all the way. (clicking the Mark button during power up doesn't add/remove a bookmark, BTW)

2) Holding down the Mark button brings up a list of all bookmarks (we knew that). After playing with it a bit, I realized that this is an excellent way to quickly flip between files, since it lists all the bookmarks you have set, not just the ones in the current file. Handy. (Added note: Once you do this one time, you can get back to the All Bookmarks Menu by single clicking the Menu button, rather than holding down the Mark button for 5 seconds -- until you visit a different menu, at least )

Okay, those are my first two, what do the rest of y'all have for us?

[Slava]

These two are rather observations then anything else

1) History. If you by mistake pressed buttons 1-0 while reading the book, then you history to get back to the page you were reading before.

2) "Press Ahead". Reader queues all the buttons you've pressed. So if you remember what keys to press, and in what sequence, just do it, don't wait until screen gets refreshed. Reader will get there. E.g. I'm in book list, book under number 7. So I would press 7 and 1, to "Open" the book and "Continue" to read it.

[yowzah]

1. Regarding Slava's #1 above on History, just want to point out that you don't need to go to the Menu and navigate to the History page, you only need to shimmy the joystick left one click; that will bring you back one step in your history.

2. Even though the unit doesn't use any power while not turning pages, I recommend turning the power off when not reading simply because the buttons tend to get pushed (especially the 0 button) when the cover is closed, thus navigating to places you don't want to be.

[yowzah]

3. When copying Word documents to the Reader, the reader does not use the filename as the title of the document. Instead, it uses the Title found in the Summary tab of the File.Properties dialog box of MS Word. (Discovered this after I had a list of books all titled "1".)

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by yowzah

2. Even though the unit doesn't use any power while not turning pages, I recommend turning the power off when not reading simply because the buttons tend to get pushed (especially the 0 button) when the cover is closed, thus navigating to places you don't want to be.

The jogstick "shimmy" trick you mention is helpful for recovering from this, should it happen -- just click the jogstick left, until you get back to where you were.

[Slava]

This one is related to CONNECT software. You can preview documents and see how it will be displayed on the Reader. In particular, it's very useful, when I'm trying different formats for non-english characters.

[Bob Russell]

Let's not forget this really basic tip... to safely snap the cover back onto the Reader, place the reader face down on a flat surface to distribute the force, and then press the cover onto the back of the Reader until it's all snapped in. You don't want to accidentally damage the screen if you put a finger in the wrong place.

And NatCh... your tip on holding the mark button down is the best! I had forgotten about that, and was lamenting the difficulty in switching between multiple books when I'm reading more than one. This makes it really easy! (I wish it was so easy to continue even without a bookmark!) I like sometimes to have several going at once.. a classic book (like from the Harvard Classics) that's great literature but takes effort to read, another book that's educational or useful, a Christian book to inspire me, and what I read most -- something fun like a novel!

[NatCh]

alexishinds posted this one in this thread

If you run your RTF file through wordpad on a PC or TextEdit on a Mac it slims down the file size, and gets rid of some compatibility issues on some files.

[BobVA]

I found that I can transfer files from Connect MUCH faster to the memory card/stick by using a dedicated USB reader.

Once the card is formatted in the Reader (i.e. it's got the "Sony Reader" directory and sub-directories on it) if you start Connect with it plugged into an external card reader, you'll see it show up in Connect, just like it was in the Sony Reader.

You can then transfer files to the card/stick and get the speed of a dedicated card drive and the pre-formatting of Connect.

Cheers,
Bob

[NatCh]

I put a wrist lanyard on mine (from a camera store), and I've figured out that if I run the lanyard across the back of my hand, and down between my index and middle finger, it supports the Reader's weight comfortably, and positions the page buttons nicely under my thumb. I just use my fingers to control the angle I'm looking at the Reader's page, not to actually hold it up.

Of course, different hand sizes and lanyard lengths will cause variance in how well this might work for others.

[NatCh]

Here's a collection of tutorials on how to do some basic stuff from Sony.

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/mod....pl?mdl=PRS500

[Slava]

Cool, they've added a lot since I posted link to that page :-)

[NatCh]

D'oh! Sorry, I didn't realize it was the same page, Slava.


igorsk has dug up some specs on the Reader:

Originally Posted by igorsk

Reader uses kernel 2.4.17 (n12) and CPU Dragonball MXL from Motorola.

Original post over here.

[Slava]

That's ok, that post got lost somewhere anyway

[each]

Originally Posted by yowzah

3. When copying Word documents to the Reader, the reader does not use the filename as the title of the document. Instead, it uses the Title found in the Summary tab of the File.Properties dialog box of MS Word. (Discovered this after I had a list of books all titled "1".)

It is same with PDF docs, Reader would display the Title in the Document Properties first. If there isn't any Title, it would use the file name.