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Looking for comments about Sony’s Reader (PRS-505) and Linux

Dear lazyweb, this time I am asking for opinions and comments, rather than writing my own 🙂

Today I’ve been trying to clean up my home office, and I seen how many reference books I have that I could have downloaded, or at least bought, in PDF format, rather than printed or bought in solid paper form. While I’m quite a bookworm and would probably continue buying novels in solid paper form, I’m considering an electronic paper device for technical references (which are also those who take more space in my library at the moment).

I was suggested more than once the Sony Reader.. while I don’t really find myself a Sony fan, I can see they are quite advanced in what they do, and being able to read standard PDFs should be good enough to me, as I just need it for reference manuals (for now). I also seen there is a project already to get the reader to work on Linux, and it seems well developed, so I’m trusting I would get it to work on Linux quite easily.

But as I like first-hand impressions, does anybody have any comment to give me about this?

Comments 4
  1. Saw your post via hoosgot.com -I have the earlier version, the PRS-500. It’s quite nice, and I use it a lot. It often sounds like a miracle device, especially for reading PDFs, but I’ve had problems with PDFs and display of fonts on the screen, often the antialiasing of the Sony screen makes the default fonts hard to read oftentimes, so I have to play with the files, reprocess them to make everything readable. My experience is that it handles RTF files really well, making everything very readable, but that means you lose diagrams and the like.The other thing is that the Sony Store is Windows only, and you’ll need a windows box to get things set up the first time, I think. I use macs as my primary boxes, and linux as well – there are programs available to make the sony appear to be a flash drive, and you can add/remove files from it that it then understands.All in all I’ve been quite happy with the device, it goes in my travel bag when I need some thin reading material. The biggest issues are its software connection, DRM system (which you get around by putting ASCII, RTF’s and PDFs on it, thank you Project Gutenberg!)The other issue with the 500 was the page left and right button, but I understand that interface issue is fixed with the 505…Good luck!Dave

  2. i use a Nokia N8xx for the same purposes and i’m able to read PDF/CHM files without troubles; Nokia N7xx/N8xx are fully supported by linux, you can easily find a cheaper one on ebay.

  3. equi, N8xx and N7xx are *not* epaper. I wonder why people insist to compare them to epaper readers, when they use LCD. LCD is not what I want, simply put. My eyes can’t read for too long from an LCD without feeling tired. And if I wanted to use an LCD I wouldn’t spend anything at all and just use my own laptop.

  4. sorry flameeyes, i admit my ignorance about ‘electronic readers’. now i better understand your request. sorry for the noise.

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