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Sony PRS-505 Portable Digital e-Reader System (Silver)
Price:
- displays eBooks purchased from the CONNECT eBook online store
- displays Adobe® PDFs, plus TXT, RTF, BMP, JPEG, GIF, PNG and Microsoft® Word files
- plays MP3 and AAC files (protected files not supported)
- internal 192MB memory
- memory slot holds an SD Memory Card (up to 2GB capacity) and Memory Stick® Duo media (up to 8GB capacity)
Great transactionDate: 2009-01-06 Rating: 10 out of 10Really had been wanting this, found a great price - seller was very responsive and helpful. Definitely a wonderful transaction! would highly recommend
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BewertungenSony PRS-505 Reader A Disappointing Check-In As To State-Of-The-ArtDatum 2009-01-06 Rang: 2 von 10
I hadn't paid much attention to the state of the electronic reader industry until a friend recommended the Sony Reader based on his positive experiences.
I don't know whether the particular device I received is a lemon, or whether most of those who've posted reviews on the internet so far are early adopters who see more of the vision than the reality. I've used my Sony PRS-505 Reader on a number of airplane trips.
The most frustrating aspect of using the Sony Reader for me is that it crashes approximately half of the time (and reboots) when I attempt to read the New York Times; yesterday on a flight it also crashed when I attempted to follow a link in Newsweek. It crashed frequently when I try to read PDF files in general - I don't know whether this is because these are somehow ill-formatted (I can read them on my laptop), whether because the device has a relatively primitive PDF viewer or because my particular device is defective. The problem is that simply because I synch articles I want to read to the device can not give me confidence that I will be able to read them once I'm on a long airplane flight and ready to do so.
The second aspect of the device that I found surprising has been the short battery life. A friend of mine who has the same device told me he never bothers to shut the device down, and can leave it for long periods of time without significant battery strength decrease. In my case, if I leave the device sitting for 3-4 days or so I can be pretty confidant it will be dead and unusable until I recharge it. When the charge is full though, I do seem to be able to read for an essentially limitless number of page turns (meaning I naturally charge/synch before it becomes even remotely an issue).
She LOVES itDatum 2009-01-06 Rang: 10 von 10I got this for my wife or Christmas, and she has rarely put it down since. She originally wanted the Kindle, but the only difference between the 2 products was that one being on a wireless network that does not work at our house ( I didn't find that aggravation worth the $100 + difference in price). She is able to quickly and easily download books and carry several e-books with her in one handy little device. The seller gave us 100 free books, there are plenty of "deals" to be found on books if you shop around, and the Sony e-book store is very user friendly.My wait is over...Datum 2009-01-05 Rang: 8 von 10The PRS-505 is a great gift for a tech savvy bibliophile. The form factor and display clarity make for an excellent reading experience in office and outdoor lighting. It's a gray scale only reader and not the fastest text reader available. Still, it displays PDF files well, has fine battery life, and reads from SD-cards (and Sony's memory sticks). Overall, it's easy to recommend.
I notice that mine displays 16 shades of gray rather than the 4 shades I was led to expect. Thanks to the latest firmware upgrade, it rotates, resizes and reflows text in PDFs fairly well. And, it is generally quicker than earlier efforts. It seems fairly solid and sturdy. To date, I've suffered no hang ups, system failures, excessively long refresh waits with PDFs of 400+ pages, or any other disappointments reported by less favorable reviews.
Of course, there's no a built-in backlight (though a lighting accessory's available). It's grayscale only, slower than reading PDFs from the laptop, and the AC adapter is an unincluded extra, which may be an issue for those who would use the reader as an MP3 music player.
Overall, I am very pleased with mine, would buy one again, and have already recommended the device to friends and colleagues - even without holiday pricing.
A wonderful way to read the classics (and all the other stuff you never seem to get around to)Datum 2009-01-04 Rang: 10 von 10Books are a mixed bag these days: On the one hand you have modern books, which are often set in slightly anemic typefaces that get overpowered by the overly white, slightly glossy paper they are printed on. Typography is often quite bad, looking little better than a Word document. And those few books that purport to be well-designed are often self-consciously so, as if to say: "Look here's a book that isn't as ugly as all the rest. And it has ITC Bodoni as a text face. How cool is that?" The idea that books should be beautiful _and_ readable seems to have fallen out of fashion.
Then there are older books, and you only have to go a library to find that many volumes from no longer than forty or fifty years ago were set with a sense of style and elegance that puts most newer works to shame. And when you look at 19th century hand-set books, the choice of paper, color of the binding, the letter and line spacing, and the typefaces, are often exquisite. Unfortunately, the pages are stained and yellowed, and the book is musty, so while it pleases your eyes, it offends your nose.
This is where electronic readers come in. Thanks to Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive, Google Books and other such projects, millions of older, out-of-copyright works have been digitized and can now be enjoyed without the downsides of an old printed volume (or a new pricey one). Somehow, our computers are awash with texts, be they long e-mails, web pages, electronic books, or other such material, but the normal computer screens are not very suited for extended reading on them (making you bleary-eyed after a while). All you need then is a device that you can quickly copy your texts to and read them on. And the Sony Reader accomplishes this wonderfully.
Now, Amazon has a very similar reading device out, the Kindle: Amazon's Wireless Reading Device. This may be more useful if you want to read the latest trash from the NYT bestseller list, but let's face it -- the golden century of the novel was the 19th. Most of the novels written today are "not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force" (to quote Dorothy Parker). The 20 or so samples from current books that come with the Sony Reader (and that I deleted immediately after laughing out loud about how indescribably vile they were) illustrate this point perfectly. I have no idea why anyone would want to waste his time and money on those titles after reading the excerpts.
Getting free content on the Sony Reader is far easier than onto the Kindle: The Reader can deal natively with text (TXT) and PDF files (for most PDF files you can even adjust the font size on the Reader, and if that's not enough landscape mode is usually helpful) as well as Rich-Text-Format (TextEdit on the Mac can create that). If you download a PDF from Google Books, you first need to convert it to a less highly-compressed PDF -- if you have a Mac you are in luck, just open it in Preview and do "Save As..." The resulting file might be 10 or 20 times larger than what you get from Google but it works fine on the Reader. The Sony Readers also have a native document format, LRF, with advanced capabilities like a clickable table of contents. Sites such as[...] offer Project Gutenberg titles in LRF format among others.
It also helps that the Reader is not as ugly as the Kindle. After all, what is a well-written book with nice typesetting worth if you have to read it on an eyesore like the Kindle?
So in my view the Sony Reader is perfect: it works with a Mac, the display is very readable even in direct sunlight (where a normal book page is much too bright), copying content over is no more difficult than copying data onto a memory stick, the device feels light yet solid in the hand, the display size is ideal for novels, and there is even an MP3 player and picture viewer. True, the Kindle has wireless connectivity, but isn't the constant possibility of being distracted by the Web in the way of enjoying a good book anyway? Therefore, the Sony Reader has my vote.
Perhaps the one extra you should buy is the wall charger, because that isn't included in the package anymore. The Reader's 200 MB of memory can hold hundreds of books (if they are stored as text and not scans), so I think it makes a lot of sense to be independent of the computer for recharging. Also, you might want to purchase a reading light -- but skip Sony's light wedge, which is not only very overpriced but supposedly can also scratch the display. If you frequently need extra light, the Sony PRS-700BC Reader Digital Book might be a better choice for you. Finally, the "on/off switch" at the top (which really just blanks the display and locks the other keys) is a bit flimsy, so only use this switch if you put the Reader in a bag or somewhere else where its navigation keys can be pressed accidentally. Remember, the device only needs power for _changing_ pages, so if you just want to put it onto the night stand, leave it on!
Produkt InformationRecording label: Sony Hersteller: SonyModel: PRS505SCEAN: 0027242723665Format: ElectronicsUniversal product code (UPC): 027242723665ESRB age rating: EveryoneBrand: SonyFarbe: Silver
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