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Sony Reader

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Promotional photo.

At the CES convention in 2006, Sony announced the Reader (PRS-500), an ebook reader for the U.S. market. It uses an electronic paper display developed by E Ink Corporation, that has a 170 pixels per inch resolution and four levels of greyscale. The $349.99 reader uses an iTunes Store-like interface to purchase books--Sony's Connect eBook store. It also can display Adobe PDFs, personal documents, blogs, newsfeeds, JPEGs, and Sony's proprietary BBeB ("BroadBand eBook") format.

The Reader can also play MP3 files. Interestingly, there has been no announcement of ATRAC support, Sony's music compression codec. 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 planned for release in March 2006 at the January 2006 announcement. As of 27 September 2006, it is available for order. [1]. It should be competing with the Irex iLiad reader, the Jinke Hanlin Reader and other epaper-based devices to be released soon.

Sony has announced that Borders will sell the Reader in its US Stores. (As of 1 November 2006, Readers have been on display and on sale at various Borders stores throughout the US, according to posts at MobileRead.com.) Borders will have an exclusive contract for the Reader for an unspecified amount of time.

Specification

  • Size: 17.5 x 12.4 x 1.3 cm (6.9 x 4.9 x 0.5 in)
  • Weight: 250 g (9 oz)
  • Display size: 15.5 cm (6 in) diagonal (approx 1/4 area of "letter"-sized page)
  • Display resolution: 800x600, four-color grey scale, approx. 140 pixels/inch
  • Rechargeable Lithium-ion Battery

Formats Supported

DRM-free Text: BBeB Book (LRF), PDF, TXT, RTF, DOC

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)

US-sold units only supports TXT and RTF documents with Latin character set. Other character sets (such as Russian, for example) are not displayed correctly. Sony customer support confirmed that units sold in US only work with Latin characters (as of March 2nd, 2007).

Operating System

An examination of the operating manual reveals that the operating system for the Reader is MontaVista Linux Professional Edition.

Official

  • Sony: Product page at Sony

Forums

Third Party/Tools

Manga on Sony Reader

  • [2]: Easy Manga creation
  • [3]: How to put manga or other pictures on the Sony Reader and have them look good too

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

See also

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