Sony Reader

The Reader is Sony’s take on the for the Western market, with a few twists.

I bought a PRS-505 on January 2008 for a number of reasons (not the least of which was my wanting to spend less time online), and eventually upgraded to a .

PRS-500 PRS-505 PRS-700 PRS-600 and 300, not to scale Daily Edition

Good Points

  • Build quality - Lightweight metal casing on most devices
  • 160dpi screen
  • Charges via
  • Takes RTF as an input format directly
  • Loads and loads of utilities for it
  • Good contrast (PRS-505)

Bad Points

  • Original devices had an incredibly asinine DRM-laden format (later changed to EPUB
  • No wireless connectivity on most devices
  • PDF crashiness on older devices

PRS-505 Notes

  • Page size for PDF printing: 9 x 11,7 cm.
  • Max picture size is either 11 cm high or 8 wide, 8 bit gray, 166 dpi.

Resources

Date Link Notes
2010 Sony Reader Daily Edition reviewed, unworthy of cost premium or love

Not that hot, then.

Sony cuts e-reader prices, Pocket Edition now $149

The heat is on.

2009 Sony counters Kindle with new models, better format support

Nothing significantly improved over the 505 as far as I’m concerned.

chm2pdf

Extract .chm files and convert to PDF (also available as an Ubuntu package). See also archmage and extract_chmLib for viewing and extracting raw HTML from .chm files.

Sony Launches Another e-Reader, with 3G! (People Might Want This One)

Seriously now, I keep wondering what’s the hangup with competing directly with the Kindle in the US when there are actually more people reading in Europe.

Sony Attacks Amazon’s Kindle with $399 3G Digital Library Book
PRS-505 information

Detailed specs and links to additional resources

Sony eBook Library now available for Mac, Windows

The desktop software is not nearly as impressive as Calibre, and buggy. Also, the new hardware display seems blurry, even though the annotation feature is neat.

Sony Reader Pocket and Touch editions lower cost of entry, online e-book store follows suit
Video - Sony PRS-600 Touch is fast but too dim to satisfy PRS-505 owner

Figures. That’s one of the reasos I bought the 505 originally - readability when compared to the 700

Video - Sony Reader Touch Edition gets touched, desktop software upped to 3.0
Sony Reader Pocket Edition available now

Only took them about a month. I wonder when the bigger model will be hitting Europe.

Sony offering ePub upgrade / trade-in program for PRS-500 e-reader

Nice of them. I’d swap my 505 for one of the newer ones if they had a trade-in program as well, but the likelihood of that happening and reaching Portugal is near zero…

Sony's 3G-enabled Reader Daily Edition up for pre-order, content deals coming next month

Well, by the looks of it I’m not going to get one this Christmas for sure. Once Sony figures out Europe exists, though, I’ll get right on it.

Sony Reader Store goes 100% EPUB on Friday

Sensible. I wonder if there will be any firmware updates for the 505…

Sony e-readers get exclusive Dow Jones, New York Post content

I really need to look into upgrading from the 505.

Sony Reader Daily Edition starts shipping, gets more newspapers

All we need now is for Sony to remember Europe exists.

Sony Reader PRS-505 Disassembly
PRSCustomizer

A tool that generates a custom firmware image for the Reader, enabling some tweaks.

2008 Engadget
PRS-700 internals and disassembly

Some info and links on the newest model.

Hands-On
Gizmodo
BargainPDA
Shots of the production hardware
InfoSync
FAQ
PCMag video review
Quentin's notes

Might come in handy.

libprs500

Python-based library for content conversion

Notes on Low-Level Conversion Tools

For generating an optimized PDF out of a .chm file:

chm2pdf  --charset iso-8859-1 --webpage --no-title --no-toc \
--fontsize 8pt --headfootsize 7pt --size 9x11.7cm \
--top 0.2 --bottom 0.2 --left 0.2 --right 0.2 in.chm

For doing the same for EPUB (provided you have the tools installed):

extract_chmLib in.chm folder
html2epub folder/final/main.html

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