My eBook Reader experience

There are a whole set of hubs here about various eBook Readers, but most of them read to me as if the authors are just trying to hit the keywords rather that actually describe what using an eBook Reader is actually like, so I thought I'd try & describe my experiences with my Sony PRS-505 Reader and how it's changed how I read books.

First of all, a bit of background – ever since my youth, I've been a steady reader, getting through a book a week or so, just with 'before bed' reading. If I was traveling or on holiday then I'd try & pack a stack enough to last me a while but would still often find myself in the airport bookshop, looking to get something to supplement the novel in my hand-luggage that I was close to finishing!

That used to be OK, as the air-side shops would have early release versions of novels that weren't yet out in the normal shops but then the shops/publishers seemed to focus on releasing them in the 'large-format' paperbacks, at a premium price. Given that I was typically buying additional books to go in an already full carry-on bag, I wasn't impressed by either the larger size or the larger cost!

Anyway, back to the eBook Reader... I'd seen some information about the original Sony Libre eBook Reader in the past, but hadn't fancied importing one from Japan and trying to get it working in English, so I'd forgotten about them for a while. However, a couple of years ago the question “So what do you want for Christmas?” had been asked and after a bit, I thought about eBook Readers again and started looking for information as to the state of things at the time. What I found was that in the meantime, Sony had not only released a second edition Reader in the US, the PRS-500, but had not long released a third-generation Reader, the PRS-505.

I wasn't in the US at the time, so didn't have a chance to examine one in real-life, but found a web-store that would sell me one and dispatch it internationally (B&H Photo, New York), so I put my order in and waited for it to arrive, which it did after a couple of weeks, including a short delay in Customs. I gave it a quick check to be sure it worked, then put it away for Christmas!

The first impression is just how different the eInk screen is to screens on other devices with LCD screens – whereas with them, you might be looking for shaded areas to view them and avoiding bright sunlight, with the eInk screens, the brighter it is, the better the screen looks! In fact, if you're looking in daylight, there's a good chance that the very first impression would be that there's a printed sheet/transparency over the display – there's not! The screen is a light grey, rather than white, but the better/more the light, the whiter it appears but it's fine in any light that you'd be able to read a normal book in.

The other things that are first noticed with the Sony PRS-505 are the delay in response to the page turn buttons and the 'flash' as the page turn takes place. (Just to address those here, the delay is about ½ a second, but you quickly get used to pressing the turn button just before your reading point gets to the end of the page, while the 'flash' is down to the way that the page turns completely black then all but the text turns 'white'. In practice though, after a short time reading, you just don't notice it, in the same way you don't consciously notice the page turns when reading a paper book.

Initially, the main format that the Sony PRS-505 supported was Sony's LRF/LRX format and I bought a few books from the Sony online store, but then I looked further afield and discovered other options. I read a lot of books from the Science-Fiction and Fantasy fields and found that Baen Books, a publisher I had a number of paperbacks from, had a great approach. They had both a 'Free Library' with a large number of free titles from various authors and an online store that sold the rest of their titles in formats that could easily be converted into formats that the Sony Reader could display. (That was then – they now sell in formats that Sony Readers support natively, so conversions are no longer needed. They also make a large number of their back catalogue titles available on CDs bundled with newer titles, so I've gradually been able to duplicate a large amount of my library in electronic form.) The Free Library allowed me to sample a whole range of authors/series whom I'd skipped before, as Baen would typically give away the first book of a series, after which I'd often buy the rest of the series!

There are also quite a number of titles available for free download on sites such as MobileRead, where individuals have uploaded carefully formatted versions of public-domain classics by authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes), Lewis Carroll (Alice), Dickens, Shakespeare, etc.
I can even 'borrow' books from an on-line library that I'm a member of, where they show up on the Reader displaying how many days are left before the loan expires.

It didn't take very long before my Sony Reader became an essential companion on any outing. I've constructed a protective case for it using a perspex library DVD security case I was able to buy online, to protect it when in a backpack or in carry-on baggage and it's an essential part of my travel gear. (I do still need to take a paperback for the part of the flight where the crew say “All electronic items must now be switched off” but other than those 20 minutes at the start and end of the flight, I've got access to anything up to a few hundred titles on my DVD-case-sized Reader – and thus a bit more space in my luggage too, both checked and carry-on!

It's good with power too – with normal use it's good for a week or two on a single charge, while even reading steadily (like I get much of a chance, with two kids!) it's good for a few days at a time, unlike my phone!

There are certainly things it's not that good at, such as trying to display titles such as technical reference books, so they get read either as paper books or on the computer, but for my normal day-to-day recreational reading, it's completely replaced my purchasing of paperbacks. Even the ones I already have only get read very rarely when I'm looking for a particular book that I've not yet duplicated in electronic format.

My summary would be that while they might appear to be just a gimmick, if you're the sort of person who does a significant amount of reading, you owe it to yourself to have a close look at the available eBook Readers and see if there's one that might suit your life-style as well as I've found that the Sony Reader fits mine.