Launching in Canada end of April 2008
$300
Available only at SonyStyle.ca and The Sony Store at retail.
The book I brought along with me on my trip this week turned out to be tiresome. It happens, you grab a book off the shelf because it has an attractive cover, is by an author you’ve always wanted to try, or because some well-meaning friend won’t stop talking about it, but the moment you settle down into your seat and dive into the first chapter, you realize it’s a poor choice and find yourself stuck with carrying around 300 pages of useless pulp.
But with the Sony Reader, I realized that I could make that book immediately vanish and replace it with another more engaging one. In fact before I left my home I didn’t even have to decide which book to take with me. Every book lover has a list of six or seven books they wish to read at some time. The Sony Reader is a device capable of carrying up to 160 electronic books, so I just loaded it up with every book on my list. Once I was settled down in my seat for the trip I began to go through my selection, skipping the ones I didn’t like with a simple push of a button.
At 8mm thin and 8oz., the Sony Reader has the size and feel of a pocket book. Its light, its comfortable, and with a soft-leather cover feels nice when you carry it around. The 6” screen uses a special display technology called electronic paper, and just as it sounds resembles a page that can magically change its text. It is extremely easy on the eyes, can match the quality and style of any font, but unlike traditional LCD screens, does not light up or display in colour. Illustrations will always be in black and white and you won’t be able to read in the dark without a book light, two issues every book lover is already used to. The one trick it can match to an LCD screen is the ability to display digital photographs. You can even load in your own family photos and the resolution, although monochrome, is impressive.
Turning a page does seem magical. While I was reading on the subway I attracted several on-lookers who moved closer to my seat just to watch me as I read. It was only when I looked up that I realized I was putting on a bit of a show. I’d press the page forward button with my thumb and the text would shift, shimmer, and change causing all eyes around me to widen and heads to shake in amazement. This would happen to me again and again as the train made its stops and new crowds would board. I’ve travelled with all of my gadgets at one time or another and so far this has drawn me the most attention.
In addition to changing pages, you can also change the size of the text. If the print proves too small, you can increase it by pressing the magnification button. I found this useful, not just for ebooks with fine print, but also as I changed from well-lit locations to areas with dim lighting. Being able to enlarge the text helped me keep reading as I moved from one train station to another.
As you would expect with a device designed to act like a book, there are few buttons. There is a left-handed as well as right-handed set of page turning buttons, numerical buttons for accessing specific pages, chapters, or menu options, a text magnification button, and a bookmark button that allows you to digitally turn down the corner of any page so you can easily find it again later (this is different from remembering the last page you were reading, which the device does automatically). And if you’re gadget-savvy, there’s a traditional directional pad and menu button for navigating device options.
Also included is the ability to play MP3 and AAC files, something I didn’t think I would use often, but once I found myself on the subway, surrounded by the inane chatter of others, it was a source of great relief to plug in a set of headphones and block out all the noise with a subtle soundtrack of my own choice. Should you want to load a large selection of music, audio books, podcasts, or digital photos, or even expand your library there are memory card slots capable of accepting files from either an SD Card or Memory Stick Duo for up to 4GB of storage.
The battery life takes a bit to get used to. Unlike cellphones, MP3 players, and digital cameras which need to be charged on a regular basis, the Sony Reader’s battery life is good for up to 7,000 page turns. After you charge it the first time, it might be weeks or months before you’ll need to plug it in again.
The obstacles in getting ebooks for the Reader aren’t the ones you’d expect. The software that allows you to access Sony’s online book store is PC only and due to a lack of French language support, the Reader isn’t being offered in Quebec. If you can get past those two sticky points, there is a wide variety of options for accessing books that have been purchased, home-made, and downloaded from peer-to-peer networks.
At its most basic, you can connect the Reader to your computer like any USB device and use Windows Explorer to drag-n-drop new files into place, but you’re far better off to use Sony’s free eBook Library suite which does a fine job as an organizer, desktop reader, and online store. It allows you to synchronize all your content with a back-up library on your PC computer.
In addition to accepting ebooks in Sony’s own proprietary BBeB file format, the Reader comes with built-in support for PDF, TXT, and RTF files. Plus, and this is key, you can use the eBook Library software to convert Word Document files for use on the Sony Reader as well. Conversion is almost instantaneous.
Sony’s Online eBook Store currently offers 40,000 titles from a variety of publishers including HarperCollins, Penguin, Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Grove/Atlantic. Prices range from as little as $5 to as high as $17 and new titles are being added each day.
The store itself is a well-designed, one-click purchase experience with a number of surprises including free ebooks. When you first register your Sony Reader you’ll be given a store credit to download 100 titles from their “Classics” section which includes Shakespeare, Lewis Carol, H.G. Wells, and other great writers. They will also be arranging a number of ebook promotions including a free copy of “Go Green, Live Rich” by David Bach to celebrate Earth Day on April 22nd.
Although it has been almost two years since the Sony Reader was first announced, Sony Canada has certainly made the wait worthwhile. Short of its lack of support for Mac users and Quebec residents, the Sony Reader Digital Reader offers no weaknesses. Its support for Word Documents and PDF files gives it access to most of the ebooks available online, the online book store offers reasonable prices and promotions from a long list of publishers, and the price of the reader itself, $300, is quite reasonable.
You could argue that few book lovers would ever spends more than $300 on regular books, but the experience of easily travelling with a selection of titles, downloaded from a wide number of online sources, of being able to change the print size and play music to drown out external chatter, and knowing that when you power off the device it will always keep your spot and won’t need to be charged for weeks, creates an elevated reading experience that lives up to the price tag. This is the best thing to happen to eBooks and has the potential to inspire more people to get back into reading full length books as a habit.
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