Sony PRS505S Sony PRS-505 E Reader The perfect way to store and read digital books
Posted by Notcot on May 2, 2010 in Handhelds & PDAs |
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I umm’d and ahh’d for ages before buying my e-reader but haven’t regretted it for a minute.
It is easy to use (I hate the e library software that comes with it and most often just copy and paste books to my SD card/reader itself rather than use the software.) offering you several options to find the books you want including by date added (my fav option), by author (it does sort by first name which is a bit daft), by collections which you can customise to your favs and more. You can play music while you read on it (although you have to use earphones (not included.) It has a picture viewer for photos but the graphics aren’t that good and I wouldn’t bother using it for that.
You can change the font size of books which is helpful but can sometimes leave you with lots of words with hyphens in the middle where they were at the end of a line but now aren’t (a small annoyance) changing font size does mean that when you initially open the book it will take longer to load and will run down your battery faster.
You get a USB cord to charge from your computer with it, this takes 4 hours and you can’t read anything when you’re charging it. You can buy a charger separately and I don’t regret that I did, it charges in 2 hours and lets you read from mains power if you want.
If you’re an avid reader you’ll probably find like me that you fill your readers memory very fast but you can have either/both an SD card and Sony memory stick to hold extra books.
There aren’t tons of places to get ebooks in the UK yet and I have struggled to get a couple I want but more and more places are coming on board including waterstones, whsmiths and I buy from some American websites like booksonboard too. I love the instance-y of buying ebooks and not having to travel into town only to find they didn’t have it anyway.
It comes with 100 classic books on a disc, I put about 7 of them on my reader but haven’t actually bothered to read any of them, they’re all really old classics which probably won’t appeal unless you like classical literature.
I absolutely love my ereader and wouldn’t be without it now but I probably wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re an avid reader like me and at least partially computer literate, there is still a way to go until these are the norm.
Rating: 5 / 5
I was given my Ereader as a birthday present as I am an avid and very fast reader, especially when I’m on holiday, so it seemed the perfect present to lighten my load when travelling.
However, I have since found that my Ereader is far more versatile and has been time, money and space saving in other areas of my life as well.
What I haven’t seen mentioned by other reviewers, and please forgive me if I have missed this in someone else’s review, but I have found the Ereader a fantastic way of storing PDF and other Document files. As a very mature student, teacher and support co-ordinator, I have been able to store lots of research items, saving on printing costs and being able to bookmark pages has been really useful. I also have just bought a Blackberry and have put its manual on my Ereader for easy reference, rather than just saving it on my laptop or printing its many pages. The Ereader is much lighter and smaller to carry than my Laptop.
My Ereader goes everywhere with me and has probably already saved me its retail value by not having to print or photocopy so many pages.
I also use it to listen to audio books or music when I am having trouble sleeping or am travelling alone and don’t want to be disturbed by fellow travellers. You can listen to music while reading, which is excellent on a flight if your mobile doesn’t have “Flight mode” and you do not have or want to carry a separate MP3 player.
I have would have liked more typeface size options but this is probably nitpicking. I was given a cover with integral light and both Ereader and Light have survived me dropping them when I have fallen asleep reading.
My husband is also happy as he is not disturbed by me having a bedside light on to read or the sound of turning pages.
Rating: 5 / 5
I have had my e-reader for over a month now and have found the unit itself to be good, it is easy to read, the page changing buttons could be better positioned but you can adapt your hold to facilitate easy page turning.
The problem comes with the software, that for the PC: The Library and the software on the e-reader itself.
Loading books onto the device is relativity simple, but getting them organised all but impossible, say you want to read a set of books you have purchased, maybe all of the CS Forester Hornblower series, you must pour them into the single folder then make a CS Forester group, then select and drop them in to make shortcuts, the books remain, confusingly, in the single folder you started with.
It doesn’t allow multiple layers of filing, for instance, Thrillers at the top and authors on the next layer. It is easy to get double loading due to the sync process.
On the device, who would seriously look for a book loaded in the last quarter.
The manual is of little use, it explains the easy things in great detail but ignores all the difficult stuff.
I buy my books on e-bay and will never pay the inflated prices being demanded for e-books by the recommended, and preferred supplier, it’s not surprising it’s preferred they must be making a fortune from overcharging for books, more than a paperback version the last time I looked, and they are well tied up with encryption and blocks to stop you saving them to your computer.
Sony must sort out the appalling software currently being used on this device.
My recommendation, wait for software improvements or look elsewhere for an e-reader that offers what it should.
Rating: 2 / 5
I bought the product originally to download and read books but having just taken it on holiday loaded up with PDF nursing strategies to prepare for an interview i was delighted as this meant i could use my holiday time effectively and not go overweight with my luggage – excellent all round, easy to read in sunlight on the beach and of course very compact in my hand luggage.
Rating: 5 / 5
This is a great product. If you are someone who reads on the move, then this is ideal. The battery life is amazing. The only problem is the lack of proper Mac support. However, it will work with a Mac and I thought I’d give some more info here as that would have helped me decide to get one a lot earlier. If you can get it plugged into a PC just once and authorise the device in Adobe Digital Editions (free download), then you will be able to buy books from the Waterstones (or presumably other epub) stores. You have to buy the book, open it in Digital Editions on the Mac, and then pick up the file and import onto eReader. Otherwise, it will work just fine for pdf and txt downloads of books. Get the mac program Calibre, which is free to download. You can then import book files into this and put onto the eReader. Calibre is pretty powerful and will do things like download the whole of the BBC news website to download to your device – you can schedule this. Overall, I’ve found it pretty easy to work out how to use with the Mac – it’s a bit more fiddly than you’d like, but fine once you’ve done it once.
Rating: 4 / 5