I finally broke down and bought one! It's silver, beautiful, and I love it. I won't say something prosaic like I can't believe I ever lived without it, but I'm definitely thinking it. When I purchased it I received 100 "free" classics so I've of course downloaded all of Jane Austen's novels and most of Shakespeare's plays. I was worried about downloading works not from the Sony site and also not available there, but found a solution. I downloaded a short story from The Wild Rose Press in lit format as a way to test it. Then I used a converter which worked perfectly. I think this is officially my springboard into purchasing the majority of my books in e-format. I've been teetering on the edge and reading them on my PC, but the eReader is definitely going to make my life better and now I won't have to buy more bookshelves to accomodate my ever growing tbr pile!
8 comments:
I've been slowly researching e-readers. What made you choose this one over other ones?
There are a few reasons I chose it over the others.
It uses the e-ink technology that the Kindle has, but isn't as expensive. The font can change to three different sizes. I can read word documents on it. I can listen to music on it too. I can load about 160 books on it w/out an SD card (though I'm looking into getting one) I was worried about not being able to read my already purchased PDF books, but I found a way around that (I'll email you personally if you want). There's not a glare on the screen (that I've seen).
It is a little pricey, so if you don't want to dish out the money for it, I've heard from many people that the ebookwise reader is pretty great too and it's about half the price. I don't think it has the e-ink technology though (someone correct me if I'm wrong) and that was a defining factor for me. I've also heard the the ebookwise uses out of date card technology.
I wanted my reading experience to be just as good as reading a paperback and so far I haven't been disappointed.
I would buy one but they are still unknown beasties in Australia and they cost an arm and a leg. Maybe, one day, possibly-perhaps, Oz will embrace the whole e-book thing...maybe when the drought breaks
I've got the 'low tech' eBookwise, but I LOVE the backlight. LOVE LOVE LOVE it. It doesn't have the bells and whistles of the high-priced ones, but it sure makes it easy to accumulate books, doesn't it! I don't look at ebooks as 'instead of' but rather 'in addition to' print. I've got huge backlists of newly discovered and other favorite authors, and not having to remodel the house to shelve the books is great.
I just wish there was a universal formatting.
Question -- how does your Sony handle PDF? I've heard it's hard to enlarge fonts in that format.
That's funny I've been thinking bout buying a reader and haven't figured out what kind I want. I will have to look seriously hard at this one (yes I said seriously hard)
Terry - yes, it is difficult to read in the PDF version. From now on I won't be purchasing any more books in PDF format.
As for the ones I already have, there are a few options. Adobe Acrobat has a function that allows you to convert your PDF to rtf, then transfer to your e-reader. There's another option that doesn't work as well, but you can save it as text.
I know you didn't ask, but there's also a program I found to de-DRM .lit formatted stuff and it works perfectly.
And yes, I wish there was a universal format!!! I just can't buy any more print books right now, my DH is about to mutiny ;)
Sarai - seriously hard? I like it!
Katie, yes, there are ways around a lot of the formatting issues. My books aren't available at the Kindle shop (Kindle takes a huge chunk of the cover price, and my publisher won't pay it). HOWEVER, you can convert a file so they're still 'readable' on the Kindle and Sony.
There's more 'how to' information here
And, speaking of e-books and e-readers, a reminder that you can get all sorts of books for these devices, not just books published by primary e-publishers. Your post jump-started me into visiting the eBookwise site, where I bought the newest Jonathan Kellerman, two Suzanne Brockmanns and two by Jordan Dane. And, of course, I uploaded my newest release, too, since I got my advance copies yesterday. :-)
Oops, Katie, I forgot to post the "rules", so I updated my blog to include that. Not sure if you saw it! :)))))
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