Books-A-Million: Sony PRS-505 For $99

Somehow Books-A-Missing got a hold of the best Sony eBook Reader ever made (The PRS-505, that they promptly discontinued making because Sony is brilliant like that.) and has it for sale for $99. That is a very good deal on a well built basic eBook Reader that works with Adobe Digital Editions.

From Kotaku: Sony Removes Linux Installs On PS3

As I mentioned in The Sorry State Of Sony they remain firmly entrenched continuing on their downward path of customer loss and ultimate failure in the consumer market. Instead of adding functionality and ease of use to their key products Sony, lead by perpetual techno-loser George (Let’s make the Sony eInk screen unreadable) Bailey, continues his course of removing existing and noted product functionality and usefulness.

This week as exhibit “A” Sony has flat out decided to remove any support for Linux installs on the PS3 much like they decided to remove any support for playing PS2 games on the original PS3 that sold so well for them. It’s yet another head scratcher moment of lame decision making that will turn the PS3 like so many other products Sony has created from a must have purchase to just another sorry document of Sony’s failure to give their customer base more options and better reasons to continue to buy Sony even when the initial product was a much hailed success.

Sadly they seem determined to fail no matter how many people point out these valid issues and Sony seems almost boastful of dishonoring their valued customers. Otherwise good old George would shut his mouth and hire better people to try and salvage the brand he has been… well destroying.

From: Gizmodo ~ How Sony Lost Its Way

Gizmodo recently posted this article on the state of Sony. I have to agree.

Gone are the days of the Walkman and the quintessential XBR TV and the Sony VAIO laptop, the Sony PS2 in every home and a Sony CD player in every pot. I had all these things and still listen to my MDR-V700 headphones every night and play my PS3 every week and I still love these products. BUT! Let’s look at a glaring reality right in the face…

Sony PRS-700 Touchscreen Ebook Reader:
Sony decided that the paper-like e-ink wasn’t enough of a draw for an ebook reader, so they decided to “fix” it with a touchscreen and LED side lighting. Which gave the PRS-700′s lovely paper-like e-ink screen a nasty case of glare, topped off with feeble, uneven lighting, kind of a problem if being read is your sole purpose in this world. Worst of all, when the tactic was bashed for its obvious flaws, they kept on doing it.

The Sony PRS-700 made Gizmodo’s Top 50 Worst Gadgets Of The Decade and for good reasons. Sony took the only good functions of the PRS-505 and dumped them for fuzzy touch screen layers that obscure the words you are trying to read and then they added glare with the lights.

After that fine fiasco they turned around and stopped making the only really readable screen in the lineup (The PRS-505) but instead made the smaller PRS-300 and to add insult to injury they made the fuzzy touch screen more expensive with the Daily Edition.

I am beginning to think after we finally see the new pads coming out with far more functionality than a Swiss army knife and have a chance to start using them at home as eBook Readers and Personal Organizers and eMail and eBanking and Internet Browsing and well everything else they do. A lot of this eInk eBook Reader bull is going to become the consumer equivalent of a really bad hangover kinda like the one Sony is a prime example of right now. I just have this feeling we as eBook consumers are going to step back and wonder what the hell the whole deal was with all that cheap clunky retro tech people were drooling over and paying way way too much for and that my friends is the sad summation of all things eInk.

During my time at Sony, I’ve been a part of several shifts: I’ve witnessed the transition from film to digital imaging and the shift from analog television to HDTV, and the shift from analog music to digital music. There are some similarities between where the publishing industry is today and where the music industry was when it entered the digital age. When we transitioned from LPs and cassette tapes to CDs and MP3s; music did not die – vinyl and magnetic tape formats did.

Right Steve, where do we begin?

Sony failed to push their ATRAC digital music format DRM down our throats and thus their Walkman line crashed and burned as the Apple iPod and MP3 took hold. That was a failure on Sony’s part to see the future and an absolute failure to provide intelligent consumer options in particular “music file formats” in your hardware. Oh and Samsung and LG just stole your TV business out from under your fat ass this year using cleaner, sharper display technology. Does any of that sound familiar with your current eBook Reader product line? It should.

History has painfully shown us what worked and what didn’t work during past transitions, and we’re now in a far better position for the industry and consumers to make the digital transition together with the digitalization of books. During the digital music boom, consumers copied CD’s onto their computers before MP3 players were widely available. This time around, we need to steer clear of piracy – and I believe we’re doing that; we have the right DRM measures in place. These measures, combined with a multitude of popular eReader devices, a wide selection of content at reasonable prices and protective measures that treat publishers and authors fairly will help us avoid the ‘Apple-ization’ of the industry.

Ah so DRM is gonna save our asses Steve? Really? Apple, the greatest example of saving the Music Industry from itself, is BAD BAD BAD!

I don’t know about “history” Steve but your Sony corporate earnings reports for this year alone suck mighty ass. You are I guess the man in charge, so please explain how you are “an expert” in foreseeing future profit potential when you found none this year? Hmmm, how was Apple’s earnings this year Steve-o? You know Apple dumped Music DRM right?

Sony

Japan’s Sony Corp. announced Friday a quarterly loss of 290 million dollars, hit by weak demand for televisions, cameras and other electronic goods, but it upgraded its outlook for the rest of the year.

The maker of Bravia televisions, PlayStation game consoles and Cyber-shot cameras maintained its forecast for its first back-to-back annual losses since it was listed on the stock market in 1958.

So Steve just wants you all to remember HE killed the Sony PRS-505 their cleanest eBook Reader screen to bring you clunky foggy unresponsive touch screen eInk technology and force you to pay more for all that crap you don’t like anyway. Because it has nothing to do with reading! Oh and they slapped wireless into that same unit with the worst screen this year so let’s see how that goes.

Yeah, Steve Harber is someone I would listen to if I wanted the experience the wonders of bankruptcy court.

Sony Daily Edition

Just the facts…

7 inch eInk Touch Screen (16 level gray scale)
1.6 gig memory with two SD Card slots
Battery life for 7 days
Support PDF/ePub/BBeB DRMs
3G Wireless

Now in pre-order for $399.99

Reg Hardware: Sony unveils Mills & Boon Reader

A Sony Pocket Reader in Romantic Rose Pink with Snowbound: Miracle Marriage, Under The Boss’s Mistletoe and Christmas Betrothals all loaded in for 180 Pounds or around $303.

Such a deal! NOT! Things like this make me miss the Sony 505 at least the screen was big and sharp for the money.

Sony is providing a nice OverDrive Library Online Search function.
Even if you do not have a Sony if you use a eBook Reader that uses Adobe Digital Editions you can use OverDrive.

So check it out and see if you can start checking out eBooks today.

Sony’s new lineup of eBook Readers are not making it with the reviewers. Like this guy.

Oh yeah, so to close the loop on my ebook purchases, I decided to return the PRS-600 Sony Touch Edition and buy another red Sony PRS-505 before they can no longer be found available. The Touch Edition is nice with the dictionary and notes capability, but I rarely use these features and the display on the 505 is just too good for the 600 to beat.

The low down from most of the reviews I have read seems to be pick up a Sony PRS-505 while they are still around for a good size, sharp, clear eInk display with solid basic eBook Reader functionality.

The new smaller Sony PRS-300 does not compare very well at all to the similar 5 inch screen size Astak EZ Reader Pocket PRO which has a faster chip and removable battery and smart card slot. The Sony PRS-600 has a hazier display than the PRS-505 due to the fact Sony wants to force people to use their not as responsive or clear eInk touch screen technology.

Sony should have at least kept the PRS-505 but this will give other companies a chance to outsell them.

In a move that should surprise no one after those Amazon sales figures were announced for 2009. Sony has announced by the end of the year they will dump their own proprietary DRM format and will sell and support only ePub format eBooks. Doing this will just place them more in line with their other eInk competitors Cool-er, Elonex, Astak, Plastic Logic (Who does not have a eBook Reader out even though they get mentioned in articles all the time.) and this list is growing bigger every day. All these eBook Readers can use Adobe Digital Editions for their DRM authentication and transfer of Adobe DRM eBooks to the device so no surprise there.

I am beginning to think all basic eBook Readers from now on will, and probably should, provide the same DRM format support of Adobe’s PDF/ePub simply because Amazon through their overly possessive licensing practices basically killed any chance of third party eBook Readers supporting BOTH Amazon’s Mobi DRM format and Adobe’s PDF/ePub DRM format and there really never was a good reason to use any of the other DRM formats I have only heard about. I swear that most of those other DRMs were probably created by nerdy college students and were only used by like two people on the whole planet at their peak.

At least things are becoming much more simple format wise in the eBook Reader wars. You have Amazon on one side with their variations on Mobi and remember even they bowed to the textbook publishers and put PDF support on the Kindle DX and then there is “everyone else” using Adobe PDF/ePub. So depending on how sales go I would imagine this is the final show down in regards to what format becomes the industry standard. In a perfect world I hope all supposedly smart people wake up really soon and realize DRM is a waste of their time and money not to mention I could Google three available python scripts that can take out all of these DRMs in less than a minute but that’s just me refusing to live in La La Land.

Now if only all those existing eInk eBook Readers could be tweaked to display the typical business supported PDF format clearly in a decent font we might have an interesting fight on our hands.

Oh and Amazon, just to get the shock and awe out of the way… Apple supports PDF at the OS level, and are the main platform for most Adobe products, and pretty much always has been. Good luck as an also ran!

UPDATE! A really interesting list of all eBook Devices that officially support Adobe Digital Editions with pictures and descriptions. Basically if the device is not on this list I would think twice and remember kids promises of someday doing this or that are not functional in real life.

Really interesting article with pictures and links to great resources for the personalization of your Sony PRS-505. Nice to know they are using MontaVista Linux. You can change the way buttons function and other great things to make life better for you.

Hack the planet!