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Sony Reader Touch Edition - Red (PRS650RC) ReviewI have had my PRS-650 for about a week now. I have had a chance to play with all the features. I also have owned a Sony Reader PRS-505 for about one year and a half.ERGONOMICS AND FEATURESThe Sony PRS-650, in my opinion, is a beautiful piece of equipment. It is lighter than the PRS-505, weighing in at only 7.6 ounces. It is also slightly smaller but has the same size screen. It has an aluminum case and a matted back surface. The back is less slippery and thus easy to grip.
I actually prefer now to read on the Sony Reader verses a physical paper book. A lot of people will say they like the feel of a book. You will get over that. The Sony Reader is better than a paper book. The PRS-650 is lighter than most paper books. You will be surprised at how liberating this can be. You can hold the thing with one hand in many comfortable positions. Also, the reading surface is flat. On a paper book, the reading surface is curved near the binding, and thus gets unequal lighting. You also do not have to keep an eReader open like you do with a paper book. Turning a page is effortless. The words flow into your mind as if the device was not there. Beautiful design leads to an immersive reading experience. I thought the PRS-505 was well designed for reading. The PRS-650 is also well designed for reading, it just has a ton more features. I do have to say the PRS-505 was better designed for one handed page turns. The PRS-505 had two page turning buttons located on different places on the eReader. This allowed one handed page turns with either hand. The PRS-650 only has one set of buttons to turn pages. For one handed page turns, you pretty much can only use your left hand. The touch screen also allows you to turn a page by swiping the screen. This is cool, but I don't think it is any better than just pushing a button.
The screen of the PRS-650 rocks! It noticeably has greater contrast than the PRS-505. And the PRS-505 was considered the "gold standard" of readability. The earlier touch models (PRS-700 and PRS-600) compromised contrast and glare to provide the touch screen. With the PRS-650, Sony has solved that problem. It looks great and glare really is not a problem. Also, page turns seem to be about 50% faster than the PRS-505. In the PRS-650, you can also change how the text contrast renders. This works good for books that have colored text that don't look as dark as they could be.
I will not go over all the features, but will point out some that the PRS-650 has over the PRS-505. The one feature I love the most is the ability to highlight text. With a touch screen, this is almost like doing it on a paper book with a highlighter. You can use your finger, but the provided stylus works better for small fonts. You can then associate a note with the highlighted text. This note can be hand written where you can draw with the stylus, or you can use a touch qwerty keyboard. If the highlighted text has a note associated with it, a little icon shows next to the highlighted text. When you touch the highlighted words, the note opens up. I read a lot of non-fiction books that I want to highlight, so this is huge for me. You can also mark up a book by drawing right on the page with the stylus. You can circle things, make arrows, etc., with the stylus or your finger. Pretty cool!
The other feature I love is the ability to zoom on a page. I have read books on my PRS-505 that have had diagrams that I just could not make out on the 6" screen. Now with the zoom, I can see them clearly. The PRS-650 has a cool feature where you can double tap a picture in the book and it will zoom to fill the screen with just the picture.
Another feature worth pointing out is PDF reflow. This is not new to the PRS-650. If you read a lot of PDF documents, this is huge. Without PDF reflow, one PDF page will fill the screen. It generally will be too small on a six inch screen. To read it, you will have to zoom and pan. Pretty much unworkable. The Kindle does not have PDF reflow. With PDF reflow, you can change the font size and the document reflows within a page. So now one PDF page may take more than one screen to render. You do normal page turns to access the reflowed text. This makes reading PDF MUCH easier. A lot of books from the public libraries are still PDF, but ePub is the dominant new standard used by the libraries.
There is also a Power Management feature on the PRS-650 that is cool. When you shut off the PRS-650 by sliding the switch at top, it really puts the device in stand-by. This allows the PRS-650 to very quickly come back on. In stand-by, it uses a very low amount of power. If you never turned a single page, the PRS-650 will lose its battery charge just by being on stand-by. This stand-by time is about 2 to 3 weeks. With Power Management turned on, if on stand-by for more than 2 days, it will fully shut down automatically. When fully shut down, it will not use any power, but it will take about a minute to turn on. You have the option to shut off Power Management.WHY BUY SONY
Many will choose an eReader based upon availability of books, price of books, ergonomics/ease of use, and features. I would like you to also consider and additional reason: principles.
Sony has embraced opened standards on both the format of the eBook and the Digital Rights Management (DRM). They have done this by using Adobe eBook Platform as their underlying technology. Adobe eBook Platform consists of several components, most importantly Adobe Digital Editions and Adobe Content Server 4. Many other publisher and retailers have also chosen to use Adobe eBook Platform, which has resulted in improved compatibility between eReaders and eBooks.
Sony Reader Store, Borders, over 9,000 public libraries, eBooks.com, Books-A-Million, to name just a few, have adopted Adobe eBook Platform. Barnes and Noble also uses Adobe technology, but uses a DRM variant. The Sony Reader PRS-650 can read protected eBooks purchased from the above mentioned retailers, with the exception of Barnes and Noble. The Barnes and Noble Nook can read books purchased from Sony Reader Store, but surprisingly, as far as I know, the Sony Reader cannot read protected books purchased from Barnes and Noble. I suspect a firmware update to the Sony Reader allowing support for the DRM variant could change this in the future.
Other eReaders that use Adobe technology can read the books you are reading on your PRS-650. Most notably is the Kobo. The way you can tell an eReader is compatible with the Sony Reader is if it supports ePub for Adobe Digital Editions and PDF for Adobe Digital Editions. This specifies the document format and DRM standard.
The key to make this all work is to use a consistent Adobe Digital ID. When you get your PRS-650, you will be asked to create an account on the Sony Reader Store. Typically you will use an email address and a password to create an account. Sony Reader Store will generate an Adobe Digital ID based upon your Sony Reader Store account credentials (provided your computer is not already authorized with an Adobe Digital ID). It will then authorize your computer and your device based upon this Adobe Digital ID.
Now say you want to purchase a book from Borders. This can be confusing, but as long as you remember to use a consistent Adobe Digital ID, you will not have compatibility issues. Your Adobe Digital ID is essentially your personal encryption key used to protect your copy of eBooks. Borders will recommend that you install Adobe Digital Editions and their reader app. You do not need to do this. The Reader Library software that comes with the Sony Reader, along with the Adobe Digital ID generated by the Sony Reader Store, is all that you need.
When you purchase a book from Borders, and then download it, Borders will actually download a very small file with an acsm extension. The Reader Library Software can open the acsm file. When the acsm file is opened by the Sony Reader Library, this causes the download of the actual eBook from an Adobe Content Server 4 server. At the moment of download, the eBook is encrypted using the Adobe Digital ID associated with your authorized computer and by Sony Reader Library software.
So my advice is not to install Adobe Digital Editions and to use the Adobe Digital ID generated by the Sony Reader Store. When you get set up to check out books from public libraries, OverDrive will advise installing Adobe Digital Editions. You do not need to do this. The public libraries work exactly like Borders. The public library will download the acsm file to your computer, Sony Reader Library will open the acsm file and download from the Adobe Content Server 4 server your encrypted version of the eBook. You actually can do all this without the Sony Reader Library software and just use Adobe Digital Editions. You can let Adobe Digital Editions generate your Adobe Digital ID, but I personally prefer the Sony Reader Library software just because it makes purchasing books from Sony Reader Store very easy. The Reader Library software also works great with the public libraries. You can return your book directly in the Reader Library. The Reader Library will tell you how many days are left on your check out. The Sony Reader PRS-650 will also display days remaining for your checked out book. When your check out expires, the book will be removed from your computer and eReader automatically.
So if you want to share books between eReaders, use the same Adobe Digital ID. You can have up to six devices on the same Adobe Digital ID. My wife now uses my old PRS-505 and we can easily share books.
So I started this whole discussion around principles. Say you bought a Blu-ray player from Store A. Store A then says, your Store A Blu-ray...Read more›Sony Reader Touch Edition - Red (PRS650RC) Overview
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