Sony Reader Taking Hold?

An anonymous reader writes "Sony recently launched their latest attempt at an electronic book reader. The 'Sony Reader' is small and lightweight, about the size of a paperback book, and using E-Ink technology it only requires battery power when changing the page so light on power requirements. While it isn't their first attempt at an electronic book reader, critics are already predicting the Reader's success."

Comments

Success???

[SpookyFish]

But what is the DRM, and how will it rootkit me?

Re:Success???

[thej1nx]

But what is the DRM, and how will it rootkit me?

Ah, thanks for buying our product and it is good of you to ask that question. Since we could not find a satisfactory and adequate way of protecting our copyrights, we have now introduced DMCA 2.0(Damn, My Corneas! Arrrggh!!!)

First our qualified, expert ex-mafia representatives will drop by to gouge out your eyesballs. Rest assured that this will be a painless, troublefree process. They will knock you out with a big mallet first. The ebooks text will be all be encrypted in Navajo code(already patented by us). A special navajo talker will be provided to you to decrypt and narrate the text to you. We will ofcourse be charging you an arm and a leg(and two eyesballs) for this valuable service. You have already agreed to all this in the EULA(it was the microscopic fine print).

Have a nice day.

Thanking you, Marketing/Mgmt team

P.S. If you upgrade to our premium service we will also provide a trained free seeing eye dog(1 year supply of dog food also included)!

Re:Success???

[scdeimos]

Argh, I just noticed the *note* on that section:

7 These formats require file conversion to BBeB using supplied software.

At least they supply the necessary software.

Re:Success???

[Nogami_Saeko]

Sigh... I was actually considering buying this until you found the "catch". I don't want my files converted to their proprietary (likely DRM'ed) format. I want it to support PDF, RTF, TXT, HTML and the like natively.

For example: Device shows up as a USB drive when plugged into a computer, drag and drop your documents onto it, let the device convert/display them on the fly for me. No special software necessary.

Now it's possible (and I stress the "possible") that they're doing the conversion upfront on the host machine to save processing power and to make the battery life longer on the reader unit. But they should at least give the user the choice... Either do the conversion up-front, or support the file types internally with the understanding that the unit will have less battery life and may take longer to display pages.

I'll reserve judgement until reviews of their conversion software come in, but if that software tries to sneak any sort of DRM onto MY files, or prevents files loaded onto the unit from being transferred back to a PC it's connected to, they can kiss a sale goodbye.

N.

This will save my wrists!

[montyzooooma]

Having recently struggled through Johnathon Strange, The Cleric Quintet and half of the Thomas Covenant saga in massive hardback editions I am seriously looking forward to a convenient lightweight way to read these tomes.

Unfortunately with most ebook sellers pricing themselves higher than equivalent paperbacks it's going to take more than this to really liven up the market. I favour SF&F so Baen ( http://www.baen.com/library/ ) are a welcome exception. They offer DRM-free downloads and subscriptions AND offer a load of books for free download.

Re:This will save my wrists!

[aussie_a]

Unfortunately with most ebook sellers pricing themselves higher than equivalent paperbacks

For the majority of cases this isn't true. I buy from two stores, Ereader because I like their format and find their DRM non-intrusive nor limiting.

The other store which will appeal to slashdotters is Fictionwise. Both stores sell books for a comparable price to Amazon. such as The Footprints of God which is cheaper at Ereader. Another example is Blindfold for $8 from Fictionwise or second hand at Amazon. I know which I'd prefer ;)

Having said that, you won't save much money, if anything, buying e-books (I've found Australians will actually save some money though, because our prices are dearer, even once you take exchange rate into account). I still prefer the e-books because I'm running out of room in my house for dead tree books. I'm leaving the rest of the room to comic book collections and books not available electronically (although more and more books are being made available, such as Anne McCaffrey's books).

Having said that, inertia does appear to sometimes cause e-books to be priced dearer for a while longer then the paperbacks. An example is Robert J Sawyer's Hybrids which was kept at the hardcover price for a while after the paperback was released. But it has now finally come down in price. So if you're patient, you will get good prices for your e-books.

Re:This will save my wrists!

[andreyw]

Incorrect. DRM is _intrusive_ and limiting - even well-implemented DRM like that provided iTMS. Sure, it plays fine /now/. What happens in 10 years? I have books printed in the beginning of 1900s - and I can still prop-them-open and read, without needing some weird limiting technology to unlock the content. Same goes for tapes, CDs, LPs.

Will I be able to read the ebook or listen to the music in 10 years? Likely no - which btw is perfectly fine with the content providers, who don't think you own anything anyhow and thus are glad to "lend" as many crippled copies as you like/need.

Hence, it's real paper for me for books (or PDF/PS/DJvu) and AllOfMp3 for my music needs (can't find russian music elsewhere anyhow).

Taking hold???

[Black Parrot]

Shouldn't that be "taking root?"

Doomed to failure

[Xenkar]

Paperback books are cheap. This ebook reader can't compete with real books so long as it will be priced $300 to $400. The only way eBook readers could become commonplace is if they give them away.

Re:Doomed to failure

[aussie_a]

The only way eBook readers could become commonplace is if they give them away.

Not true. They do have to become more reasonably priced then $400 US, but you don't have to give them away to sell them. Many people have bought PDAs mainly to read e-books. They are convenient and easy to store (I can take 100 books in the amount of space needed for 1 book). Don't underestimate that factor alone. Besides which, there is a TON of content online (I don't like reading long stuff on the computer, but on the PDA, let alone this e-book reader, I don't mind at all) that is either free or not available in print.

They'd have me if......

[aussie_a]

They'd have me if it was possible to install other readers onto it (I don't want Sony to write the programs, just make it so other people CAN write the programs and the user can install them on the reader). Alternately I'd be more tempted if their format wasn't DRM'd (yup, non-DRM e-books do exist. One store that sells quite a bit from numerous prominent authors (such as Kevin J Andserson) is Fictionwise).

I'm a big time e-book reader and I'm migrating to an e-book only library (for new books anyway). If Sony has success, that's great. But I'm finding it doubtful that they will, because if someone like me isn't interested, what is their demographic?

According to other reports it will support pdf

[antifoidulus]

without DRM, but I'm assuming that their book store is going to impose less DRM than the one they launched in Japan. In that bookstore, you could only "buy" your book for 2 months, after that it became unreadable. That defeats the whole purpose of having an e-reader! If I'm laying down $400 for an e-reader, I want to be able to bust out "Breakfast of Champions" on a whim, not make sure that my license is up to date before doing so. One of the reasons I don't buy a lot of books right now is that I hate having to find storage places for them, plus I tend to move around a great bit and shipping books is expensive and a pain.
I think a sanely priced bookstore would be a great idea, but till then I'm sticking with the library!

Finally!

[Ours]

It's about time. I've played with one of these 2 years ago in Tokyo and fell in love with it. If it wasn't for the price (aroud 400 US$) and the fact that it was all in Japanese (so I couln't check if it read PDF files), I would have bought one. If these baby can read PDF and HTML, it's going to be one great tool to read technical documentation during my daily train commute. No more heavy books to carry around breaking my back.

Re:From the Fine Article

[JanneM]

What besides DRM does this do extra??

It's the screen itself. I've seen and played with the previous reader here in Japan, and the screen really is amazing. As in "you have to see it before dissing it" amazing. It really is like reading on paper. The brighter the environment is the better it looks.

On one hand, this reader is supposedly able to show any PDF or html and connect over USB like a mass-storage device, which is good (and the lack of which is what stopped me from buying the previous model). On the other hand, Philips is soon coming out with their version of a reader with a paper-like display, and I'd frankly rather buy from just about any company other than Sony nowadays. So I'll wait until I see what the Philips reader will be like, and unless they screw up with some DRM-only boneheaded move, that's what I'll get instead.

Why put a fake horse in front of the automobile?

[ian_mackereth]

These dedicated e-readers are all trying to look like a dead-tree book and are missing a big part of the point. My PDA is small enough to fit in my shirt pocket. A book, even a paperback, isn't. Neither is a paperback-sized e-reader.

It's like trying to make automobiles palatable to horse'n'cart users by putting a fake horse in front of it.

I do all my reading on a Palm (T3, if you care) and have done for years. All it took to make it worthwhile was a paper-white screen with 320x320 or better resolution.

Why do I prefer ebooks?
The 800-page book I just read weighed no more than the short story I read before that. And I could have hundreds of 800-page books in my pocket at once.
I can touch a word on the page and instantly call up a definition from a 150,000 word dictionary.
I can read in the dark, I can read while waiting in a queue, I can read while floating in a canoe (with the PDA in a waterproof bag.)
I can bookmark interesting pages, I can jot notes in an electronic 'margin', I can copy a relevant passage into an email without re-typing it.
If my house burns down, I have an off-site backup of my library.
I can search for a character's name or a phrase I want to look up.

And I don't need something that _looks_ like a book to do it!

Pictures and More Details

[giafly]

The unit reads PDF files as well as Sony's proprietary (anyone surprised?) BBeB format (stands for Broadband Electronic Books). They will be releasing software for reading BBeB format on your computer so you can read books you've purchased on your PC as well as on the Reader, but apparently you can only "share" your copy of the book with up to six other devices. When pressed for details about how this "document DRM" actually works, the PR rep we spoke with had zero information -- we asked whether a Mac version of the BBeB-reading software would be released but no word on that either. - Engadget