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Sony Takes Aim At Amazon's Kindle
MojoKid writes "Sony recently announced two new eBook readers and has set its sights on tapping into Amazon's Kindle market share. The Sony Reader Pocket Edition and the Reader Touch Edition will come out at the end of the month and will reportedly cost less or the
same as the older, more established Kindle. The Pocket Edition has a five-inch
display, comes in several colors ('including navy blue, rose and silver') and
fits, as one might expect, in a jacket pocket or a purse. It can store about 350
'standard eBooks' and can last about two weeks on a single charge, Sony claims.
The Touch Edition is a bit larger, with a six-inch display that, as you'd
expect, can be controlled via a touch interface."
You might be joking about the hardware, but ebook readers need more and cheaper content to become popular. People want books where they only pay for the content and delivery costs. Not publishers setting artificially high prices to not compete with paper based books. Not to mention that we need significantly more books in the catalog. Only a small percentage of the books available on Amazon have ebook peers.
Try reading it outside in bright, direct sunlight (ie the beach).
Readers like these Sony ones and the Kindle are all about the e-ink displays, full stop. They are awesome, and the charge life is measured in weeks. LCDs are shit for reading books, honestly.
Yes, Sony can tend to be very open, as long as the BMG part of Sony doesn't find out about the move.
You see, Sony suffers from a certain dissonance: part of their company manufactures electronics, people want to buy things that are open and don't impose undue restrictions on them, they prefer gadgets they can do what they want with, that allow them to take their media and use it however they like.
The other part of Sony is one of the largest recording companies, a member of the RIAA.
The other half of Sony doesn't want you to be able to do anything with your media at all, except play it once, and then pay them every time you want a copy on a new device of yours. DRM is a must and non-negotiable as far as people with that type of thinking are concerned.
There would be a lot of benefit to consumers, and probably to Sony, if the two parts of Sony would just split and become separate companies...
In the mean time, it's anyone's guess what they'll do as far as DRM for eBooks; politically speaking, I don't see how Sony Music Entertainment could ever be happy with Sony encouraging DRM-free content, even if it's not music...
I'll consider getting another eBook device when they make it possible to lend an eBook the way I can lend a physical book.
I want to be able to lend Kindle books... commercial, protected, bestseller-type books... to a person with a Sony reader. I want to be able to replace my Sony reader three years down the road with whatever eBook reading device appeals to me and move all my books to the new device.
And I want to be able to make the transfers just as I can today with a physical book.
I have $300 worth of ebooks I purchased for my Rocket eBook. When I bought them I was assured that if I ever needed to replace the device, I could just give them the new serial number and re-download the books re-coded for the new device. Well, I my eBook device finally bit the dust. I now have $300 worth of eBooks that can be read only on a device that no longer exists, unless I buy a replacement device that doesn't exist, contact a customer service department that no longer exists, and re-download them from a server that no longer exists, operated by a company that no longer exists.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Seriously? Insightful??
Read the specs - I've owned both the 505 and the 700. Both have both internal memory, memory sticks, and plain SD cards. It takes open format books and really does last the 2 weeks it says.
Sure, Sony aren't always knights in shining armour - but their ebook readers are absolutely fantastic, they let me carry around a whole library, in non-DRM format, to read by the pool, on the tube.
This is a GOOD product