Slashdot Mirror
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."
There was a good article in the New Yorker which brings one up to date with the genesis and current state of the kindle, and e-books in general. The author orders one and then proceeds to write an article about his experience. He compares it to paper books, discusses amazons choice of a non free and closed format, and generally reviews it quite well. Having an ad blocker and hating all that is spamazon has kept me out of the loop with these new e-book readers so it was a nice intro to the current scene.
The article is available online at the following link: Kindle and the Future of Reading
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
Or at least, it is compared to the Kindle. Sony will read PDF files and EPUB files. (EPUB is an open standard; an EPUB file is really a zip file, containing a few XML documents that describe where everything is, and then either XHTML or DAISY/DTBook content).
It's VERY easy to copy content to the Sony readers (shows up like a USB hard drive, or copy content to an SD card and insert). There's no remote-kill like the Kindle.
If you're worried about finding DRM free content, check out Baen's Webscriptions or Fictionwise (look for the "multiformat" books; all DRM free).
Finally, if you REALLY don't want to go with Sony, there are lots of other good readers out there, some of which run Linux, and give you source for the software.
Unless they decided to dump the DRM, why would anyone on Slashdot want to buy these?
It looks like you don't follow Sony very well. Recently Sony has so many surprise moves towards open standards. I own a Walkman player and a Sony reader and I have nothing to complain. The Sony PRS-505 Reader I'm owning right now is nothing like the Kindle. It reads txt, *ePub* and PDF natively and even plays MP3 and AAC files, and it even has two memory slots -- one of which is SD-HC -- to put your e-books into the device, on-the-fly. There is a killer software that goes very well with that reader, that is Calibre. The program downloads XKCD, The Register and even Slashdot and puts all of them neatly to my reader every time I connect it to my computer. So just want to let you know that Sony products now, are much better than the popular choices such as the iPod and the Kindle.
"The software also is compatible with both PCs and Apple computers and enable the user to read PDF, Word, BBeB and other text files on the Reader."
- that right there.
When I first made my paperback book available in paperback format in early 2007 Amazon offered to convert it (it was in PDF format) to their kindle format for me, I said sure, and almost immediately found out that the formatting didn't work out. I pulled it from the kindle store and asked if I could do the conversion on my own. They said sure, but their format was html. Because of the charts and imagery and the way the text was done in the book there wasn't any easy way of converting the 162 page PDF into essentially a big ass website. I opted to ignore the kindle and since then haven't suffered for it in anyway.
Now my books are available in PDF format and I'm converting many of the stories into RTF versions for mobile devices. The fact that Sony now has a reader that can view html formated ebooks as well as RTF, Word and PDF files means I soon will have another outlet for my products without me having to do any type of special conversion on my end, which for me means I get another revenue stream, a potentially larger client base and no additional time cost. Win Win.
Ave Molech Setting
By jaysonelliot on Aug 6, 2009 (on TFA) "Older, more established Kindle?" The Kindle was released in Nov. 2007 - the Sony Reader was released in September 2006, and was based on the nearly identical Sony Libre which had been on sale in Japan since early 2004. As of December, the Reader had sold 300,000 units in the US alone, while the Kindle was trailing behind at 240,000. I believe you meant to say "â¦the newer, less established Kindle."
Actually in the first 5 of Kindle Top Sellers at this moment are Michelle Malkin's "Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies" and Glenn Beck's "Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against and Out-of-Control Government,...". There isn't a single liberal leaning rant anywhere in the top 30, but I also see Dick Morris and Mark R. Levin from the right. So your assumption about the target demographic might be a tad off.
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...
because they are releasing the ebooks at the same time as the hard back editions of new books, not a year later in paperback.
so it is significantly cheaper than the $25-40 price range of a hardback book.
there are also cheaper older books available as well.
and over 500,000 free classics.
and of course there's always calibre and torrent sites with LIT format books.
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