Blogg-Ed Indetermination

The Sony Reader Touch (PRS-600) is the first e-reader I have had the opportunity to use for an extended period of time. It boasts a clean, minimalist style that I like, with clearly marked and unambiguous buttons across the bottom. It’s battery life is acceptable. The required desktop software is available in both Mac and Windows versions, and its puny on-board memory of 512 MB can be upgraded up to 16 GB using the available SD or Memory Stick slots. You can switch the screen orientation from portrait to landscape through a menu, but the unit itself can’t shift its screen orientation automatically.

You add books to the reader via your computer and a USB cable. The Reader does not offer wireless capabilities. I found the software easy to use, and purchasing books from the Sony store to be a breeze. I purchased Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody (featured in an upcoming review) for purposes of testing. You can also load PDF files, which I did in the form of an open content Earth Science textbook from CK12.

The PRS 600 has a solid, well-manufactured feel to it. The screen size is approximately that of a paperback book,  and it weights just over 10 ounces (.28 KG). All of the ports are on either the top or the bottom of the unit, making for a smooth feel along the left and right sides. You can navigate between pages using touch gestures if you wish, but I found the buttons to be more consistently responsive. You can use either the provided stylus or your fingers to navigate on the screen, highlight text, and so on. The touch function I used most frequently was that of highlighting text, for which i found the fingernail of my index finger to be more useful that the stylus. (I’m always afraid of losing a stylus, a hold-over from my days of using Palm handhelds).

The reader can also play DRM free M3 and AAC files. I did not test this function, as I was primarily interested in its ability as a reader.

Bottom line: If you are in the market for an e-reader, keep looking.

The are a number of reasons why this is not the e-reader I need.

• No color. While the lack of color is not a problem with many texts, it’s an absolute show-stopper when it comes to textboosk, such as the beautifully illustrated Earth Science text mentioned above. The monochrome screen does its best to provide shades of gray, which look nice for the sample photos, but as an iPhone user I love its color display, and won’t accept anything less in an e-reader.
• While reading text, you can access the tool bar located at the top of the screen which allows you to highlight or annotate text, or on the bottom of the screen you a dictionary can appear to provide definitions of words. But you can have both available at the same time. I would like both.
• I would like the option to display black on white AND white on black text. Only the former is available.
• When flipping from one screen to the next, the screen briefly flips to white on black text of the next page before it is displayed. I found the page flipping to be a distracting animation.
• Shirky’s book contains several graphics and figures, which the e-readers renders as virtually unreadable. Zooming in magnifies the text, but did nothing for the figures. I still don’t know what they contain. (see screen shot, below)
• Another anomaly was that throughout Shirky’s book a number of WORDS could not be rendered correctly. (See circled ares in screen shot below.) What’s with that! This is simply unacceptable.
• The Sony Touch allows you to enter notes using an on-board screen keyboard. In this case I did resort to using the stylus. However, the performance of the keyboard is poor, often lagging several seconds behind the typing.
• Reading the PDF Earth science text book I found that paragraphs were often breaking in strange places when I increased the text size. Whether this is a problem with the PDF formatting or the reader I don’t know.
• The Sony Touch does not have a back lit screen, and reading it in even a dimly lit room can be difficult. You will need a brightly lit room or reading lamp to use it effectively.
• Forget about making useful marginal notes while using the Touch. You do have access to free form note making with the stylus. If you like writing your signature at the grocery store on touch-sensitive pad, you’ll like this experience. If you handwriting looks illegible, don’t expect the Touch to improve it or try to convert it to typewritten text. Additionally, margins are irritatingly small for such notations. What I want is the ability to put a pen at an insertion point, type or write a note, and then hide it. But the clincher for me is that when you make a note, and then change the type size, the note moves location on the screen. It’s no longer associated with its position on the screen adjacent to the text you wrote it next to.  As currently implemented, this is a useless “feature.”
• While I am on the topic of making marginal notations, if I had my way there would be a mechanism to toggle them on and off, so that a subsequent reader could choose between a pristine or annotated version of the book.
• Finally, what should happen when you hold down a right or left key to advance or reverse the text. The logical thing, I would think, would be for the key to automatically repeat, to allow you to flip forward to back several pages at a time. Not so with the touch. Want to go forward 10 pages, ten gestures or ten presses of the forward button.

Sony makes several version of the Reader, and the Touch may not be representative of the features and capabilities of the other models.

I so wanted to like this e-reader but, alas, I don’t. YMMV

I have no idea what this graph is supposed to depict.

There are dozens of examples of missing text in the book similar to this one.