Tuesday, July 14, 2009

First impressions of Sony Reader

Mine got here yesterday (a 505) and DH had my laptop to meet with a client. Our Mac is the only computer with a compatible port that I can reach (there's one on DH's work computer, probably, but it's lost in a tangle of wires and dust) so I charged it up on the Mac. Then he got home, but our wifi isn't working and my kids had the cord I use plugged into the Mac so they could watch old Transformers cartoons on YouTube, so I could only transfer stuff I already had on my laptop.

I saved my work-in-progress (WIP) as a pdf file and transferred that, too. Since we went for a playdate at my beta-reader-friend's house (her sons are the same ages as mine), I showed it to her and had her read the intro that I had changed (and more and more I keep thinking I need to take it out completely. It's very prologue-y. And ooooh I have an idea for it (quick jotting things down...)) But anyway.

So yesterday and so far today, I have only uploaded my book and a couple of free Harlequin books that I had already put on my laptop. Once I went back and read the instructions (and I didn't like the fold out format of the instruction sheet, so got most of my answers from the reader computer program - oh, which I had already installed from the Internet), it made more sense, but they still were a bit vague, I thought.

I read one of the Hqn books last night while getting the baby to sleep. When magnified one click, one page almost fits on a screen, but sometimes there are some orphan lines on the next screen and I have to click again 2 seconds later. It would be nice if it could figure that out and go from one screen to the next, but it is just a pdf reader and reads a page. Oh, and it messes up the formatting quite a bit, especially in dialogue. There were a couple of places that I had to click through the magnifications (I know it's only 3 sizes, but wouldn't it be nice if there were a zoom out button, too?) to get back to the original, small size just so I could see who said what.

It is a bit dim in the light of one lamp while the baby is falling asleep, but generally it has been all right. The reason I don't like reading on computer screens for too long at a time is the backlight. I'm glad to hear from others that it is visible in bright light, it doesn't just disappear like cell phones screens usually do.

It's going to take some getting used to the blinking when going from one page to the next. I read quickly and am used to just zooming on, but I have to give it a couple of seconds which is throwing me off. Obviously, that shouldn't be insurmountable!

I'm still pretty paranoid that I'm going to drop or leave it where the baby can get and she's going to hurl it across the room.

Right, all that and I haven't even downloaded anything new from the Net for it, have I? Well, once I have, I'll write a review for Sarah at the smart bitches :)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Leaves me wondering when they will begin introducing such programming to beginning readers. Will kids have to learn the technology along with the old fashioned ABC's? A new world fer shur!

Anonymous said...

Well, give yourself time to get used to it. Reading books electronically is a whole new world. The Kindle is a little different but I"m sure many things are the same. One of the things I like best about the Kindle is that it is not backlit -- it's not lit at all. If I want to read it in the dark, I need a booklight but in bright conditions, it's just like a book. In the one lamp scenario you spoke of it, it would work just like a book.

The one place (I really do mean it -- this is the ONLY place I miss it) is when I suddenly think, what was that that happened a couple of pages back and I want to skip back a couple of pages and re-read something. In a book, you can skip several pages at once and jump back to a section, while keeping your place marked and then jump back again. In the Kindle, I have to go back 1 page at a time and then forward again 1 page at a time. Irritating. On the other hand, I am finding that I don't skim as much when I read on the Kindle. I am not zipping through the book at scary fast pace -- I'm reading it more carefully and don't need to go back and reread something again as often. Interesting, huh?

Anyway, I am madly in love with my ebook reader and hope you fall in love with yours, too!