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Okay, I've been playing with my shiny new Sony Daily Edition Reader for a few days now.

What's Great for Normal Users: The 7" touch screen. Awesome. One of several reasons I just couldn't see buying a Kindle. I mean, even my ancient Gemstar ebook had a touch screen. Page turning with a thumb or finger swipe, highlighting, scribbling notes, bookmarking, double-tapping a word for an instant definition...these are important things for me if I'm going to fork over cash for a dedicated reader. Embedded links to chapters, news articles and sections all work great by tapping through. Fully integrated New Oxford American dictionary accessed easily by tapping a word, or via key entry on the screen.

Compatible with the .epub format, which makes a huge amount of content readily available not only from Sony's store, but from libraries, coughtorrentscough and all of Google's Pubic Doman stuff. Load times vary depending upon the format, but overall books load very quickly with little lagtime. The most egregious lags seem to come on the .pdf files, which appears to be common across most dedicated readers, but even then, the hang up is negligible for the most part. A few seconds at most. A .pdf of Les Miserables probably took the longest to initally load, but did so relatively painlessly in around 8 seconds, and even less upon subsequent loads. For reading, fonts are easily adjusted in size from very small all the way up to ridiculously huge XXL. And the device will easily flip to landscape format for reading, either for a two-page, paperback-like reading, or just single page. Single-page landscape reading is especially effective on some of the peskier .pdf and .doc files that have formatting quirks.



I tried all sorts of formats on this thing and there was really nothing I could find that the Reader couldn't be adapted to handle very well. And it HASN'T CRASHED ONCE. Given that this is a brand new Sony device, surely with firmware fixes already planned and being developed, this is amazing to me.

The wireless connection is AT&T 3G and works well where's there's service, fairly fast and the Sony Bookstore is easy to navigate, although a little simplistic. Only 4 or 5 daily newspapers are currently available for subscription, but Sony already has contracts in place for a lot more, including the NY Times. 1.6 GB Hard drive, Media Stick and SD card slots. Nice and light, around 1/2 a pound. Built-in, but easily detachable, leather cover. Plays audio files. Loaded Sketches of Spain up in 256 MP3 format and it sounds great.

What's Not-So-Great: The price point is going to be a turn-off for some people at $399, but I personally don't mind the premium for the flexibility it provides. Additionally, the unit is plagued with some of the same contrast, clarity and glare issues that remain problematic for the previous Sony Touch models. I understand that this is partially the price you pay for laying a touch screen layer over the e-ink, but the glare especially seems a bit inexcusable. In relatively normal ambient light conditions, it's not an issue at all. But catch an overhead light at the right angle, and suddenly you can't see a fucking thing. So, a little annoying. For me, it's well worth enduring those occasions to have constant touch screen interface. But I can definitely see it being an issue for some people. Also, the Audio application is puzzling. There's no 'Stop' once you start a track. There's Pause...but no Stop. So the little note icon stays in the bottom corner even after you've gone back to reading or browsing. Weird. And there's actually no audio player, per se. You just click on a track, and it starts playing from that point in the audio folder. I'm guessing there that will be a firmware fix shortly.

What's Flat-Out-Fucking-Awful: Sony's 'Library' software, for use in managing the reader, and shopping for books at Sony's ebookstore when not in wireless mode, is the worst piece of fucking buggy, nonsensical and annoying crap since....well, Sony's craptastic CONNECT music software that was their laughable 'answer' to iTunes. I swear to fucking God, the thing crashed on me within a couple of minutes, requiring a re-installation. And everytime the Reader is first connected by USB, it tries to install it again. It proved completely incapable of properly synching the device with the Library contents. And finally, it suddenly decided to omit the left panel altogether, rendering it 100% worthless, even after yet another uninstall/reinstall. In all honestly, it started to be more than a bit amusing, because I never really had any intention of using it anyway, but an average user has got to be pulling hair out over it. A little digging suggests this is probably related somehow to running 64-bit Windows, but really, Sony...let it go. You can't fucking do software. You just can't. You've never been able to do software. I don't know why you can't do software. But cut it out.

What's AWESOME for geeks: CALIBRE. The open-source CALIBRE software will basically let you put damned near anything on this book with little fuss. It's already been updated to recognize the PRS-900 and works flawlessly converting all sorts of shit to the epub format. Hell, there's even a plug-in that converts those .cbr digital comic files into high-contrast, very readable (usually in landscape mode) epub documents in 16 shade grayscale. Allows for completely editable metadata and collections. I've got it set to download news from a number of papers every morning that get instantly uploaded when the device is detected. Takes about 30 seconds. Even if Sony's Library software wasn't already blatantly useless, this is clearly the answer to any issues with converting and synching content with this Reader.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with it, although it has now caused me to renew my rather dangerous habit of reading while driving to work.