Sony Portable Reader (PRS-500) (Page 1 of 5)
Written by
R. Wood Miles
Posted on: Dec 30, 2006 at 03:19pm
Section:
Hardware
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MSRP: $349.99
Purpose: To read electronic books. Secondary functions are displaying black and white pictures in JPG or PNG format and playing music in MP3 and ACC format.
(Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code on the Sony Reader.)
This device does nothing that you cannot already do with a laptop computer, a tablet computer, desktop computer, most cell phones, or most PDAs. It is designed for the sole purpose of reading books and perhaps listening to music as you read. It is very good at this.
First, a few basics about the unit, it is small, about the size of a paperback book — 7” x 5” x ¼”. The screen is 6” (diagonal measurement) 800 x 600 4 grayscale e-paper (E-ink) with 167 dpi resolution. The internal rechargeable battery provides about 7,500 page views per charge (20 hours more or less in use.) Controls are easy to use. The system is built on the Motorola Dragonball MXL CPU and provides about 91 MB of internal flash memory book storage. Additional storage up to 4 GB is available through either a removable SD card or Memory Stick. The OS is MontaVista Hard Hat Linux 2.4.17. Interface to a computer is through a USB 1.1 (Type A, the small one) and there are also connectors for power, headphones, and an optional cradle.
Supported book formats are BBeB (a Sony unreleased specification with DRM), LRF, DPF, TXT, and RTF. Sony CONNECT software supplied with the unit to assist in transfer between the computer and the Reader as well as between the Sony CONNECT bookstore and the computer for purchase and loading of books. Internal fonts are from Bitstream and include Dutch (~Times New Roman), Swiss (~Ariel), and Courier.
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