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 Poor Quality and Lousy Customer Service Aug 15, 2008
Product stopped working after 7 months. Sony store where it was purcahsed refused to take it back and sent me to customer service. Customer service wanted to charge me for a replacement and when I balked they sent me to a customer service manager that negotiated the rate down but still wanted to charge me. In addition -- being forced to send the unit back at my cost.
Given the cost of the unit I would have expected better build quality and better customer service. Will bite the bullet and get it fixed but lack of quality and service will keep me from purchasing a Sony product in the future.
 Too costly Aug 08, 2008
I love the idea of this thing. I love the feel of it. And I thought it was going to be so practical, but it turns out it just is not.
I travel a great deal and fill in the time by reading. It's annoying having to pack three or four books just to get through a trip, to know that you're going to have to haul them around--already read--at the other end of your trip. So this was a great thing for me.
But it's expensive. Even the initial cost is a little high, but then to find out that nearly every single title available through the sony ebook website is more expensive than not only it's kindle counterpart, but also its real book counterpart was a huge let down. I cannot justify a digital copy costing more than the same content on real paper. Maybe Sony is has higher book prices in order to compensate for its lower unit cost, but it means that the only things on my ebook are the 100 free classics downloads that came with the purchase. And the classics were not the choicest of classics, either.
As soon as the cost of available titles goes down, this thing will be my favorite accessory.
1 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 Sony Blue not for Europe Jul 30, 2008
Sony PRS-505/LC Blue Digital Book Reader
This Reader should not be sold to Europe because you need a Visa card with an American address to order books to read.
The manual and the "interface" are not up to Apple standard. A large manual like a map of USA where you have to jump around from digit 1 to digit 9 to make any sense of the product is not a nice introduction.
If you are not very young you can't read commercial PDFs, the text gets too small and you can't increase it very much.
I use the reader for texts from the Gutenberg site.
1 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 Great at What it Does Jul 22, 2008
A few months back I started reading up on electronic ink devices, and since we funnel most of our weekly purchases (groceries, gas, etc.) through a Borders credit card before paying it off each month, I started saving up the reward points to get this device.
Having saved up enough cred, I bought the unit in late May (2 months before writing this review). I've absolutely loved it. I haven't purchased any books through the Sony store, but I have downloaded more than three hundred public domain books through feedbooks, manybooks, munseys, and mobileread. Since any book older than 100 years (in America) or 50 years past the author's death (in England) is free for reproduction, the selection of books on those sites is a liberal arts education ready to be plucked. For someone like me, who likes old books more than new, the greatest thing about this unit is being able to carry around Saint Thomas's entire Summa Theologica, Augustine's City of God, Spenser's Faerie Queene, all of Shakespeare's plays, the histories of Livy, the essays of Montaigne, the Federalist papers, the novels of Mark Twain, and all the dialogues of Plato in a unit that weighs less than one volume of any of those great works.
The display really is like reading from paper, and an automatic viewing history function makes the bookmark feature helpful but not necessary; if I get tired of reading Cicero, I can simply return to the main menu, read some Nietzsche, come back to Cicero, and pick up where I left off. I have not tried Calibre yet, but the Sony e-library program, while inelegant, does fine for organizing the titles into whatever categories suit me. (Right now I've got them sorted by historical and geographic categories--Greeks, Romans, medievals, Renaissance, Enlightenment, etc.)
I've recommended this unit to a number of friends, and I've taken it with me on the road, to doctors' offices, and just about anywhere I go. Great purchase.
7 of 7 found the following review helpful:
Sony EBook reader Jul 13, 2008
I currently own several (3) of the PRS-505 Ebooks by Sony, and am generally very pleased. I have purchased many ebooks in the last few months (love to read, any chance I get), and love to brag to others about my ebooks. The book is lightweight, about the same size as a regular (printed) book, and easy to transport in a pocket or backpack. The selection of book on the Sony ebook site is generally OK, with a few authors that are cutting edge, and many that were completely unknown to me before I took a chance on their books. The "Free" 100 classic ebooks is not very valuable, as all of these books are available for free on many internet sites, however you do save a small amount of money and help the environment by buying ebooks verses printed books.
I would love it if SONY had installed a backlight, but they didn't. I have had some issues with the Sony Ebook though. One of my books had a screen failure, so have had the unpleasant experience of dealing with their customer service department in Larado, Texas. They neither care to hear from you, want to talk with you, or care what your issue is. I sent the broken book to them June 8th ($29.00 + shipping), recieved a recycled ebook from them 2 weeks later that did not work (error 3-013), and sent it back for repair again. As of today, July 13th, the ebook replacement is still not back yet.
In summary, I love my Sony Ebooks, can't wait for the PRS-510 if it ever comes out (backlight, better book selection, improved customer interface), and personally believe their customer service department is poorly managed and run.
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