That’s the question asked by Andy Le Peau, editorial director at IVP, following his quick review of the Sony Reader PRS-500.
You can’t search it. You can’t write notes in the margin. You have to have Windows XP. There’s a half-second delay when you press the turn-the-page button. You can’t skip directly to a particular page. There’s no backlight option for those who want to read in the dark.
It costs about $350.
eBook reading devices aren’t new. A half a dozen entered the market in the late 90’s, many of which received great reviews from the early adopter crowd (a.k.a., “techno geeks”). Problem is, the devices never really took off with book publishers (a.k.a., “the content providers”, a.k.a., “the market makers”). And without book publishers (a.k.a. “critical mass”), the devices (no matter how “cool”) are nothing more than expensive doorstops. It looks like Sony may have failed to grasp that concept.
Leave a Reply