Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

I’ve been tempted by the Sony Reader ever since the device first went on sale, but a handful of issues have kept me from actually picking one up. Things like a limited screen resolution I can live with, but the device’s PDF support, particularly when resizing documents that are larger than the display is less than awesome. (I’ve tested this out myself on many occasions with a variety of different PDF files.)

But as of today, the PRS-505 Reader is getting a firmware update that will not only allow it to access and accept non-secure ebooks in the EPUB format, but will also support Adobe eBooks with DRM and finally have the ability to reflow standard text-based PDF files. Since the majority of my own collection of ebooks is in the PDF format, I’m hoping this update will finally make Sony’s Reader a viable option for me. But I think I’m still going to hold off for a while and monitor the various Sony Reader forums to see how well the update actually performs. And I’m sorry to say that you owners of the original Sony Reader, the PRS-500, are out of luck since the update is only available for the current model.

[ READER DIGITAL BOOK BY SONY OPENS A NEW CHAPTER ON EBOOK FORMATS (Official Press Release) ] VIA [ Yahoo! News ]