This Old Mac

By Holden Scott

So, everyone is talking about Sony’s just released Daily Edition eReader. This is the big brother of the Sony Touch Edition Readers (PRS-600). The PRS-600 offers users a full touchscreen, with a stylus that can be used to scribble notes directly on the screen. So far, Sony has had trouble keeping up with demand for this Reader. Their online store is often sold out.

As an owner of the PRS-600, as someone who has written an extensive review of the product, as someone who really likes the PRS-600, I wanted to offer some predictions in relation to the Daily Edition.

Some context… Compared to the Kindle, there is a lot to like about the Sony PRS-600. A touchscreen, two memory card slots, a better, more sleek design, and a more open system that supports pretty much every e-Document format known. With the Kindle, it is devoid of a touchscreen, does not support many file types natively, and has no room for memory expansion. Additionally, it is not as sleek as the Sony PRS-600.

The one feature that the Kindle has over the PRS-600 is wireless connectivity over the 3G network. It’s easy to connect, purchase, and download books from Amazon: no need to sync with a USB cable to a computer.

With the PRS-600, there is no wireless connectivity, so users must connect to their computers via USB and sync the device with the Sony Reader software. With that software, users can search Sony’s bookstore, buy books, and store them for a later sync. This is also where the books are organized: users can make collections of books, so once they sync over to the Reader, they are all organized by, say, category.

Realizing that users, particularly in the US, have lauded the wireless connectivity feature, Sony has included that with the Daily Edition. Just like in the manner available to Kindle users, Daily Edition users will be able to connect to Sony’s Book Store over the 3G network. There, they can search for, buy, and download books directly to the device. In addition, perhaps the killer feature, is the inclusion of periodical subscriptions. The Washington Post, The New York Times, and many other periodicals, have made their content available to Sony for inclusion in their bookstore.

Once subscribed, Daily Edition users will receive their periodicals when they are released, all over the air, without having to touch the device. So with the Daily Edition, the morning paper will be sitting on the device, waiting to be read.

The periodicals are formatted to play nice with the Daily Edition. That means they are specifically formatted and streamlined for the device. Images and graphics will be included in Daily Edition versions of the available periodicals.

Calibre, a popular, open source eReader application, allows for the delivery of pretty much any periodical that has an online version to most eReaders, including the Sony PRS-600. I tested it out. The user can set the program to download periodicals everyday, automatically. Once the eReader is connected via USB, it will sync that content onto the device. This is a bit more cumbersome in comparison to the Daily Edition. Not only that, but the content is just parsed out, text only versions of the online content.

I’m not a fan of reading periodicals in this way on the PRS-600. Specifically formatted periodicals from the Sony Book Store, instead of text only versions from Calibre, complete with images and graphics? That sounds much better. But will that content be available to non-Daily Edition Readers, like those of us using the PRS-600? The answer is yes, it will. I phoned Sony directly and asked them. They stated that PRS-600 users will also be able to subscribe to and download periodicals from the Sony Book Store. The only difference is that that content will have to be synced via USB, instead of over the air.

That is an exiting, added benefit to us PRS-600 owners. But how will the Daily Edition fair? And do I regret buying the PRS-600, and not the Daily Edition? My prediction is that many people will still opt for the PRS-600. That’s not to say the Daily Edition won’t sell. All things being equal, it will. But I suspect it won’t steal the PRS-600’s thunder to any great extent.

Here’s why. The Daily Edition is great for people who want to easily buy novels, fiction related stuff, and who want to try reading enewspapers without having to connect to a computer. This is a subset of the eReader target market. The people who love reading novels and such, not the people who are doing research.

For us who read non-fiction stuff, who do research, the PRS-600 is compelling. While having 3G connectivity is great, it is not something that people doing serious research would use. We use our computers to collect information, not eBook readers that are not designed for searching the web. And imagine the experience of trying to use a Kindle, with no touchscreen, to search Google? Not very good.

No, that’s all a waste of time to use eReaders to find books and studies for research purposes. Using a computer is superior. All those PDF files, etc. that are on our hard drives can be easily imported into Sony’s Reader software, then synced over to the PRS-600. It’s easy to organize collections as well.

So for research, a computer is a must: it acts as a medium through which data can be collected and stored, and as a conduit for an eReader. eReaders on their own are just not powerful enough to do the job of a computer in this context.

And with the PRS-600, in comparison to the Kindle, since it natively supports so many more file types, it is a superior choice for the researcher, for the person who doesn’t get all of his content from Amazon. Try loading a bunch of documents from your computer to your Kindle. You have to send those files to a special Kindle Email address, where they then get converted and downloaded over the air to the Kindle. It costs money to do this, and the results of the converted files vary widely, from what I have read.

Getting back to the Daily Edition, another thing to like about the PRS-600 over it is that it’s much more sleek and compact. It’s about 1.1″ less in height, .02″ less wide, and 32% thinner. The one thing I love about the PRS-600 is just how thin, sleek, and compact it is. The Daily Edition is much more cumbersome. Still nice, but bigger, thicker and heavier (20% heavier). When the two units are placed side-by-side, I would say that users will prefer the PRS-600’s form factor over the Daily Edition. True, screen real estate is sacrificed (about 1″), but the screen size on the PRS-600 is pretty good, and allows for landscape mode as well.

So, do I regret buying the PRS-600 instead of the Daily Edition? It’s clear I don’t. I like the PRS-600, and if Sony magically put a 3G chip in there, it would not see much use.

Sony Style Store