More on TechnologyTell: Gadget News | Apple News
Sony Reader reviewed by CNET: Mostly favorable
August 2, 2006 | 3:52 am
|
By David Rothman
Here. The review is mostly favorable. There’s a reference to an expected shipping date of “sometime in September.”
Is this info current, or are we talking about in the nick of time for the holidays–maybe even up to November?
Meanwhile the unit has drawn a 4.9 out of 10 among nine readers based almost entirely on the specs and advanced PR. (Earlier headline fixed.)
|
Previous
SUBSCRIBE TO RSS
Comments:
The 4.9 is a mark given by readers of the article. It is dubious whether this counts as “in [a] review”. But that would not have made such a nice, juicy headline, would it now?
Actually that 4.9 is an average of the 9 user reviews that are up. How these users have reviewed the product without actually having one is beyond me. Well, okay, actually one user (out of nine) claims he has tried one out here:
“i live on orlando florida, go to cypress creek high. these are gonna be standard issue from school (IB Program) starting 08 school year. i weighed my bookbag last year, i had 38 pounds of textbooks, at nine ounces im relieved. yall rating this thing a 1 is stupid. i got to try it out at a preview and its simply AWESOME. for school purpoess anyways. i realize price may be a problem, but for advanced class work or a college student, this is excellent. also, prices on materials are set to be 25% off hardcover standard, 50-75% off for students. gonna be a hit for sure”
http://tinyurl.com/g7nuy
Even having tried it, I’d question his 10 out of 10. Indeed, I have no doubt Sony may well deserve a 4.9 from CNet once the Reader is out. On the other hand, this assertion of the existence of an education program may signal good things for the ebook world as a whole.
Ah, beat me to it.
Branko and Ayrkain, many thanks for the catch re the Sony item. Branko, no sensationalism needed in writing about the Sony. The facts are scary enough. I’ve fixed the headline and noted that the rating came from readers, not the magazine staff; and as usual I encourage all TeleBlog readers to alert me ASAP about accuracy-related matters. Same concept is why I find the intensively reader-annotated Slashdot to be infinitely more credible overall than the mainstream media, and why I can’t wait for interactive e-books with reader forums and perhaps even reader-created blogs inside the books.
Detail: As far as I know, the print edition of BusinessWeek never corrected an important fact about the Sony and PDF. To me, it’s no mystery why most people regard journalists at about the same level as used car sale guys and lawyers; the media are publishing just a fraction of the number of corrections they should be. What’s more, book publishing houses generally do not fact-check nonfiction books or do so in a cursory way. No wonder so many people rely on the Net rather than books.
Thanks,
David
P.S. I meant to say that the 4.9 rating was in BIG PRINT at the bottom of the page on CNET, while info about the source of it was in somewhat smaller print. So much for the grassy knoll theory, eh, Branko? Mea culpa just the same.
The student Arykain quotes doesn’t need an ebook reader, he needs a better english teacher!
David, what’s this “important fact about the Sony and PDF”?
I notice in the article you point to, you claim that the Reader cannot display DRM-protected PDF files. Is that it? It sounds like are you talking about the EBX scheme that Adobe uses on their PDF ebooks. But what makes you think that such a capability (or lack thereof) is important information to the Business Week readership? When you look at the set of PDF documents which people actually read, the proportion protected by EBX must be a tiny, tiny share. Pretty much insignificant.
I can see why it’s important to the people who read this magazine (the TeleRead blog), but I don’t see why Business Week would care.
Hi, Bill, here’s my take on this. BizWeek said it could read ANY PDF file. You can split hairs, but to 99.9999999 percent of the world that would appear to include the DRMed kind of Adobe that large publishers go for. People will remember “PDF” in the Sony Reader ads and expect that they can read DRMed PDF from bookstores or libraries. That’s hardly an arcane matter just for TeleBlog readers. Bottom line: BBeB is the only DRMed format the Sony can read. You’re very welcome to disagree, but in my opinion, that does indeed count as “important.” Thanks. David
I see your argument, David, and “any” does technically include oddities like EBX-protected ebooks, but I disagree with your use of the word “important”, because I don’t believe your numbers. It’s not 99.999% of the world — it’s somewhere far less than 1% of the world. I’d bet that 99% of the world, or even 99% of PDF users, have never encountered and would not recognize an EBX-protected PDF file (the kind that large publishers go for). Ebooks are simply not in widespread use, and DRM-protected ebooks even less so. When you say, “will display PDF”, that means regular old non-EBX PDF to almost everyone, including the readers of Business Week. BW would only confuse them if they attempted to raise the issue. Of course, the readers of this list are sophisticated in this regard.
I do agree that, as the Sony Reader is being marketed to an ebook-reading community which is very conscious of 1998-style ebooks (like EBX-protected PDF files), perhaps Sony should be more careful about this. But it’s such an insignificant fraction of PDF usage that it’s not an important issue. (Sorry about that, Bill McCoy.)
> Ebooks are simply not in widespread use,
Exactly, Bill–partly because consumers so often feel misled when they buy e-book-related products.
> such an insignificant fraction of PDF usage
I’m talking about DRMed PDF, period. Along with Mobipocket, DRMed PDF is one of the formats being pushed by OverDrive at countless libraries, including the NYPL.
Thanks,
David