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Taming your $99 Sony Reader: How to make the screen more readable
July 13, 2007 | 11:10 am
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By David Rothman
Did you buy a $99 Sony Reader? I gave mine a test drive yesterday. In sunlight, at the doctor’s office, and near my favorite reading lamp, my Reader lacked the level of contrast I wanted—between the words on the screen and the background.
But what else do you expect for $99, a bargain price for a gizmo commonly selling for $250-$300? A new model with a brighter screen will be on the way, and sooner or later the contrast may match paper’s. Best of all, you may be able to address the contrast issue even now with your older machine.
A bold solution
Be bold—try boldface. Rather than contenting yourself with e-books in the native Reader format, use the RTF option on Manybooks.net or similar public domain sites. You can then then open up the file with Word or Open Office, use control-A to select all text, and the apply boldface. The words won’t look as pretty as the Reader’s usual text does, but will be infinitely more readable in dim light. Yes, the same concept would work with nonpublic domain books and with Word itself. With commercial titles from most big publishers, alas, you’re SOL since you can’t modify books encumbered with proprietary formats and DRM.
No matter what you do by following the steps above, you won’t be elevating the actual level of contrast. But the thicker letters will increase your perception of contrast.
Promising for books where you don’t need word searches
Because even the existing Reader offers a little more contrast than my old Librie did, and because conversion from outside formats is so convenient, this bold trick may allow me to use my $99 bargain as my main machine for books where I don’t have to search for words.
The current Sony model won’t let you do that (although I vaguely recall that some workarounds might be out there—can anyone refresh me on this?). The new model is rumored to address the search issue. True? The search capability would be certainly be handy for keeping track of characters in Russian noels.
Sony-related memo to my friends at Wowio
The type in your PDFs is much too small on a Reader screen, just as I expected. The sooner you can abandon PDF or a reflowable format, or at least supply alternatives, the better it will be for me and your other fans with E Ink machines.
Seen in PDF on a Sony Reader, the Wowio version Sophie’s Choice is a disaster for anyone without a magnifying glass. Sony’s font-size control won’t work with PDFs or at least not with yours.
As someone who loves the idea of free, ad-supported books, I hope Wowio will be able to respond soon—formats are very much on the company’s mind, even now. Significantly, via Adobe software, Sony has agreed to support the new IDPF format. That would be a great solution.
And a memo to Sony…
Perhaps the third-gen Reader can have “Page ahead” and “Page back” bars on the left side for turning the page. The little buttons don’t cut it. And the forward/back button near the left bottom corner isn’t as good ergonomically as one in the middle of the left side, given the way most people would prefer to hold their Readers.
The Carly test
Alas, even with the bolding, the contrast on the Sony screen isn’t good enough for Carly. Perhaps the new model will do the trick for her.
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Comments:
Preliminary thoughts on Sony Reader: Interface-wise, it’s outstanding! I actually found the page turning to be not an issue.
there is definitely latency issues with changing font size, but once you change, everything is ok.
I was somewhat bothered by the contrast issue, but mainly when I only had light to my side. If you have a decent overhead light, this doesn’t seem to be a problem. Ironically it’s almost easier to read outdoors.
It’s easier to load a MS word/rtf file as a way to modify size. PDF’s have limitations and html conversions are still unwieldly. I’ll be playing with html2rtf next week and will report back.
Still for $99 it’s a bargain, and there are workarounds to many of the issues listed here.
In the next two days I’ll be posting a piece here about the Sony Connect store and my problems with it. Stay tuned!
In a brief look at the Sony Reader, I actually liked the display quite a bit. I found the relatively low-contrast text to be easy on my eyes. The ambient light was bright and even, though, so it was not a very challenging test.
I’m planning to buy a Sony unit for day-to-day use, so I’ll be better able to evaluate it in real-life situations soon.
[...] Various sources have recently priced the simple Linux portables at $150-$175 each as a result of hardware upgrades, although the program recently said costs should reach the $100 goal soon, and drop further in short order thereafter. Those would make a dandy e-book reader, and put further price pressure on Sony’s e-book readers. [...]
Gerry: Wowio on a Sony would be terrific, but I do hope you’ll bold the characters enough. Of course, the best solution would be the IDPF specs, which would allow reflowable text—ideally in styles that users could choose, if they wanted to deviate from the default.
Your preference for low contrast is interesting. The best solution would be user control over this, but failing that, I myself would prefer paper white.
Thanks,
David
A paper white display would be nice, too, but in that case I would prefer dark gray text rather than pure black.
Gerry, thanks for the helpful feedback. I love comments on specific usability issues!
My own preference is pure black against paper white. Aesthetics are important, but I believe that usability is, too, and my eyes don’t like gray against white, even dark dark gray. I like the if:book blog very much, but it find it harder to read, as a result of the grayish text. Carly feels the same way about gray–she wants high contrast and for this reason wonders how much she would like the present Sony Reader. But let me poll readers of the TeleBlog. Here’s the suggested wording.
If you’re happy with that wording, I’ll go ahead. Others may comment, too–on the proposed poll, not the issue, which they can do later. Does the above wording leave out something?
One thing I’m curious about is the extent to which formal design training influenced your thoughts on what is ideal. I’m not sure if the experts are always right. I’d rather go by what my readers are telling me. As I recall, you’re the first to wonder if a modified Sony reader would end up with too much contrast (I may have forgotten some people’s comments). Significantly the new Sony is supposed to have a 20 or 25 percent brighter screen. I wonder if that might bother you. I myself meanwhile am using bolded text on Word files to get around the low contrast on the present Reader. Each to his own, eh?
Thanks,
David