Sony prs-900bckit daily edition

Once the store is loaded and you've been logged in, viewing books and loading new store pages is quite quick assuming you have a passable 3G connection. If you want to get a taste of the store, you can visit Sony's web browser version here: ebookstore. For most popular books, Amazon and Sony have a similar selection, though Amazon still offers more books overall. That said, I've found that the books I'm interested in are available at both sites since publishers usually release in several formats at once.

But I suggest you visit Sony's online bookstore with your web browser, so you can see if the titles and prices suit you. You can't use books sold by Amazon for the Kindle because Amazon uses a proprietary format that doesn't work on competing ebook devices nor can you use Barnes and Noble books meant for the Nook because they don't use standard Adobe DRM on their ePUBs.

Alas, DRM is still a pain in the pants, just as it used to be for digital music downloads. By default the wireless connection is turned on, and it goes into standby after a few minutes of inactivity. You can still receive publications when the radio is on standby. That means your new publications will be waiting for you in the morning when you wake up, just as with the Kindle.

We like Sony's status icon that lets you know signal strength and connection type and lets you know when the radio has gone into standby. Oh happy day, the Sony PRS has a removable battery under the back cover and it comes with a charger.

Both are good ideas for a device with wireless since that means more frequent charging. The Reader ships with the battery out of the unit and the back cover removed. That's a good thing since it's quite hard to remove the back cover which is made of plastic with a faux-leather texture. While most Sony Readers are nearly all metal, the back cover has to be plastic to avoid interference with the wireless radio. The front bezel is metal and the included leather flip cover is removable but the connecting tabs are delicate so follow the instructions to avoid tearing them.

The Lithium Ion battery looks much like a cell phone battery and in our tests it's been good for 5 days on a charge with the wireless radio on. In my tests I read for at least 1. With the wireless radio turned off in settings, the reader should reach 1. The music player will shorten runtimes, but it's not a terribly power-hungry technology. The Sony Reader Daily Edition is at the top of our favorite ebook reader list. The size and screen size make for a perfect combo of portability and reading pleasure, the wireless works well and we really enjoyed the Sony ebook store experience directly on the device.

The Reader is attractive and it comes with all the goodies in the box so you won't be shelling out extra to get basic accessories. That said, the Sony PRS is more expensive than the Kindle and Nook, and in this difficult economy, that puts the Sony at a disadvantage.

Whether you prefer an on-screen or physical keyboard is a matter of taste, much as it is with smartphones. Thus we won't give the Kindle or Sony an advantage there, though we have one comment: removing the keyboard allows for a smaller reader.

We'll take the Reader Daily Edition over the Nook any day since the Nook's color LCD doesn't really improve navigation and at times stands in the way of ease of use. Book sellers should be in the business of selling as many books as possible rather than locking customers into a specific piece of hardware. Likewise, we're not thrilled with Amazon's proprietary ebook format and lack of ePUB support, much as we applaud the Kindle's brain-dead ease of use when it comes to buying books. Amazon is good at selling and it shows on the Kindle.

But forget reading library books on the Kindle: no can do. Pro: Excellent size to reading area ratio, and the PRS is still very portable. Attractive and sturdy design with a metal bezel. All the goodies are in the box, even the separately packaged zipper case. On-device bookstore experience is excellent and downloads are quick. Reliable daily delivery of periodicals in our tests, and the Sony has a strong wireless radio with good power management.

Con: More expensive than the competition. Sony's books sometimes cost more than Amazon's check out booksonboard. Web Site: www. Like the Touch Edition PRS , this model also has a touch-screen interface, but its screen is elongated, measuring 7. That makes it almost exactly the same length as the Amazon Kindle in terms of pure physical dimensions, but because the Kindle uses up some real estate for its physical keyboard, the Sony delivers several more lines of text on its longer screen.

Mix in a touch-screen interface and the Daily Edition's markup and note-taking capabilities and you should have one of the more appealing e-reader options out there, particularly when you factor in the aforementioned elegant design. The screen As far as the screen goes, Sony appears to have made some very slight improvements over the Touch Edition. This model's display has 16 levels of gray vs. However, like the Touch Edition, this model still has some glare issues, and though the touch screen is fairly responsive, you're not looking at a capacitive screen like those found on iPhones and other new smartphones.

That means you need to apply a little pressure to the screen to get the desired response and it just doesn't have the zippy feeling that the iPhone or iPod Touch has, partially because the paper-mimicking E Ink technology built into virtually all current e-readers is inherently sluggish compared with traditional LCD technology.

And if the Daily Edition were the first e-reader you ever picked up and you had nothing to compare it with, you'd probably think it was just fine. The Daily Edition's 7. Like most other electronic paper products, this model uses e-ink technology, which serves to make the letters and words on the screen look more printlike in their appearance. One of the characteristics of e-ink is that when you turn a page or scroll from one onscreen menu item to another, there's a slight delay as the screen refreshes.

That's true of this model, too, but it has a faster processor than Sony's entry-level PRS Its faster processor is helpful when accessing PDF files, particularly larger ones, and using the zoom feature on those documents.

Note: Larger screen e-readers are more suitable for viewing PDF files, but while this one doesn't do a great job with them, it does better than the Nook and the Kindle do. Comparing the Daily Edition with the Nook side by side, the first thing you notice is that the letters and icons on the Daily Edition appear lighter and the background is slightly darker read: a darker shade of gray. You'll also notice that when you are holding the two units together and tilt them, the Sony's screen is much more reflective.

At certain angles, with normal overhead lighting, the glare is so bad that you can't read the text on parts of the screen. Needless to say, the combination of these drawbacks leaves your reading experience not as good as it could--and should--be. In case you're wondering, there's no way to adjust the contrast.

Nor can you change the font style, as you can on the Nook. But you can choose among six typeface sizes using the dedicated Size button--extra-small, small, medium, large, extra-large, and extra-extra large. Most people with reasonable eyesight will find that the medium and large font sizes are optimal for reading. This model doesn't have a built-in accelerometer that automatically flips the screen when you turn it, but you can manually set the screen to display vertically or horizontally.

Like the iPhone and other next-gen touch-screen phones that have been appearing lately, the Daily Edition incorporates some gesture-based commands. You can swipe your finger across the display to page forward or back you can choose between a left or right swipe to advance pages in the settings menu. Swiping and holding your finger down at the end of the swipe allows you to advance or rewind through pages at a fast clip.

The swiping is a nice way of giving you the feeling of turning pages in a book, but a lot of folks will continue to use the well-placed hard buttons at the bottom of the screen to page forward and back. We actually liked the overall interface of the Daily Edition, finding it had a clean, uncluttered layout.

There are four icons at the bottom of the screen that take you to "Home," "Store," "Applications," and "Settings. Aside from the virtual buttons, you get five hard buttons at the bottom of the screen, including a dedicated "Home" button that comes in handy and a button that pops up the font adjustment minimenu onscreen. This is in part because the has a better range of font sizes, and it also has improved landscape functions over the earlier models.

It comes with an AC adaptor, leather cover, travel case, USB cable, pre-installed SIM card, stylus, and a user-replaceable rechargeable battery pack, not to mention the free wireless. I expected the case to be like the soft neoprene sleeves that come with the Pocket and Touch Editions.

But it's actually much nicer. The travel case is made by Case Logic and has a hard and durable outside with soft imitation suede on the inside. The only problem is that you have to lift the corner of the reader out of the case to access the stylus and to turn it on, but it's a nice addition nonetheless. Because of its larger screen size and custom zoom feature, the Daily Edition is well-equipped to display many types of PDF files. The gesture-based functions are intuitive and make for fast navigation through menus and books—all ebook readers will probably head this way in the near future.

Aside from the larger screen, the Sony PRS has some new features that the other models don't have. The Sony PRS connects to the Reader Store, where you browse through ebooks and newspapers to download directly to the Reader in seconds.

The store is setup very similar to the version accessible from your computer. From there, you can purchase subscriptions to newspapers, with some exclusive content to the Reader Store, and have them automatically appear on the Daily Edition each morning via wireless delivery.

Click here for the Daily Edition's Reader Store and newspaper review and video. The Daily Edition has a crop margins feature that allows you to get rid of the large white border that sometimes surrounds the page, mostly with PDFs. I've found that this works well in some situations and other times it does nothing; I guess it depends on the formatting of the ebook.

The feature can be activated in both portrait and single page landscape mode, and seems to do it automatically for 2 page view. But for some reason it does not remember this feature; you have to reapply it when you leave the book and then come back.

The view in landscape mode has changed slightly. It doesn't show the distracting grayed-out text at the top and bottom of the page when sentences overlap into the next and previous pages.