Sony Digital Reader Touch Edition Black PRS600BC




The Reader Touch Edition features a 6″display with simple, easy-to-use touchscreen navigation. Turn pages with the swipe of a finger and enjoy fast and intuitive navigation of your favorite books. Take freehand notes and highlight sections of text you want to revisit later, just as you would in a real book, using the included stylus. If you prefer, a virtual keyboard is also available for entering quick notes or searching your eBooks. If you want, you can even export your notes to your computer using the eBook Library software. Enjoy access to a wider number of books from a wider number of places. By supporting both industry standard formats, ePub and PDF, you can access books at Sony’s eBookstore, check out books from public libraries, access over 500,000 free public domain titles from Google, as well as sharing sites, online aggregators and personal publishers (Internet access is required). Not sure which books to bring on your trip? With the Reader Touch Edition, you will never have to make that choice again. 512MB of onboard memory lets you carry up to 350 of your favorite books at a time. Whether you’re venturing across town or across the country, the Reader Touch Edition makes an ideal travelling companion. Measuring just 0.4″ thin and weighing less than 9 ounces, the Reader Touch Edition is thinner and more lightweight than almost any book, and even many magazines. The Reader Touch Edition utilizes E-Ink screen technology to deliver an amazing, paper-like display that’s more like ink on paper and fully readable in direct sunlight. Enjoy up to two full weeks of reading (7,500 continuous page turns) on a single battery charge. Paper-like display for easy, natural reading Two full weeks of reading on a single battery charge; Built-in Oxford American English eDictionary; Intuitive eBook Library software for PC and Mac 5 adjustable font sizes to customize your

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars No buyers remorse at all!
I’ve had my Sony eReader Touch for just over a week now and love it! I was debating for a long time about whether to go the Kindle or Sony eReader Touch route. What won me over was the diversity of the Sony eReader and how I’m able to put rich text files, PDFs and Word Documents on it. As a Mac User I wasn’t sure how well the software would be and whether I would have to use something like Calibre to drag and drop books/files into the reader. The Sony software worked well on my Macbook Pro (running Snow Leopard) and the Sony software looks a lot like iTunes. No real learning curve there!

As far as the different file formats go, I found that besides Sony’s .epub format, the Word Docs come out pretty nice. The PDFs look good as well, but if you adjust the font size it can adjust a little strange, but not enough that it bothered me. I’ve heard people complain about the cost of the Sony ebooks, it seems reasonable for a $7-15 price range. I’ve been reading The Lost Symbol and its been worth $9.99 to me.

One of the great features is double clicking with the stylus on a word and then a dictionary pops up with the definition. Great handy tool there. Also, I like the option of highlighting and writing on the pages and then those notes getting exported in an easily accessible way. I do own an iPhone, but reading on these is much better. You can’t really compare the two, because they serve two different purposes. The eReader is meant for reading and even listening to music. I have hard time when people try to compare both of them. The eReader has a long battery life, I don’t have to worry about it turning off or dimming if I’ve been reading the same page for a while. With the touch screen I still like swiping my finger across it to change the page. The design is very slick and a very convenient reader.

Because of the touch screen there is a little bit of a reflection, but I hardly notice it now. It comes with a USB cable to charge through your computer, a neoprene sleeve and a tiny instruction booklet. I love that Sony has two options of expanding the 512mb internal memory with Memory Stick Pro Duo slot and an SD Slot– with books being 2mb or less, there is room to grow!

I seriously recommend this device above all others. I travel for long periods of time and this fits my needs very well. I’ve caught myself pulling it out and reading in my spare time or when I have a few minutes here or there– so it’s not always for traveling. Certainly a great purchase.

5 Stars Best Electronic Device I have ever purchased!
I recieved the Sony Reader Touch Edition as a birthday present from my husband. He had noticed that I was in need of a better way to carry around my heavy books to and from work. Lugging around heavy hardcover books on a commute that was 2 hours long was starting to become a huge problem. Out shopping one day, hubby decided to pick up this little beauty. I was planning on buying the PRS 505 but he saw how I was eyeing the Touch Edition. The only issue that made us both stop to think about purchasing the Touch Edition was the PRICE! But I left the store with the Touch and a huge smile on my face.

What I like:

The expandable memory – I can carry 100s of books and documents on the huge collection of SD cards I have laying around the house. The design – lightweight, sleek. Large, clear display with a responsive touch screen. Extras: the mp3 player, photo viewer and a stylus come in very handy. MP3: for when I’m in a crowded area and need to listen to something other than chatter while reading. Photos: just to view photos on a whim. And the stylus for writing on pages, highlighting and double tapping small text. Features: the built in dictionary – I have used it more than once on one book alone! The adjustable font size: some days my eyes need larger text and with the Touch its a button push away. The note taking function – either on the pages or as a seperate document. The ability to dog ear pages. The internal memory is wonderful. A fast responding touch screen which makes page turning natural and such a breeze. The easy to navigate menus. I can go on and on.

What I don’t like: other than the price, I do have an issue with the lack of managing my books on the devce itself. If I want to create a new collection and/or move a book, I have to plug in the USB cord and manage everything in the eBook Library Program. It’s not too much of a hassle but would have been nice to be able to make such addjustments.

Bottom Line: Love it!: I have a much easier (and greener!) way to enjoy my books!

2 Stars A Review From A Techie and A Technical Graduate Student – All About the Annotations
In my dreams, the PRS-600 was going to be the single source indexible, portable addition to my brain.

In reality, it falls short. Waaay short.

I have PDF copies of technical materials that I would love to annotate and export to Microsoft Word, Excel, etc. I use these materials as a software developer and CS grad student.

When you make highlights of texts in a PDF, one would think that you’d be able to export highlighted text. Nope. This is a major drawback if you want to take notes. Also, the stylus written annotations are in a format called .note Why not png? gif? jpg?

Also, the notes are not kept with each file, but in a central “notes” repository in the reader. If I am using this thing to take classes, I want my notes to be associated with that CLASS (and probably a specific DOCUMENT). I need a note classification system, which PRS-600 doesn’t have.

Zooming in on pages in PDF is painful. The six inch screen is too small to successfully duplicate the look and feel of a textbook, IMHO.

If you’re a scholar and you’re looking for an ereader with which to do serious research (read hundreds of pages and annotate them easily), and you *can* wait, I suggest you do at this point.

I wonder if Kindle DX (which is supposedly for the academic world) has any of these problems.

I bought this product at Crutchfields and they were great.

4 Stars Finally, the eBook reader I’ve been waiting for.
The SPR-600 is the first eBook reader to do what I need it to do. It handles different text file types and PDF files “correctly”. It also has the mandatory SD memory card slot (for easy exchange of large collections) and a fairly easy to use touch screen interface.

The general design is fairly well done, the unit seems very solid, and the general size and weight is about right. I found the MP3 player to be a throwaway feature that I feel should have been left out and had the price reduced.

Negatives include buggy software for managing documents, lower contrast screen than other models (common issue with epaper screens with touch), some bugs with Word docs (missing images), and the price is still too high.

Suggested improvements include better document organization (couldn’t create nested collections), and a document read back feature like the Kindle (give the headphone jack a real purpose.)

Ebook readers have come a long way, and for me they have reached the point where I am finally adopting them. I feel for mass adoption though, the price has to get much lower ($100 or less) and the technology more streamlined. I can see the day (soon) when a school student carries an eBook reader instead of the 30lbs of back killing books.

4 Stars excellent device, strange screen and low reflow capabilities
The device itself is very nice. No fancy stuff, maybe excepting audio and pictures that I don’t need at all. No WiFI, no 3G/GPRS, but it’s enough if you can add your books at home and just read them when you are not connected to a PC.

The bad things are:

- screen: has a very strange reflection (being touchscreen) and you’ll see your face reflected in the screen all the time

- compatibility: not so good when reading technical books, like PDF ebooks. Reading them at original size is out of the question, increasing the text size will omit the pictures, will reflow/omit the tables and will be no more than a regular book. The workaround for this is to change the orientation of the screen, read on landscape mode, which is somehow strange, and try not to increase the text size.

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