Comments about Sony Sony PRS-505 Reader Digital Book, with Internal Memory for Storing up to 160 Books, Memory Slot for Memory Stick Media and SD Cards, Dark Blue:

The Sony PRS-505 is a good deal for Mac users even though Sony has ignored us. It's a very good product and what it lacks in speed it makes up for in optimum legibility, and not being tied to any ONE vendor (like [...]). It's so well designed that holding it in your right hand the forward/backward grooved page controls fall directly under your thumb. It's perfect in the left hand too with another set of controls. It's also light weight, easy to bookmark, with three font sizes, and comes with a great leatherette cover that won't fall off. The SONY 505 does not have an index or dictionary but provides an outstanding reading experience. The drawback for Mac users has been that Sony has geared all its software for PC users; enter Calibre, by brilliant programmer Kovid Goyal. This easy-to-use freeware ebook management software (NOT included) is a marvelous companion to the Sony Reader allowing you to use RTF's, PDF's, DOC., and other formats. The PRS-505 is a bit slow, but not extremely so. For ebook lovers it opens up the world of books through pay sites like Fictionwise (multiformat option) or FREE manybooks.net, or the Gutenberg Project. With a more reasonable price than the PRS-700 or the Kindle2, the 505 is a bargain.

Comments about Sony Sony PRS-505 Reader Digital Book, with Internal Memory for Storing up to 160 Books, Memory Slot for Memory Stick Media and SD Cards, Dark Blue:

If you have a Mac and not a PC your experience with the Sony Reader is not so great. While the Sony PRS-505 is a pleasure to use, very sharp legible type, and a simple interface. The downside is that the Reader is TOO simple, without search tools, slow, no indexing, and only a handful of formats (on the Mac side). If you enjoy the classics there is virtually no end to the free ebooks available from [@]However, if you enjoy popular or contemporary fiction forget it. [@] has a warning at checkout that clearly states "eReader books DO NOT work on the Sony Rearer or Kindle." [@] make finding titles for the Sony 505 impossible. They have formats that either require you have MS Internet Explorer (not supported on the Mac) installed, or have formats that are incompatible (.pdb for PALM OS; Gemstar; Adobe, not PDF but Adobe Digital Editions, which requires installation of its own proprietary software and DRM book format). I use Calibre [@] to convert .lit from the Microsoft unencrypted files to Sony's .lrf format. Calibre is excellent book-management software.[@]DOES have a multiformat option (NOT e-secure) that includes several formats for download including Sony's (.lrf) and Microsoft's (.lit).