The easiest way to get books on the Sony Reader is to download encrypted Sony e-Books from the Sony Connect Store. This is done through the included Sony software. The software is quick and easy to install. We found it easy to use after we got used to a few quirks. For instance the software would not let us drag and drop pictures to the Picture folder, but when we dragged them to the Library folder (one level up), they immediately appeared in the Picture folder.
The Sony Connect Store now has thousands of books, which are easy to download to your computer, but then you must take the extra step of hooking up the device to download them to the device itself. The Amazon Kindle lets you download directly to the device without a computer which is a far superior method of transfer.
You can also transfer content to your memory card and slide that into your Sony Reader, however, you must still use the Sony desktop software to download books and organize your books into collections. At this time there is no Mac software, so if you are a Mac user, you might as well forget this Reader. Also, please note that the Sony Connect Store is currently only available to U.S. and Canadian residents, so if you live outside these areas, this will not be a viable choice.
Most of the books at the Sony Connect store range in price from $12 to $20, some are higher. Sony does have a nice collection of inexpensive classics many priced at $.99. As we write this they are offering 100 classic books for free with the purchase of the Reader. This offer replaced a 50 free book offer, so we expect that Sony will continues these offers in the future. Although the classics are nice, we would like to see a few free best-sellers offered as well.
The Sony Reader also handles Adobe PDFs, RTF, TXT, BBeB (Sony's Broadband electronic book format) and Microsoft Word files. We found that most PDFs which were not specifically formatter for the Reader, were not terribly readable. One solution was to reformat the documents to the size of the Reader screen and to eliminate the white surround. While this actually worked very well, you will need a full version of Adobe Acrobat or some other PDF creation software to do this. The added work and expense may not be worthwhile.
Because the Reader doesn't need power to display pages (only to turn them), power consumption is measured in page turns. Sony says that it lasts up to 7,500 continuous page turns. Although we could not confirm that number, we felt the battery life was more than adequate except when music was constantly played along with reading.
