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October 20, 2008

My Sony Reader Diary: Software

The Sony Reader comes with two pieces of software.  One, eBook Library, loads stuff onto your machine and manages your books.  The other, Adobe Digital Editions, is needed to handle the downloads of books you may buy online.

Both are OK as far as they go but they have their limitations, not least of which is that eBook Library won't work on Macs.  That doesn't bother me too much,  I don't have a Mac and frankly hate the things (their big, childlike icons and only one fucking button below the touchpad) but it is clearly an issue for the heathens that do own one.  I can't wait for their comments, they are bound to come.

The other problem is that you can't edit any of the information for the books you have.  So if a PDF file is called ae9000xytryPIK998.pdf then then is what the book will be called on your Reader.  Unless you have Adobe Acrobat and can be arsed to go in and change the properties of the file.  I don't and I can't.

So while I have been enjoying my Reader I was finding the software less than helpful at times.  Which is why I checked out Calibre, the utility suggested by a few people online.  It is miles better and has further enhanced my Reader experience.  Not only can I edit the files and titles, but I can also change the author names so that they now appear on the machine in alphabetical order by surname.  Oh yes.

Capture_2

The interface looks like this and it detects your Reader once you plug it in.  You can make changes directly to the files on the Reader and you can also download newsfeeds and stuff like that.

Delightful.  I suggest the people from Sony reading this take a virtual leaf out of Calibre's digital book and amend their software accordingly.  Or buy the company that makes Calibre.  One of the two.

Posted at 06:00 AM in My Sony Reader Diary |

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Comments

Heathens? Us? I think not. We're the believers.

Posted by: alex | October 20, 2008 at 08:51 AM

A heathen writes: plug in a mouse?

Posted by: Marie | October 20, 2008 at 10:50 AM

Needless additional hardware for a laptop. Might as well have bought a desktop.

Posted by: Scott Pack | October 20, 2008 at 10:52 AM

Interesting to hear that Sony's still rubbish with its software. I've got a great Sony MP3 player, but it only uses the terrible SonicStage (the new ones use Windows Media Player) - its made me very wary of buying anything Sony that requires software...

Posted by: Adrian | October 20, 2008 at 11:19 AM

Interesting to hear that Sony's still rubbish with its software. I've got a great Sony MP3 player, but it only uses the terrible SonicStage (the new ones use Windows Media Player) - its made me very wary of buying anything Sony that requires software...

Posted by: Adrian | October 20, 2008 at 11:19 AM

It's going to cost me a fortune to rejoin the 21st century at this rate! I can't keep up with all these gadget things!

Posted by: Jon M | October 20, 2008 at 10:14 PM

Blogs are good for every one where we get lots of information for any topics nice job keep it up !!!

Posted by: digital dissertation | January 09, 2009 at 10:46 AM

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