Review: Sony eReader – PRS-T1

So I have had an eReader previously, I had a Bookeen Opus which I quite liked, initially. It let me read books easily and get all that lovely public domain stuff off Gutenberg (fantastic resource that). However it soon started to break, I had to take the battery out to reset it and then that soon failed to get it to work.  So I’ve been eReaderless for a while, and I wasn’t that taken with the Keyboard Kindle, mostly because it was bigger and bulkier than the Opus.  So I left it a while.

And then news came out of about Amazon releasing a touch screen eReader and I thought that perhaps I would get that. Now I didn’t really want a kindle because this whole Amazon only book format is a little annoying, but as I was starting to think that perhaps I could also use the device to help me edit stories the prospect of being able to make hand written notes/have something lighter than the keyboard version was quite exciting. Only problem? Theres no release date for it here.

After looking into my other options I settled on the Sony eReader. I knew it had a touch screen, came with a stylus and was lighter than the Kindle. Price wise it is a lot more costly then the new smaller Kindle, but on it’s own it comes in at less than the Kindle 3g (which has the keyboard). The Sony eReader doesn’t have 3G but it can be connected to a wireless network, and honestly I don’t really see why you’d need the 3G in the first place. There’s enough space on these things to load them up with books. (I think the Kindle can store slightly more books, but this does have a microSD slot if you need to store more than 1200 books at time(!))

Decision made I purchased it and bought it him, where I proceeded to discover just how fantastic this device is.

The touch screen itself is incredibly responsive when you’re navigating the menu or when flicking the pages. (You can turn pages either by pressing the button or by swiping the screen.) The only issue I’ve had so far when it comes to page turning is PDFs as if I’ve changed the font size to read these better they seem to take a while to turn the pages. But I’ve had no problems with any other formats.

I have used it so far to view a knitting pattern while I tried to knit, and I will admit this was a little awkward as the pattern was in PDF format and having to zoom in made it a bit awkward turning pages as I tried to repeat several lines that started on one page and finished on another.  Not terrible but I may have to think carefully over whether it may just be easier to print off the pattern, as I had a few incidents where my knitting needle pocked the touch screen and turned the page.

The software that comes on the eReader to install on your PC to transfer books makes it very easy to group texts into collections. (Never having had a Kindle I can only assume it has something similar as it is sensible, but my Opus used a normal menu navigation system and was quite slow to response so it would take ages to move between folders. So this is pretty fantastic when I compare with what I had.)

Bookmarking is pretty easy, hold down the screen on the top right, although it’s a little unresponsive at times, hold it down long enough and I get the option of making either a hand written or a keyboard typed note on the page. Can’t tell you how excited I was when I found this, when I’d asked in the store if it had a keyboard the answer I’d gotten was no. So to find this here and to discover that it is a pretty nice keyboard to use. Much easier than what you get on a touch screen phone, but then the area is larger.

I can also highlight words/sentances look them up in the dictionary/wikipedia and again make notes, or simply underline stuff with the stylus. Which really should help if I need to annotate anything I’ve written with things like ‘WTH does this mean!’. 🙂

So I was pretty chuffed with this as it had already exceeded my expectations somewhat. And then I discovered that I could write long elaborate notes that weren’t attached to any documents. What you mean I can write potential story notes down and actually have it as something legible (as opposed to my hand writing), and also I can make separate notes for different things (as opposed to them being on different pages so I have to flick through the note book to find what I’m looking for). Also if I’m typing it on the tube the movement of the carriage isn’t going to make my handwriting more illegible? Can you tell I was quite excited? Yes ok maybe it’s sad, but sometimes it’s the little things that make you happy.

 

As a note using the internet through this is not great, I mean really you will just be using it to download books but personally I just prefer plugging it in to my PC and loading them that way.

Also my other grip, and one which just strikes me as a really odd design decision. The device comes with a stylus. This is something which is potentially quite easy to lose, and there is NO WHERE TO PUT IT. Currently I have this clipped onto the case that I bought for my eReader but I’m always paranoid that when I’m getting it out of my bag on the tube it might fall out. Sony what where you thinking?

Apart from this though I am loving my eReader its a fantastic little device, well worth getting. 🙂

Also as a side note I had to laugh at another review of this, as they began to start comparing this to a tablet and reviewing it as if it was a tablet, they talked about how this was awful at internet browsing and picture quality. I think someone needed to explain the difference between the function of an eReader and a Tablet computer,  there’s quite a big one!

Grrr Computers

Computers are a PITA much of the time, (why on earth do I want to work with them..?!). Literally a week or so after my warranty expired on this machine (August) then it started acting up. Now usually when I switch the computer off I also turn it off at the back (thou not the mains) just to save on some power, but suddenly the machine decided that it didn’t want to turn on. The fans started it made whirring noises, but no beep. No sound to indicate that the BIOS was starting. Turning the whole machine off at the mains and then back on again seemed to fix it. It acted like this for a few days before finally I just stopped switching it off at the back, as it would 95% of the time turn on fine the next day.

That was until today. After about 4 or 5 attempts to switch it on and off it juts had no life.

I did send an email near the end of August asking the people who built the machien for me what they thought the problem might be.  They suggested that I try resetting the BIOS and if that didn’t work then I’d need to replace the CMOS battery in the Motherboard. Due to project I didn’t get around to resetting the BIOS (and I just plain forgot last week.)

So you can imagine how I felt this morning when the PC would not turn on, and I knew that I hadn’t tried to fix it even though I’d had the issue for a while…Therefore I knew that the only real step I could take at this stage was to check the battery and replace it. To my surprise I discovered that the Motherboard uses a basic Lithium battery that a lot of calculators/watchs etc use. So it just goes to show that not all parts of the computer are mystical and magical! 😛

After the magic of Compressed Air in a Can worked its wonders on the dust, it was possible to see that.. well nothing looked wrong. Got the battery out (luckily not welded in) checked the voltage on the battery, which seemed fine, put it back in and tried to start the pc up… NO JOY!

To cut a long post short, I bought a new battery (unsure whether it would make any difference, but it was the cheapest way to check tbh), put the new battery in, plugged and switched on the machine.. and… BEEP. YES! the BIOS beeped!! Thank goodness for that.

So the machine is now on.. and I am a bit loath to turn it off.. I shall sort out resetting the BIOS soon I think. Hopefully that’s all that was causing the trouble… (and hopefully I’ve not jinxed myself there!)

New camera = Happy Bunny

So I bought a new Camera at the weekend, the Pentax Optio M50, and I have to say I’m already really liking this thing. I did a bit of research before I bought it, looking for a decent compact camera that was less than £150, and this one had some pretty good reviews. My camera history before this is not very extensive, I got a Canon Powershot A40 back in.. 2000???? as a Christmas present.  Well way back when digital cameras were just starting. Its big, bulky, has the tiniest LCD screen you can imagine, and ate through the 4 AA batteries it used like they were simply starters. Oh and I couldn’t delete individual images it was all or nothing. I was never particularly fond of it, although the fact that I could transfer pictures to my PC wihtout waiting to finish off a film and then EVENTUALLY send it off to get them printed was VERY much appriciated.

It did however mean I didn’t take my camera to very many places and relied on other people taking photos etc. So when I realised I needed to get a new phone last year I went for one that had a camera in it. And I must confess that for the last year this has sort of served my purpose fine to an extent. (The pictures aren’t always great, the colour can be off and a bit blurry but at least I can take pictures when out and about.) However as I have started to take more photos of knitting and other things, I came to the conclusion that my camera phone just wasn’t cutting it, it was slow and took me ages to sort out getting a nice photo. I’ve even borrowed my mum’s camera on occasion but I’m not comfortable using it. Hence the Pentax.

I have to say I am majorly impressed with it. Its got a very simple interface, no having to go to a menu to get to the flash menu I can just jump straight there, same with the timer and the mode and the focus.

I’d just like to note here, that it is painfully obvious from the above that I’m behind the times on just what camera’s can do, so I suspect some of the features that this camera has have been available for quite some time on many others. Ah well they are very nice features.

Panorama mode of my back garden. Its great, I take a picture then it gives me a transparant image of one side of it so that I can line the pictures up, and then it stitches them all together. 🙂

I can’t say what this is a picture of, as its a surprise for someone, but I think the colours came out quite well, if a little blury. Clearly I need to play around with what the best mode to take photo’s of knitting is, but I’m already quite happy, as this was the first photo I attempted to take of this. 🙂 (I took this on the food mode of the camera.. yes there is a food mode… for high saturation to make the food look more appatizing, apparently.)

A close up of my Tyranid Warrior (Left), can we just compare this with the phone attempt (Right). A much better looking picture, shaprer and truer to the colours!! Fantastic! 🙂

I have to say there are some odd features on this camera thou, for instance I can change the sounds played for start up, or the shutter etc, the first options is generally a the standard noise you’d expect, the 2nd is something a bit more fancy, the 3rd.. its a cat meow. I mean I am a cat person but wtf?

Still I like what i’ve got on this camear so far, now I just have to get used to using the different modes etc. Also the fact that both the camera and the software it comes with can do things like reduce red eye and that the software can adjust things like the levels, is really nice. 🙂

Technology is just annoying

I think technology took a dislike to me this weekend. I tried to install Vista Service Pack 1 on Saturday morning, it would get all the way through, do the last restart, when its supposed to configure the install and then just say “Install failed, reverting back”.. Well.. how nice. As per several troubleshooting suggestions I ran a couple of system scans, turned all extra programmes off and … it still didn’t’ install. I have yet to try the suggestion to try and install it with things like the virus checker turned off, I think I may wait till after my exams to sort this out.

Vista however has also started to do other really crazy/annoying things.. The compute window.. it groups things by drive type, and with the computer drives it very helpfully had a little green bar that showed you how much space you’d used/had free. Or at least that’s what its SUPPOSED to look like (see example here). I really appreciated it too. But now… now mine looks like this:

Can you see that?? Its grouped them alphabetically!! I mean WHAT?! And don’t any of you dare tell me that I can change it back to sorting by Type by right clicking and selecting the sort by. I will have you know I’ve done that TWICE, and yet after a restart or two it REVERTS BACK to this alphabetical sorting….. Not to mention that I have no idea how to get those nice computer icons back with the green bars to tell me how much damned hard drive space I’ve used. I really appreciated those!

I also ran out of black printer ink on Saturday, I had to use my dads printer.. which was almost out of black ink too, so it should be fun getting the rest of my lecture notes printed off from which to revise from.

Oh well.. at least I’ve actually managed to fix one issue! Dany wasn’t going into standby mode after having the screen saver on for 10 mins, but I updated the graphics driver on Sunday and that seems to have fixed it. I also discovered that because I have a NVIDIA card I was entitled to a couple of free stuff chapters so a demo Peggle, the first few levels of Portal, and some HL2 chapter things. Neat! I may have to invest in Portal now… it was fun. 🙂

I also have a few suspicions that it MAY have been this graphics driver issue that was preventing SP1 from installing.. but like I said I’ll try to install it again after my exams. In fact I need to go revise, I have another one at 6pm today. The fun never ends(!)

What a time waster

Unlike some people I am not a complete Microsoft hater, I mean yes at times the software can be really annoying, but I have found there are some fantastic features in Office 2007, and actually I do kind of like Vista, but there are some things about it that really annoy the hell out of me.. and I have just run up against one of them.

I want to edit some Librivox files in Audacity, using version 1.3.4 which is in Beta, and the software has suddenly decided that it will open in full screen mode, or just sit in my start bar, I cannot get it into windowed mode. I have never liked working with software in full screen mode, unless 1) it is a computer game that does NOT make me queasy, or 2) I am trying to focus specifically on writing up a piece of coursework. Editing Audacity files doesn’t fall into either of these to categories. So a quick trip to the Audacity help forum suggests that I need to reset audacity by deleting a few files. Here is where I start banging heads with Vista.

I need to get here Documents and Settings\<user name>\Local Settings\Temp\, but when I get to Local Settings, Vista tells me that my Access is Denied. Why does it do this? It’s Vista’s crazy way of telling me this because these files are located elsewhere. There’s some useful information about it here, and as the guy says, if Vista can tell applications where the actual path to these files is… WTH can’t it just take me there? Now I’m going to have to waste time trying to find the file locations. *Grumble*

Edit: Blah I think I’m still tired, if I read the webpage I linked to more carefully it actually tells me where such things are.. now to see if I can fix Audacity.

I hate technology at times!

Sometimes the whole technology having a mind of its own thing really pisses me off. Yesterday I brought out my GameCube for the first time in months, so that I could play some Super Smash Bro’s with Caleb. After brief moment of ‘Ack no sound with the cube! don’t be broken please!’ I fiddled around with the cables and realised that luckily it was just that a scart cable wasn’t quite plugged in properly.

However in the middle of playing a game my digi set top box decides to turn itself on, (It was on standby) and tells me that it needs to reinstall all the channels. Err.. what?? Ok so fine it’s had a bizarre attack of amnesia… so I say ok reinstall the channels – that you shouldn’t have lost in the first place because I DID NOT restart you.

So it reinstalls the channels, (yay?) and then… THEN it tells me it needs to install the guide, and to make sure I don’t see this same ‘install guide screen’ every time, I must leave the set top box in standby mode and not turn anything off at the plug. What…?! WHAT?!?!?! You do realise that appliances USE UP electricity in standby mode?! RIGHT?! So you want me to bascially burn up more of our electricity so that I don’t have to keep reinstalling this guide. Also when I did install the guide its not the normal guide that I’m used to but some bloody Virgin sponsored thing!

And actually the Virgin thing annoyes me, but does not piss me off nearly as much as this ridiculas I’m not allowed to turn everything off at the plug thing. Excuse me I do like to try and do my little bit for the environment, which means I like to NOT leave things in standby mode.

I just don’t get what’s changed, its the SAME digi box I’ve had since last summer. It worked, it was good, I could turn it on and off a the plug as often as I liked, my tv guide was just there when I pressed the guide button on my remote. NOW?! Now apparently some retard has decided that I must reinstall it EVERY TIME… Thats like telling me to reinstall Firefox or iTunes every time I turn my PC on and I want to use it. What crap.

Sorry, as you can tell I’m rather pissed off about it all.

Edit: It is in fact just a glorified Teletext thing and I guess just Virgin are paying for ad space, so its nothing to do with Virgin in that sense. I have now also figured out how to get the old generic guide back.  Which I do much prefer, apparently the Teletext extra, is just an enhanced service. But still I find it very annoying that I can’t just turn things off at the mains, thus saving a bit of electricity.