Review: Sony Reader PRS-500

Don't buy it; save yourself $300+ and a big headache.  After wasting seven hours' worth of my time, most of it on hold waiting for Sony customer support people who ended up being no help whatsoever, I boxed it back up and returned it to Sony.

I had been looking forward to storing up to 80 books in their new-technology, hi-res ebook reader.  But not any more.

In theory, it interfaces with a Windows machine.  In practice, the Sony software ("Connect Reader") would not even run on my Sony Vaio notebook computer running the latest XP SP2 update, with 22GB free space on the hard drive.  [Note to self: Theory and practice frequently diverge.] 

I remain an optimist, however.  Specifically, I am optimistic that one of three things will happen: either (1) Sony will fix their software so that it works as advertised with Windows XP (on a Sony Vaio, no less); (2) Sony will write their software to interface with the OS X operating system; or (3) consumers will stay away from Sony products in sufficient numbers to drive Sony out of the business of wasting consumers' time and money. 

[One nice thing about running your own blog is the freedom to publish a warning like this every now and then, to help others avoid a time-wasting mistake.]

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End Note:

Not that I need help with this any more, but here is the error message that wouldn't go away no matter which Sony employee "helped" me or what I did to the boot.ini file based on stuff I found in the Microsoft knowledge base.  Click to enlarge—or, better yet, just wait for my next article later today, now that I have free time to work on it.  I'll be using my Mac.

 

Comments

[rufus]

THIS is kind of an interesting confluence of two posts:

http://biopact.com/

[Fuzz]

I learned years ago to avoid Sony products after throwing hundreds of dollars away on their faulty garbage, and have warned others to stay away. Unfortunately I don't think my personal boycott is working since they still are in business and still make overpriced crap, but maybe eventually others will catch on. Welcome to the the light!

[Kevin]

Well to slightly paraphrase Steve Jobs from the recent D2 conference, the Japanese can't write software.

[PseudoNoise]

0xC000 0005 is the 32-bit exception code for an access violation, caused by either reading or writing to memory not allocated by the application. Basically, it tells you there was a bug in the program & how it manifested but not why the bug is there. Windows is letting you know it caught the program before it tried scribbling/accessing something it shouldn't.

If you have a compiler, try it yourself:

int main ()
{
int *p = 0; // never legal to access memory @ addr 0
return *p;
}

"Unhandled exception at 0x00401000 in test.exe: 0xC0000005: Access violation reading location 0x00000000"

[Steve]

PN:
Thanks, you've obviously been around that block a few times. I hope the Sony programmers read your comment. Might be a big help to any customers who haven't abandoned them yet.

[Jon Wolf]

There are LOTS of people who own the Sony Reader on the MobileRead forums. Myself included. And nobody at all has ever reported that error. Have you tried to install Connect on a different computer? Have you disabled everything running at start of the computer? I have Connect installed and it runs perfectly.

[Jon Wolf]

The URL for the MobileRead forum is http://www.mobileread.com

Please come over and maybe someone can help you with your problem.

[Steve]

Jon: The Vaio is my only remaining active Windows machine. Ironically, I almost passed on the ebook reader until it could interface with the Mac, but reasoned, "Hey, it's all Sony stuff, that should be safe enough." Dopey me.

At my age, time is more valuable than money, and the Sony support structure was a complete waste of my time. One person's supervisor refused to get on the phone with me, even though I held for one hour. He must have been in a really important internal meeting, I guess.

It's on its way back to Sony. I might take another look at it -- in a store setting -- if and when Connect is made available for OS X.

[Happy PRS User]

Thats too bad about your poor support experience. I agree with previous comment that many others (including myself!) have had great experience with the reader!

I hopes post like yours don't discourage people from buying it and Sony ends up killing the product :(

[Splashman]

Steve, don't hold your breath waiting for OSX support from Sony. They've always dissed the Mac, and they've always had their own special brand of clueless as regards software.

This anecdote is further support for the notion that software and hardware must be integrated a la Apple. It's virtually impossible for a company like Sony to provide adequate support when their products can run on a gazillion different permutations of hardware.

[MH]

This could well be a Windows problem not a Sony problem. Sony made some good products, including the Reader. I have been using it for six months now without any problem.

[LaughingVulcan]

Sorry it didn't work for you. It does for me. It does for other Vaio users. So I wonder what was really wrong.... At any rate, again I'm sorry it didn't work for you because it is a very cool, useful, and fun device.

[Steve]

Looks like I'm not the only one who experienced the problem. See the first message on this thread:
http://tinyurl.com/yusjvy