Sony to Link Readers with Libraries

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Sony was showing off the Reader hardware (Pocket and Touch) editions that will be going on sale before the summer is over, and we had a chance to test some of it out. The Pocket Edition is way too large to fit in a typical pocket, but it is the smallest hardware we've seen yet. It's not touchscreen, but it does have nicely laid out controls that provide easier access to menu and list items than Amazon's offering. In some ways, the hardware controls are superior to the touchscreen—there's no ambiguity about a button press, so if the display is unresponsive (a common event with eInk screens), you know that it's probably just a matter of waiting.

That wasn't clear when using some features on the Touch Edition. Some people using the Touch were attempting to add notes to it, and it was difficult to interpret their failures, as it wasn't clear whether the touches weren't registering, they were performing the wrong action, or the hardware was just being unresponsive. Sony's also changed the software slightly from its previous touchscreen version, which bewildered some experienced users.

Nevertheless, for the most part, however, the software was well laid out, and it was easy to navigate on screen. The keyboard was arranged in a standard, offset-QWERTY format, which I found far easier to use than Amazon's vertical arrangement. The screen registered keystrokes with a small click when depressed, providing tactile feedback; the largest problem seemed to be that the touches sometimes seemed to register at a slightly different position than the keys appeared on screen, a consequence of the depth difference between the touch and display hardware.

Notes can be exported back to the desktop software with an image of the text they were associated with, so even if the underlying library book expires, the effort isn't lost; maybe Sony didn't want to be targeted with a class action lawsuit, such as the one that Amazon was hit with.

Sony also announced that it would have the Readers on display at 8500 retail locations, giving potential users a chance to try before buying.

In contrast to a lot of areas, where the company seems to be flailing, it's obvious that Sony has a clear strategy here: offer a variety of hardware with different features and price points, and give its owners the option of obtaining material from a wide variety of sources, including their own documents. Making that a profitable strategy is going to be challenging, however, as the Readers will be competing with Amazon's Kindle, new arrivals on the market, and (perhaps most significantly) smartphones and netbooks that can easily handle reading material.

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