Sony Reader Wi-Fi review: in-depth first look

Friday, September 30th, 2011

The announcement of the new Amazon Kindles caused all manner of excitement in the PC Pro office this week, until we realised Amazon actually had no plans to release the most exciting products in the UK. What a let-down. Still, that does at least give other manufacturers a chance to steal a march, and that appears to be exactly what Sony has done with its new Reader Wi-Fi, of which we have an early sample.

The first thing to notice when you pick up the Reader Wi-Fi is how light it is. It tipped our scales at just 162g, which makes the current Kindle look positively portly. With no keyboard it’s small enough to slip into an inside jacket pocket, and although it does feel a touch plasticky, it’s well made and the soft-touch plastic rear gives you a nice grippy surface to hold onto.

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Reader X: Adobe gets it right at last

Monday, October 18th, 2010

With the launch earlier today of its new Acrobat X platform, Adobe is naturally keen to highlight the strengths of its Acrobat authoring applications. With new capabilities such as action-based automation and enhanced portfolio handling, the new Acrobat X Pro (see full review) is certainly a decent upgrade.

By contrast, the new Acrobat X Standard (see full review) offers comparatively little. As many programs now offer their own in-built PDF authoring capabilities, and third-party alternatives such as Nitro and the more powerful Nuance offer similar office-focused PDF-based power (including OCR-based archiving and rich Word export), the one thing that Acrobat X Standard is crying out for, and that Adobe has again failed to deliver, is a major price cut.

Overall however I’d still call the new Acrobat X platform a major release, thanks primarily to the changes made to the free Reader X program.

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New E Ink turns up with speed-up

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

I was disappointed earlier this month when an eBook reader landed on my desk to be reviewed. Every time I turned the page, so to speak, there was a second or two’s lag. It was irritating, and it led to me ranting about the need for a new screen technology that can refresh instantly, if eBook readers are ever to take off.

This morning I saw a video that made me re-think all that. The new AM 300 developer’s kit from E Ink can handle animation pretty smoothly, and instant page turns, too. It uses the same technology as previous versions – little balls, black on one side and white on the other, which physically rotate to create areas of colour – but handles it all a lot faster.

This is down to the chips and firmware that control it. The importance of this is often underestimated; rival television manufacturers may use the same panel from the same factory, but the image quality of a TV is largely down to software. Even the performance of Formula One cars is largely down to their engine management and braking control software.

I’m waiting eagerly for the first reader to use the new kit. I just hope that the next generation of models won’t mess up all of this hard work by putting the buttons where I can’t reach them.

Why eBook readers need a few more years yet

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

I’m reviewing the BeBook eBook reader at the moment, and it’s already wound me up – after just an hour’s use. That’s not good; reading is supposed to be fun.

Unlike a traditional book, where I can turn a page with a quick, well-practiced swish of the thumb and forefinger, I instead need to press a plasticky little button and wait two seconds while the screen panics for a second or two, before finally delivering the next few hundred words. It’s not a pleasant experience, and I’ve already learned to hit the next-page button at the start of the final sentence, so as to minimise plot-destroying gaps in flow. (more…)

Bringing the Internet of Things to my flat

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

When I was young I used to think a lot about how to create a machine that could track and organise every single object in the world, giving easy access to bizarre information like exactly how many blue cars there were in my home town, how many people in my county, where the greatest concentration of certain types of animals were, and so on. It was perhaps a sign of some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder, which, if the highly organised state of my MP3 collection is anything to go by, is still ticking along nicely.

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