While catching up on my tech news over the weekend, I ran across Sony’s name a couple of times. Sony has a line of ebook readers available that are actually fairly affordable. They come in multiple colors, sizes and storage capacities. The news story I read announced Sony’s new line of thinner and faster ebook readers. The other Sony-related news I caught talked about Sony’s rumored PlayStation Phone, a new phone that will combine the features of a phone into a device similar to Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP). Sounds interesting …
… except, Sony screwed me. Earlier this year, Sony removed my ability to load other operating systems on my PS3. They did this because it could potentially have led to the PS3 being hacked. You can literally count on your fingers the number of people in the country that had the ability, knowledge and equipment needed to duplicate the hack, and ultimately the hack didn’t lead to anything — no real exploits, no mod chip, no anything — but that didn’t stop Sony from removing a feature that I was using and is printed on the side of the box as a feature from every PlayStation 3 owner. (Is that enough italics to make my point?)
So, no. I won’t be buying a Sony Ebook Reader, a Sony Phone, or anything else of theirs for a long time. I hope I’m not the only one that feels this way.
I still think its pretty pointless in this day & age to buy just a single use tech device. e-readers rank right up there as the worst offenders.
FYI from initial rumors (for this wave, as the PSP phone has been kicking around for 3 years now) is that the phone is going to be build on an Android OS backend. Interesting thinking if you ask me.
You do have a good point. Hackers will always find a way to circumvent protection schemes and the ability for the PS3 to run Linux was not some hack but rather, as you say, an actual feature of the console.
Oh, and Playstation Phone? I hope for them that it’ll fare better than the taco (aka the Nokia N-Gage)…
I’ve been thinking on-and-off about getting an e-reader, but haven’t figured out which one yet. One must-have feature for me is the capacity to read PDFs properly, as I have access to the online version of the French equivalent to The Economist. In fact, most of my reading would be in that format (PDF)…
I’m a kindle fanatic and yes, it’s a single-use device, but I also read over 100 books per year (not kidding). An iPad or whatever isn’t going to cut it for that high level of reading. Plus I spend all day looking at an LCD screen, just saying that there is a good reason to look at a standard e-ink e-reader. Plus it does one thing and it does one thing really well. (and yes, I pre-ordered the new Kindle the day they announced it). Plus the iPad (unlike the iTampon apparently) doesn’t fit in my purse – hey, us ladies have our priorities!
Having said that… it is proprietary. I also hear (heh) that you can break the encryption if really want to. I also use Calibre to import the PDFs and it usually does a really good job, I can also clean them up if I really really want to. But if you are looking at a lot of graphics, the kindle nor the nook nor the sony is the way to go. You’ll need something else.
I REALLY hate when they take away the ability to hack into something or cover up holes. Amazon did that with the kindle so we couldn’t put our own screensavers on. Drove me crazy until someone figured out how to circumvent their circumvention. Ummm…. I think that’s too long of a comment, but you said ebook and I have 13 days (THIRTEEN DAYS) until my new kindle will be here and I’m buzzing more than if I had a coffee IV at this point.
Oh, and Hi!
I’m not upgrading my PS3 to the latest version of firmware for that reason.