Interface

The placement of controls is only one part of the usability equation, menus can make or break a device. We’ve all had our experience with horrible overly complex Menus, when a user has to jump through 5-7 different screens or button presses to do most task, there is a problem. From my usage of the Reader thus far, I’ve experienced very little of this. The menu is not the best graphical wise nor is it the most elegant, but it stays true to the theme of this product, keep it simple.

The following menus help keep one’s digital library organized, which results in less time searching and more time to enjoy reading. The Reader has 16 books preloaded, not all of the books are complete, a few are only excerpts, below you will find the list of preloaded ebooks.

The row of number buttons act as shortcuts, so in the above picture, if you pressed 8, you would access the Excavation book. These number shortcuts apply to most of the menus.

Each ebook has it’s own menu for additional options. The Reader supports PDF ebooks, the format of ebooks purchased from Sony’s online ebook store, Connect, is in BBeB format which is a secured ebook format.

The reader has very basic musical functionality, when I say basic, I mean basic, like next song, stop and play only options, basic. The Reader supports MP3 and AAC audio formats. I could definitely see this feature used for audio books, in situations where reading could be difficult, such as driving.

Changing the view to horizontal applies to all screens, so you may read your books in this fashion.

The mark button is used for bookmarking pages. As shown above a blue light shines indicating the page has been bookmarked and the top right corner of the page is folded graphically.

Awww yes the screen lock, this is a great tool for the guys. It’s ok guys, you can download The Notebook no one has to know.

Still confused about when to use screen lock?

“As Fobio presses against her body, his eyes penetrating her soul, she is helpless in his arms, unable to break his spell of seduction.”

Guys, if your book sounds something like this, lock it up!

Readability

The following images should give you a clear illustration of what the Reader is capable of displaying, 4-level grey scale isn’t as bad as I had initially thought. Take this picture of a baby for example, it’s quite detailed.

If you look closely you can see the shadow of the previous page, this ghosting effect is most prevalent when displaying darker screens, not to worry this is not visible when reading ebooks.

This video demonstrates the Reader changing pages.

Table of Contents:

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: InterfacePage 3: Conclusion

Filed under: Sony