I would love to use this to read all my manga, but I worry about the battery life. With 30 fps it will only run only 4 hours. (I assume browsing the menu will keep the screen busy) With 3 fps (reading manga, at a quick rate) it will last 40 hours. So I assume a combination of both (menu interaction and just reading stuff) it will run for 20 hours or so. That's not really THAT much considering it has no backlighting. Not enough for a week of camping for example.

Know what would be great? If there was some sort of podcast-like system for comics combined with this device. Instead of going to the comic shop every week they could just charge my credit card a small fee and all the comics I subscribe to would be automatically downloaded to my PC and sync'd to this device. Then I could just read them off the device whenever I wanted. No more trouble with shelf space storing the comic collection. It's not perfect yet though. I don't see any color and it's still rather large. Call me when it's paper thin.

So the Librie grew up, but it's still infested with DRM that prevents it from being used in a reasonable way. Too bad, really. Maybe someone will fix it. Maybe even make it read PDF files!

I love it! I'll get one solely because they used Trigun as an example! iDD

Shin, I believe the maximum FPS the latest E-Ink technology can maintain is 2 FPS.

If this is really e-ink or e-paper, fps isn't a concern unless you expect moving objects. This technology is supposed to only require power when you change the display. As such, there wouldn't be a flicker at 1Hz if you were reading text.

Yeah, that Trigun better be out here. :-) What I'm not clear on: can you ONLY fill it with content from Connect, or will they allow 3rd-party development for it? It would seem, er, a little silly to have a book be a closed system. Also, what happens with non-fiction books when they're searchable? Could be perfect for your, erm, Sony Vegas Visual Quick Start book. If Sony is allowing anyone to do that, that is.

Wait, just read this, and it sounds like it'll do RSS (hi, Gizmodo), JPEG, and PDF. Now we're talking. Wonder what you'll need to do to optimize for the device?

If there isn't a handy text/Word conversion utility, f'get about it. PDF's alright, but I still hate working with them on PC, plus wouldn't you need to pay Adobe to make your own PDFs? Still, I like the idea. The size looks just right to me (roughly trade-paperback). I could see getting one, but I'd probably wait for color.

Wow. I mean .. Wow. If Sony can just hire Apple to create the user interface and desktop software for this bad boy, and I'll order a dozen.

Sweet, looks like Sony finally got their head out of their a** and is releasing an uncrippled reader. And Shin, you "read" manga (or anything) at 3 pages per second??

sdfjkl ... "It's got a USB plug, and could be used to download and read websites, JPEGs or PDF docs." Note where it says it can read PDF docs.

I think there's a problem with your math. You have 7500 page turns. At 30fps, that's 30 pages/second, or 1800 pages/minute. It'll last 4 minutes, not 4 hours at that rate. I'm guessing it's not even possible to navigate the menu that ridiculously fast though, and I highly doubt they'd animate the menu, since it would drain the battery so fast. Your time in the menu is also likely to be less than 1% of the time you do actual reading, especially if it goes to the current page of the book you were reading when you turn it on. At a more realistic rate of a page turn a minute, the thing is good for 7500 minutes, or 125 hours. Not bad. Looking at it another way, if you figure the average book is 500 pages or so, it's good for 15 books.

Post a size comparison photo!! (specifically a thickness comparison, but also general overhead shot)

Wow... what the heck was I thinking when I typed out my numbers. Very strange that you're the first to correct me after so many posts, thanks SheikRattleEnroll Anyway, I would read manga 3 pages a minute or so. If I include fooling around with the menu... let's say, adds 66% extra page activity, I have 5 pages a minute. I'll end up with... 25 hours. Still kinda short. Don't get me wrong, this item looks awesome, but I just thought the strength of E-ink was more significant than that.

OK who fools around with two pages of menu for every three pages they read and still expects to be able to plow through anything at 3 pages per minute? Secondly do you seriously expect to read 5 pages per minute for 25 hours before you can charge it up? That's good battery life in my expectations. Keep in mind that it's doubtful that Sony has loaded it up with the biggest battery the world has ever seen. With the power performance of this e-ink stuff being what it is, it would stand to reason they designed a device with a 7500-flip battery life and figured that would be enough to satisfy people doing a lot of page flipping (such as using it as a reference book, making notations, etc) while keeping battery bulk reasonable for those people who just want to read books with it.

Even 20 hours sounds like pretty good battery life for a week of camping, assuming you're not just holed up in your tent reading the whole time.

e-ink does not work on refresh rate - read the
comment by schalliol above.
Check out the how it works at http://eink.com/technology/howitworks.html

7500 page turn means 7500 page turns.
One page turn lasts up until the a new page is viewed.
So here is the maths:
- if you zip through 7500 pages in 5 minutes, battery life will be 5 minutes
- if you like to take it slow, 7500 pages in lets say 6 months, battery life will be 6 months
That is how the maths should work.

What are you guys talking about!!! It's 7500 page turns! Can any of you read 7500 pages in 20 hours!?!? I think I could read a 1000 in 20 hours, and that's fast. At that rate you're talking about 150 hours of straight reading. There is only a 168 hours in a week. I read at the MOST 10 hours a day. I would only have to charge the battery once a month MAYBE. Also, the screen requires NO power one the image is set, so there is no Hz at all, because it does not refresh. So if you are on a page for a hour let's say it doesn't use any power at all, that's why they messure this in page turns. Also nagivating the system is not page turns because the whole screen is not being refreshed. I don't don't care how much or whatever you read you aren't likely to recharge this thing more than once a month!

I don't know what you guys are talking about! There is a reason why Sony is measuring in page turns. This is because the screen in not refreshed! There are no hertz, no refresh, no frames… Have you even seen one of these displays in action? They are not designed for movement capture; they are solely to show stills. There is no power used at all once the screen is set. Imagine the power it takes to run a wrist watch LCD, and then imagine that power is only used when changing the display. What uses the power on these units is the CPU that renders the text, and that's not that hard to do. In fact, I doubt this thing has an on and off button, because if you turned off it would still be showing the last screen of text. I bet the CPU auto turns on and off with input from the control, once the function is done the CPU is off again. You could be on one page of text for a year, and it wouldn't take any power once it was set. Farther more navigating the menus are not considered page turns because the unit only resets a small part of the display. Also as noted above, system navigation account for a VERY small part of system use. You speed most of the time reading, and only a little bit find what you want to read.
And who the heck can read 7500 pages in 20 hours!?!!?!? I think I could read 1000 pages of text in 20 hours, and that's fast. Most people can't read that quickly. So at 1000 pages per 20 hours you're talking about 150 hours to read 7500 pages of text. There is only 168 hours in a week! At most I only read 10 hours a day, and I sure the heck don't do that every day, and I don't read at peak speed all the time. So we are talking about charging the unit once a month or two at the most for a VERY active reader.
Things that will drain the battery would be listening to music, and more complex formats such as PDF. Viewing PDF will use a little more CPU time, so you'll see a loss, maybe 5000 page turns vs 7500 for TXT. Now music will eat up lots of power because the CPU has to run the whole time you are playing music. I'm guessing you might get 8 hours of music play, and that wouldn't be too shabby. But that is just my guess with the music, but I can't see you getting more than that. Once more once the battery is dead there will be no way to clear the screen, because it takes power to clear the e-ink display. Once a state is set it is set until a new state is set. That why it's call e- ink, because it works like ink.

I really like the sound of the Sony reader but I have looked on 'Connect' and the books seem pretty limited. I would want to be able to access a wide range of non-fiction, including some of the rarer areas of history and archaeology. I would also be keen to download magazines - again some of them would be less common than others.

Does anyone know what the likelihood is that this will be addressed in the next twelve months (the time it will take for me to purchase one!)

Is no one concerned that you can't purchase books from Connect yet??? Possibly in the spring? Ive looked to see what type of print is being offered (Chapters is going to kill me) but no title lists seem to be available yet.

If anyone else has come across their print list other than the PDF of the Da Vinci Code let me know.

i am totally getting one! it's battery is going to run out in the first hour, i just know it!

As an avid reader I love my Sony Reader except for one issue: Locating e-books that are downloadable into my reader. Other than www.BloodyGoodRead.com and it's sister site, I've not found one site that provides a PDF file downloadable into the Reader except of course, for Sony's Connect site. The result is that I'm still reading a lot of books from my laptop.