4. How Sony Did The Book

Size And The Display

Sony's PRS-500 is small: 6.75 inches high by 4.75 inches wide and .375 inches thick. That last number as a fraction is three-eighths of an inch. Add the cover and the dimensions increase by roughly one-fourth inch in all directions. At 9 ounces, the Sony Reader is very light. A cover adds another 3.5 ounces.

The Reader's display is 3.5 inches wide by 5.7 inches high. And, it's very good. It appears almost white in most lighting situations with that very slight light green, almost light gray cast typical of monochrome LCD displays. The display is not backlit. It's my guess that Sony left out the backlight for two reasons. First, this is a book. It can be read in any light where you can read a paper book. Second, a backlight would have depleted the eBook's battery very quickly. The device would have been quite a bit larger and heavier to hold a battery of the capacity required to support a backlight.

As I noted in the introduction, the PRS-500 is not a PDA on steroids or an Ultra Mobile PC on a diet. It's an eBook Reader designed for reading eBooks, not housing your calendar or email or writing documents or building spreadsheets. Yea, you can listen to your MP3 music and look at your photos in glorious black and white, but that's it. No Más!

Most reviewers fault the Sony Reader for not having a backlight. In fact, that grand and glorious non-profit consumer watchdog agency that a week or so ago scared the crap out of parents with its totally botched report on car seats for babies and infants complained in its silly less-than-half-page review that you couldn't see book pages on the PRS-500 in a dark car or room. Well, my friends, you can't read any paper book under such circumstances without clipping on a book light. The same goes for the Sony eBook Reader. Clip a light to the top back of its cover and you can read to your heart's content in the dark. End of discussion.