6. Loading The Sony Reader With Books

Content is everything. You don't go to a movie theater to admire the gum on the bottom of the seats. You're not going to buy that super cool HDTV set just for the misery of connecting components to it. You don't come to this website to look at the ads. And, you sure aren't going to buy an eBook Reader just because it's the best designed Reader ever. You want content in all cases.

And you want your kind of content, not just any old thing. The Internet has made that clear. So, how does the PRS-500 do on content?

The answer: Not too badly. The easiest content to get your hands on comes from an online bookstore, "CONNECT", which you access using an included software package also called "CONNECT". After you install the software on your computer, you have access to both the USB 2.0 connected PRS-500 and the CONNECT bookstore.

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Above is the CONNECT software's opening page. On the left is a selection area you can use to access the CONNECT bookstore front page, your Sony Reader hardware and its library of books, or any disk on your computer. On the right is a window that shows relevant information for the option you've selected in the selection area on the left. Here we're looking at the CONNECT bookstore home page.

Most CONNECT eBooks are typical of those you'd find at a Borders or Barnes and Nobel brick and mortar store or website: best sellers and a number of genres Sony has determined users of its Reader might find interesting. See the CONNECT categories page below.

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Many categories, for example Science Fiction with 18 pages of books, include large numbers of books. Some, such as Operating Systems, are quite thin and seem sort of ridiculous right now.

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Click on the image for a larger version.

In addition to current fiction and non-fiction the CONNECT store offers classic works, such as those of Mark Twain. Prices for eBooks tend to be a little lower than those for hard copy versions, though the price differences seem less than the cost a publisher would pay to distribute printed versions minus the cost of electronic distribution. Classic works are much less expensive, selling for 3 or 4 dollars.

Buying an eBook is easy. Just click on the book's image and select Buy Now. All books on the CONNECT store use Sony's proprietary BBeB format. So, unless the format gains wider acceptance you're forced to buy your eBooks from publishers willing to have their books distributed in this format. Fortunately, as you'll soon see, you can load eBooks in other formats into the Reader.

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