* Posts by chryswoods

1 publicly visible post • joined 6 Nov 2009

Sony Reader PRS-600 Touch Edition

chryswoods
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Electronic Sketchbook

I have a 600 and Sony are missing a trick with its marketing. I use it as an electronic sketchbook / labbook. It is great to take to conference to write notes and draw diagrams (which I can then save with the PDFs of the slides). It is excellent as a means of quickly sketching out software design ideas etc. Before I used to use scraps of paper (back of an envelope!) whereas now, as I always carry it around with me, I can quickly sketch out what I need and then save it with my project. This means that my sketches are now part of the electronic history shared with everyone on the project and not lost within my paper notebook (admittedly I could just scan/photo the pages of my notebook, but that's a pain!). It is excellent as a tool for reading PDF scientific papers. It is great as a tool for proofing manuscripts (I can read a manuscript on the bus and use the stylus to annotate and correct the text). The biggest problem with it is that all the software assumes that you want to use it an an e-book, which to be honest I don't - what's wrong with a paperback? If the 600 was combined with an endnote like reference manager, and a proper UI for saving and organising handwritten notes, then I can see e-sketchbook devices like this really taking off. (and before someone responds, an iPhone is too small for this use, and a tablet's battery life is too short, and weight too high).