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_AV8R_
Participant
September 8, 2007
Question

Adobe Ebooks on Sony PRS-500 - doesnt import to Sony

  • September 8, 2007
  • 44 replies
  • 11482 views
Hello,

Ive just purchased a Sony PRS-500 book reader that has adobe PDF compatibility.

After going to eBooks.com and buying a book, I can see the book fine on my
PC, but I cannot get it to import into the Sony CONNECT Reader which is
the method to load the book on to the PRS-500 device.

Ebooks points to this forum for support, and I hope Adobe doesnt point me back to eBooks. The Sony site just assumes PDF files work, and I got
wind of ebooks.com from a discount card that came with the Sony. So Im
assuming... that they should play nice together.

Anyone else out there using a Sony reader?
    This topic has been closed for replies.

    44 replies

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    A
    Anonymous
    October 29, 2007

    Sanford,


    You're a bit out of luck for now. DRM - or Digital Rights Management makes it difficult to say what is compatible with what, however most of the places you buy books from will protect those books with some sort of DRM. Currently, the Sony Reader (both the 500 and 505 models) only supports DRM protected content that you get from their store - Sony Online Connect and does not support any DRM content (especially in PDF files) that you get from any place else, such as eBooks.com.


    If it helps, think about this all as an early versions of the iPod - when you purchased songs from the iTunes Music Store they would only work on an iPod and not any other MP3 players. Any songs you purchased from other stores such as Rhapsody would work (maybe) on your computer, but you couldn't transfer them to you iPod. But any songs you made or ripped from a CD (and were not DRM protected) would work in all MP3 players. The eBook market is in a similar state with eBook Readers - Sony's Reader currently only supports purchased content coming from their store. Other readers support their own DRM format - and not all stores support formats that any Reader supports.


    It's even worse for you since you are using a Mac. The Sony Reader is not supported on the Mac. The Sony Connect software is Windows only, the 500 model is just plain not recognized at all on the Mac, and I believe the 505 model will only show up as a mass storage device (I haven't played with one yet - so I'm not sure). So if you have the 505 model your best bet is going to be to get non DRM protected books (see my links in previous posts) and copy them directly


    Jim Lester
    Adobe Systems

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    _Sanford_Jackson_
    Participant
    October 29, 2007
    I'm confused at all of this guys, I won a Sony PRS in a raffle and I just bought a book off of the ebook.com website, you guys make this seem all easy, but I'm just a teenager i don't really understand this lingo could you help me out, are you saying its possible to convert these files to download to the PRS? BTW, I found the downloaded file of the book on my computer they were in PDF format but all that turned up when I opened them was gobelty goop.

    By the way I work on a mac.

    thanks,

    SJ
    _
    _Colum_McCaffery_
    Participating Frequently
    October 28, 2007
    Jim,
    Thank you for your help.
    Regards
    Colum
    A
    Anonymous
    October 26, 2007

    Colum


    I'm pretty sure any of the flavors of Acrobat will convert to RTF. Acrobat Standard will be your lowest price option of the Acrobats (I'm sure there are probably less expensive 3rd party options, but I haven't tried any myself and can't offer any opinions). However before purchasing there is a downloable free trial of Acrobat Pro that you may want to try to see if the conversion will work the way you want it to on your PDFs.


    Good luck


    Jim Lester
    Adobe Systems

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    _Colum_McCaffery_
    Participating Frequently
    October 25, 2007
    Jim,
    Sorry to be getting right back to you but I've been checking Acrobat and there are quite a few applications in the "suite". Which Acrobat do you mean?
    Regards
    Colum
    _
    _Colum_McCaffery_
    Participating Frequently
    October 25, 2007
    Jim,
    Thank you for your help.

    I've downloaded PDFRead GUI 1.7. It seems to be converting files successfully but I can't open the converted files via windows. Time to go back to Adobe and look at Acrobat!

    By the way, the "landscape" tip was simple and very effective.

    Thanks again

    Colum
    A
    Anonymous
    October 22, 2007

    Colum,


    You caught me spouting off internal shorthand, sorry. What I meant was Adobe Acrobat as opposed to Adobe Reader. Adobe Acrobat (through File->Save As...) allows you to export a PDF into any number of formats (such as Text, RTF and HTML among others) with varying degrees of success depending upon the PDF and the format chosen.


    Jim Lester
    Adobe Systems

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    _Colum_McCaffery_
    Participating Frequently
    October 18, 2007
    Jim,
    Many thanks for taking the trouble to reply.

    What do you mean by a "full copy of acrobat"?

    Regards
    Colum
    A
    Anonymous
    October 16, 2007

    Colum,

    Depending upon the PDF you may want to try putting your Sony Reader in landscape mode. This will split the PDF into a top and bottom page and should greatly enhance the readiblity of most PDFs (or at least it did for my wife). However it may get a bit annoying, if the journals you are reading are in a multi column format, because you'll have to keep flipping between the top and the bottom


    The problem is that for the 500 model the PDF text is not reflowable ( and in the larger sense the PDF format is supposed to be a fixed size, so viewing it on other than that size can cause problems for the viewer). So another alternative, permissions on the documents in question permitting, if you have a full copy of Acrobat is to export the text as RTF, and then import the RTF into the Sony Reader. You'll lose a lot of the formatting and all of the graphics, but the resulting text will be reflowable and will behave better on the Sony Reader


    Jim Lester
    Adobe Systems

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    _Colum_McCaffery_
    Participating Frequently
    October 14, 2007
    I'm in Ireland and bought a Sony eBook Reader on-line specifically to download in PDF journals to which I have a subscription. The problem is that the PDF pages transfer page for page to the Sony screen which is much smaller and the text is therefore illegible. The magnifier on the Sony is unable to make change to the necessary degree.

    If anyone has the solution, I'd greatly appreciate their help.
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