Resurrecting my Sony Reader PRS-500 with Calibre
With all the attention I give my iPhone, many readers out there probably don’t realize that I have a Sony Reader (1st generation). I’ll be the fist to admit that the Reader has taken a back seat to my iPhone. But today I gave the trusty reading device new life, thanks to an open source program I recently discovered.
The one mistake Sony has made with its Reader is that their proprietary software that you must download and use to purchase books is only available for the PC. So when I switched to Mac in early 2008, my Reader sort of went out of commission for a while. What is an Apple fanboy to do?
Luckily for me, and many others I assume, there are people out there who create fanastic open source programs to help with problems like the one I described above. After searching the internet for a solution, I came across Calibre, and open source program that works on PCs, Macs and even Linux-based systems. Calibre basically acts as a content management system for your reading device (it supports more than just the Sony Reader).
With Calibre, you can add and remove books from your device. It also converts ebooks between different formats (although I haven’t tried that feature out yet). It does everything that Sony’s own software does, only it does it on the Mac.
Calibre Review: Installing and using
Installing Calibre onto my Macbook was a piece of cake! It’s a relatively small program and I was able to download it in about 2 minutes using my home-based wireless DSL connection.
After the installation I opened the program for the first time and familiarized myself with its rather simple user interface (ui). If you can use iTunes, then you can use Calibre – it’s that easy.
I then went to my favorite ebookstore, Fictionwise, and bought an ebook from their science fiction section. There’s one caveat here: I had to buy an ebook that is "multiformat" so that I could download the ebook in LRF format, which is the format the Sony Reader uses (more about that later).
I downloaded my newly purchased ebook to my desktop and then drag-and-dropped it into the Calibre library. That’s it! The book was there, waiting for a home on my Sony Reader.
This is the part I worried about: Plugging my Reader into my Mac. I did so holding my breath. After nothing exploded on me I let out a large sigh of relief when I saw that Calibre instantly recognized the device! When I clicked on the Reader icon in Calibre it showed the device’s ebook library and I was able to edit some old titles that I already read (or knew I was never going to read).
Finally, I uploaded my new ebook to the Reader. It took only a few seconds. Done! Calibre works great! I’m no longer bound to Sony’s proprietary ebookstore (where the prices are a little high).
A note about ebook formats
As I said above, I had to purchase a book from Fictionwise that was available in "multiformat" so I could download the LRF version for the Sony Reader. That is one limitation to consider, but is due to the Reader, not Calibre.
I currently own the Sony Reader PRS-500, which is the first generation reader. Unlike subsequent generations to be released by Sony, the 500 is limited to that LRF format. Down the road, I might be persuaded to upgrade to the PRS-505 which supports more formats, including the "standard" open source format epub.
However, I also must note that when I searched through all the multiformat ebooks available at Fictionwise, there were over 3,000 titles in science fiction alone. So it’s not like the PRS-500 limits you to just a handful of titles. And if you’re really desperate for that new release bestseller, you can probably still find it at Sony’s ebookstore. I still have the program on my Dell PC, it just needs a little dusting off.
More to Calibre than what this review covers
I have only scratched the surface of what Calibre can do in this post. Aside from managing my ebook library on my Reader, Calibre can also convert between formats. Another cool feature is that it can take content from various news websites (i.e. The New York Times) and convert them into a readable ebook format so you can read the news on the go, without an internet connection, like when you’re flying!
So if you own any of the three generations of the Sony Reader, it might be worth it to check Calibre out. Even if you have a PC, Calibre will at least give you a choice as to where you purchase your ebooks from.
Amazon, please take note!
And what post would be complete without dumping on the poor Amazon Kindle?
This flexibility I have with the Sony Reader is probably why I’ll never buy a Kindle (unless Amazon makes some major changes to their DRM policies). More importantly, however, Sony made the right decision in opening up the Reader (2nd & 3rd generations) to other formats besides their own.
I’m just saying…
Related posts
- Love my Sony Pocket Edition Reader, hate the Sony ebook software
- Sony to adopt ePub for ebooks
- Sony releases new ebook software, compatible with Mac, leaves out PRS-500 support
- Review: The Sony Pocket Edition (PRS-300) Reader
- EPUB Standard coming to a Sony Reader near you!
Read More: Reading, Technology, eBooks
Thanks for the post. It is interesting experience with Calibre. As usually… open source community makes things more flexible.
Hi dbReader!
Thanks for your comment. I have come to love open source programs over the last few years.
Calibre has really impressed me and I can’t wait to keep using it and discover new features.
Thanks again for commenting!
-Brad
[...] sad that only the Amazon Kindle makes headlines. I own a Sony Reader PRS-500, which I love and have recently revived after discovering Calibre, a program that lets me manage my ebook library from my Mac (something [...]
I have both the Kindle and the Reader PRS-500. The Kindle can handle .mobi books, too, and text and .doc. It can’t handle PDFs, but the PRS-500 doesn’t really do well with those, either. Honestly, I’ve found the Kindle slightly better than the PRS-500, even discounting the wireless. Good luck, though!
I’ve had the 500, 505 and now the 300 pocket edition. the 500&505 definitely did not handle .PDF well, I remembered having to read most PDFs at medium sized fonts and with each page turn it would go back to small sized fonts, really annoying. The 300 no longer does that, it actually take the text from the PDF file and renders it to fit the screen, Sony was also “smart” enough to keep the page numbers from the original PDF file, I guess so you can reference the original file if need, so when someone say “take a look at page 32″ you can actually do it. Only problem with this is that it page 32 would appear 4 or five times!