Remember a couple of weeks back when I posted about it being very likely that Sony could release another ebook reader or two to go along with the new PRS-T1?
Well, it looks like that is certainly true, at least in Japan. A 3G version of the new Sony Reader has turned up on Sony Japan’s website, and it is called the PRS-G1.
The PRS-G1 looks like it is pretty much exactly the same as the Reader Wi-Fi PRS-T1. The one difference is that the PRS-G1 comes with 3G wireless. Plus there’s no red model, just black or white.
There’s been no word from Sony about bringing the PRS-G1 to the United States yet, but I don’t see why they wouldn’t. Both generations of the Sony Daily Edition had free 3G in the US. So why not the PRS-G1 too?
Barnes and Noble dropped their 3G ereaders and Kobo doesn’t have any. The Kindle is the only ereader that offers 3G anymore. Sony could gain an advantage by releasing the PRS-G1 in the US. What do you think? A PRS-G1 for $199? That’s just $10 more than the new 3G Kindle Touch without ads.
Hopefully they price this to stay competitive since before the Kindle announcements (when I thought it was just going to be the Android tablet) I figured this to be the year for Sony to make a dent in Amazon’s market share.
Also wish they would actually get information on their e-readers out to the world. No one is going to buy them if they don’t even know they exist.
If it were a 7″ screen model, I’d be interested. Otherwise, 3G just to access the Sony store is something I can easily live without.
Ditto with Cynthia’s comments on the 7″ screen. If Sony doesn’t do a 7″ screen then the PRS-950SC is going to be quite valuable.
The two memory card slots are very useful to0 (hint, use microSD cards with SD and Memory Stick microSD card adapters and thus you can mix and match memory cards between both slots). The two memory card slots allow the reader to support 64GB of storage (32 GB per slot).
Wow 64GB is an insane amount of ebooks and documents. That’s even crazier when you consider the new Kindle Fire Tablet maxes out at 8GB.
I can’t imagine scrolling through thousands of files on an SDcard looking for a particular book. I will stick with Calibre. Even if I am traveling, I now have a portable version of Calibre on a USB stick with my Calibre libraries on it. I can usually find a desktop computer somewhere if wanted to add some books to the device.
Ditto with Jim Savitz. I use 16GB on my prs-950. It is great for me cause I listen to audiobooks all the time, they take up to 1GB each. Also, I just love to read and listen to music at the same time, especially if I am reading academic papers for my master degree. I really works for me.
That is a good point flavia. I forget that people use their readers for listening to music and audio books.
I created an .epub catalog of my ebooks with Calibre and have included a custom data field in the database which is the memory card number that contains the ebook. The epub catalog is very small and allows you to search across your entire ebook collection and you also get the thumbnail of the cover along with all of the great metadata. It takes 20kb on average for the ebook thumbnail and metadata or 20MB per 1,000 ebooks. The ebook catalog is the only file I keep stored on my PRS950SC main memory. I have the catalog generation feature in Calibre include the memory card number with each ebook.