By Robert Nagle
Help us compare Kindle and Cybook Sony screen failure rates.
Note: Because PRS500 is an older device and may have been around longer, it may not be useful for data comparison. The Sony PRS505, Kindle and Cybook arrived at approximately the same time, so it makes for a better comparison.
Related: Cybook user poll and Amazon Kindle poll
We’ll post the conclusions and some further thoughts early next week.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 4:30 pm and is filed under Amazon, Amazon Kindle, E-books and all that, Uncategorized or off-topic, e-book, e-book ergonomics, e-books, e-books and other digipubs, e-ink. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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Paul Biba is now managing the TeleRead site with help from others. Reach Paul with news items or other TeleRead business. He's at paulkbiba NOSPAM gmail.com.
July 23rd, 2008 at 5:41 pm
I recently dropped my 505 when getting out of a taxi. It landed pretty hard on the pavement–even bent the bottom of the reader. I was afraid to turn it on because of stories I’ve read about the screens. I was very pleased that the screen still looks and works perfectly. I was able to straighten out the bottom and there is no visible signs of my mishap.
Very pleased with the 505!
dordale
July 23rd, 2008 at 7:52 pm
The PRS505 is pretty new and already 12% of the screens are broken (assuming the results of this poll are to be believed). That’s really bad!
July 23rd, 2008 at 8:47 pm
My wife has a 505 for around a year and she is not the most gentle person with electronics. At work we have yet to break the screen of any our 505’s but we are probably a bit gentler with our limited allotment than normal users.
And thanks for the avatars, David, it’s good to be labeled as the corporate stooge^H^H^H^H^H loyal employee that I am
July 24th, 2008 at 8:22 am
Jim, stooge away. It’s great to have your informal perspective. - David
July 25th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Mine broke lying on a table overnight. My 505 was pampered and just broke on it’s own. It was a day or two past the 30 return at the store where I bought it. I sent it in to Sony for repair. They wanted to charge me within $20 of what it originally cost new. I had steam leaking out of my ears for a few days. I decided to try and allow Sony to do the right thing so after they shipped it back I hunted for some help. I finally came across the emails for the Sony Executives and wrote to the head of the BookReader program - Valerie Motis. She had a brand new 505 in my hands within a week. Yay Sony! I recently heard that Steve Gibson (GRC.COM) dropped his 6 month old Kindle and cracked the screen. Amazon was more than happy to replace it quickly. These screen are very fragile.
September 9th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
I just got my new red Sony reader 505 about 3 hours ago. First the software would t work because evwidwntly. Even though it doesn’t say it on the box it doesn’t work with windows vista 64. That was a fun hour of searching for work around. Then I got all excited. Let it charge. Downloaded a few of the free books I got and went off to work. I showed my employees my new toy all excited and opened aesops fables. 3 page turns in the top half of the screen went dead and refused to work no matter what. My friend is onthe way to the Sony store to exchange it now. Hopefully I’ll have better luck this time around. Any one happen to have any ideas what could have caused that if it wasn’t just defective? The only other thing I did was put a pro duo memory card in it but it was brand new and empty.
November 14th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
My screen has a “line” of “defect pixels”. Very sad, don’t know where it came from. Fortunately it’s near the right edge and not too bad.
Also, the Power-On button has jammed once requiring me to open the device to fix it.
Not exactly good quality so far. But hey, it’s a Sony, so it would be rather surprising if they actually cared about quality at all
November 16th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
I’ve had my 505 for a few months and only used it occasionally. It was simply lying on a table for a short while, and when I picked it up, 15+% of the screen (in the upper left-hand corner) was unreadable. I had a 500 that broke in the same way, but I thought they had cured the problem in the 505. I shan’t be buying another.