Sony E-reader - a new gadget for us

 I bought my wife a Sony E-reader for Christmas, the PRS-T1. It has Wi-Fi and a touch screen. I spent an awful long much time getting my router hooked up so we could use the Wi-Fi. I don’t want to go into details here, but it is far from being as easy as everyone tells you. Maybe younger people don’t have the problems getting used to new gadgets. I finally discovered that I was using the password incorrectly.  When I set up my router I used capital letters, but when I tried to get the E-reader to connect, I used small letters, not realizing the password was case-sensitive. That’s the fun and frustration with using computers. They have no imagination.

I managed to connect to our local library and borrowed some books. At first, I downloaded them onto my computer and transferred them to the reader. Then I got an update on the reader and after that the E-reader program on the computer didn’t co-operate. It tried to synchronize with the reader but something went wrong and I got the informative message: ‘E-reader has to shut down. Sorry for the inconvenience.’ Thank you so much for that. At least it was polite.

I did find a way to transfer the books even without the E-reader-program’s co-operation.

Everything went fine until yesterday when the E-reader froze up. It wouldn’t respond to anything. We couldn’t even shut it off. When a computer freezes up, you can unplug it and then restart it again. How can you unplug a device that runs on batteries?

I have to say, the Sony support site is not easy to navigate. They don’t make it easy. They are mainly concerned in advertising their goods. It is hard to find the menu and even harder to print out once you find it.

I did find out how to reset the reader, which I did. It seemed to work fine, until we tried to open the books. We couldn’t open any. We received a message: Error. Protected by Digital Rights Management.

I didn’t find anything on that on the Sony site. I sent the Sony support team an email and received an answer back this morning. At least they did respond fairly quickly, but the suggestions were not satisfactory. They suggested to shut down the reader and reset it and then turn it back on a few times to see if it was indeed frozen.

Well…it was frozen. We knew that already. And the problem was it could not be shut off in the first place.

What I did then was to delete the books from the reader and upload them again from my computer. That did the trick.

I came to the conclusion, when you reset the reader you lose certain information. Luckily, I didn’t have to go through the whole lengthy process of getting back on to Wi-Fi. That still worked.

One thing I learned, it is best to download the books onto my computer and then transfer them to the reader. This way, if anything happens to the reader, I still have the books. Even though I found, the borrowed books were still downloadable on our account with the public library, which means, even if we lose them, they are still available until they have to be returned.

Purchased books may be another matter. It is best to have them on the computer.

Oh, the fun we have with technology. For me the written book is still my number one choice. I like to look at it on the bookshelf, like to touch it, like to look at the cover, like to flip the pages physically. And I don’t have to worry that it may disappear while I’m reading it. And if I don’t like the book anymore, I can use the pages to start a fire in the fireplace, wrap a present, or maybe there are other uses for the paper…When I was young, we had small squares cut from the pages of a newspaper hanging on a nail in the outhouse. Can’t do that with electronic pages.

I guess I’m just an old dinosaur and maybe not as easily influenced by all the gadgets introduced to us. We used to be able to watch TV for free, just with rabbit ears or an antenna on the roof. They took that away from us. Now we need a service-provider…and that isn’t free anymore. Now we have digital TV. There are so many channels available, one could spend the whole day watching something. We have only the basic channels and can’t even watch all the shows. I guess, we could, if we’d sit all day long in front of the box. Besides, I spent too much time already on my computer, dealing with all the error messages and program failures. Sometimes it is best just to shut everything off and go for a walk…without the cell phone, the mp3 player, the Blackberry, the iphone, or whatever the latest gadget may be called. Just breathe the fresh air, listen to real birds singing, watch real clouds, look at real trees, perhaps stop and talk to a neighbor or friend in person, instead of texting or scyping them.

In fact, I’m wasting time right now writing this little essay, instead of walking around outside. On second thought, looking out of the window I see it is quite miserable out there. It is cloudy, the wind is blowing, and the streets are slippery. Maybe I’ll stay at home after all.