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Sony has updated it's CONNECT Reader software to work with Vista - finally! The other surprise is that they've made it available for download by anyone who wants it. No longer do you have to buy a PRS-500 to have the privilege of using such a fine piece of digital craftsmanship.

It seems to be working well on Vista Business under Parallels on my OS X box. First thing the client did was download the latest version of the update software (never a good sign). I then quit the program and let Parallels take control of the "Sony Portable Reader System" USB device. The drivers and reader found each other sans incident, so I fired up the CONNECT software and it saw the reader and the inserted SD card (yay!). Book purchases went smoothly (Worlds of Deep Space Nine, if you must know). Transfers also went smoothly.

The CONNECT Store is as ugly, slow and annoying as ever, but at least everything works with Vista now. Unless they make significant changes, they really should steer clear of an OS X port. Crappy software and the Mac just don't mix well (look at Garmin's first attempt with their Training Center).

Since I posted a somewhat-disparaging commentary on the sorry state of the Sony CONNECT store & software, I wanted to update the site with at least one or two positive comments.

Sony seems to have listened to their users and the CONNECT store is vastly more responsive both in browsing and searching. Their search algorithm could still use a bit of tweaking - I searched for "card" under authors and it came up with nothing, despite new additions from Orson Scott Card.

They also seem to have added a slew of books and included more popular authors (like the aforementioned Orson Scott Card).

The software is still Windows-only and I cannot order books from the web-based one, only browse. Unlike iTunes, however, I can at least browse without the app.

So, kudos for speed, selection & some some parts of searching. Now, get to work on the OS X port!

As I mentioned, the fam got me a PRS-500 for my birthday. It really is nice, but it's not perfect. Sony is definitely not hiring the cream of the crop these days.

The good:

• e-Ink is beautiful
• the Reader is a good size and feels well-constructed
• battery life is amazing
• pictures look fantastic, despite being in grayscale
• PDF, rtf and text file support work as advertised or better
• an energetic online community (start @ MobileRead.com)
• lots of free content (start @ Project Gutenberg, but you'll find more resources over @ MobileRead)

The bad:

• registering the unit was not obvious and I'm still not sure if I have the $50.00USD credit
• the CONNECT store software is not available for download
• There are no page turning buttons on the right hand side of the unit!!!!!!
• (did I mention there are no page turning buttons on the right hand side?)
• Some content takes a while for the Reader to pre-process and cache
• No decent support for international character sets
• No way to go to a specific page. Even if they had to add a black and white LCD just for this, it would have been worth the slight loss to asthetics and battery life
• Presently, there are no newspapers or magazines that offer full-text content for the unit, making it truly an e-Book, or self-generated content reader
• The way content is DRM'd "feels" dumb

The ugly:

• Sony found some mute, blind, homeless people and had them design the CONNECT bookstore
• Sony then put some terminals in a monkey cage at some zoo and branded the result as the CONNECT software
• the CONNECT software doesn't run on Vista (hello?)
• the CONNECT software doesn't run on OS X (surprise, surprise)
• the CONNECT software/store interaction is s...l...o...w.
• the selection of commercial books from the CONNECT store is pathetic (no Ender? no LOTR?)
• finding books to buy at the CONNECT store via text searching is almost impossible

(more after the jump)