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Comment by mdip | Hacker News Reader

This looks fantastic. When the e-reader craze was going on, I avoided buying one because I wanted one pretty much like this. Most of my e-books are PDFs that display really well in a larger format device. My wife had a nook, and I tried it out for a bit, but the size/resolution made viewing PDFs designed for letter sized paper look just below adequate.

Is it wrong for me to also admit that ever since the "Root Kit Debacle" from Sony, I cringe a little at the idea of plugging a Sony product into my PC? Or am I just being paranoid?

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It isn't paranoia if they really are out to get you!

But yes, I have been waiting for a device like this for ages. I tried a smaller e-ink device, but trying to view PDFs on that was painful at best. I'm even wondering if 1200x1600 resolution is good enough for scientific papers.

Why letter size? Isn't that a little bit obscure?

Right. I'd think long and hard before using a Sony product after that.

(Un)fortunately they quite often make some fantastic hardware. I'm just disappointed that the whole horror of the various computer misuse/hacking laws weren't thrown at them for those CDs.

I agree, Sony has produced some excellent products and some of their laptop designs have made me very tempted to purchase their PC products in the past.

I own a few Sony products, but I tend to flinch a little with any Sony product that: (A) Probably has a DRM scheme associated with it (as most e-readers do, I assume this one does as well). or (B) Requires me to plug it into my PC and install Sony produced software.

It may have been a long time ago, but I tend to be one of those guys where trust is easy to establish, easy to break and serious loss of trust is nearly impossible to recover from. The Rootkit Incident was a serious loss of trust to me, so I'll steer clear for now. It's too bad, even at $1100, it'd be worth it to handle my collection of printed-to-pdf notes, documents and books.

> (B) Requires me to plug it into my PC and install Sony produced software.

That there, is a big turn-off for me. What business would Sony making a device like that which requires their own specialised software to interface it with a normal computer. There are standards for these things. The USB mass storage device standard is well-established already.

While Sony certainly deserved the infamy for letting the 2005 rootkit debacle happen under the Sony name, it's worth keeping in mind that it was Sony BMG – literally a different company from Sony Corporation, which makes consumer electronics, and also a company that hasn't existed since 2008, when Sony bought out the rest of BMG and formed Sony Music Enterntainment.

It was also nine years ago. We have to move on eventually.

2005: Sony BMG rootkit. 2006: Exploding batteries. 2008: Sony DADC is responsible for SecuROM. 2010: OtherOS removed; Hotz sued over jailbreaking. 2011: PSN data breach.

Also, they killed Lik-Sang just for selling across region boundaries.

2013 : Rockstar [http://www.salon.com/2013/11/01/the_godzilla_of_patent_troll...]

Why letter size? Isn't that a little bit obscure?

Unless you're in the USA, where it's the standard paper size.

Nearly everyone else standardised on ISO 216 paper sizes decades ago, but the USA insists on doing its own thing as usual.

We went to the moon in the 60's. Then in the 70's they started pushing metric. Never been back. Coincidence? :)

The USA went to the moon in the 1960's, but metric was officially sanctioned by the USA in the 1860's. No coincidence, merely regret.

1200x1600 would be excellent as an eink monitor.

> Or am I just being paranoid?

If you are then so am I. I don't knowingly let anything with sony written upon it touch my network.

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