Sony PRS-505/LC Blue Digital Book Reader

This review is geared toward Mac OS X users.

I am running Mac OS X 10.4.11.
I did not use Sony's CD at all prior to connecting my PRS 505 to my laptop.
I plugged in my PRS 505, and it mounted by itself.
I dragged and dropped books (mostly free stuff from project gutenburg etc) with file types txt, html, doc, rtf, pdf, and jpg.
Then I ejected them. Just that simple.
All worked well, the pdfs really slow the reader down, I would not recommend having a lot of pdfs on your reader. The doc files also take some time to load, not as long as the pdfs though.
The jpgs worked well, perfect for manga. (Not as slow as you might think... about the same as doc speed)
The txt, html and rtf file types loaded the fastest.

Next I tried to load with an SDHC card in the reader, and plug both in together. They mounted separately.
You can drag and drop files to each separately while the SDHC card is in the reader.
Don't bother with too large a SDHC card, or the ebook transfers and reading will take waaay too long.

Problems with the two above methods:
1) the neat search features of the PRS 505 (author, title, publisher, etc) don't work well, all you'll see is a file list (which is hardly the end of the world, and IS solveable -- see Calibre info below)
2) when I had files on both my SDHC card AND my Reader, I could not get the reader to list both file locations. I just got the SDHC card listing (as if the Reader itself was empty; it was not). Not sure if this is a glitch or if I'm doing something wrong. Sony customer service is TERRIBLE and I got tired after 37 minutes on hold so I just hung up, will try again some other time. I tried emailing them they referred me to the darn phone number and didn't answer my question so as much as I like the reader I give Sony itself a pass. This is part of why I purchased the reader from Amazon and not the Sony Style store; Amazon has the BEST customer service.

CALIBRE:
This is a program that will make your prs 505 invaluable.
It is a ebook library program, lets you sort your data, add meta tags for author, title, publisher, etc which the reader does a good job of sorting. I WISH the collections feature worked (for sorting series, invaluable) and the Calibre website says it does but I can't get it to work so please put in the comments if you know how.
You MUST get this program if you want proper organization of your ebooks on your reader.
I have not tried any other program, so cannot recommend or compare them.
Oh yeah Calibre also converts txt, doc, html, rtf etc files to lrf (which is the Sony Reader proprietary format)(which is good and speeds up the formatting time and you can read your book faster).

So even though the product specs for the PRS 505 say that it is only for Windows, no worries Mac users, this product will work for you. The only thing you will miss out on is buying books from the Sony Store. But there are lots of free legal copyright lapsed books you can read, so you're not really missing out. And if you're not hung up on the Sony Store, there are other ebook retailers whose products are compatible with this reader.

Buy and enjoy! You won't regret it! If you've ever wished your iPhone had a good eBook reading program, then get this reader ;)

And BTW just buy it with the AC adapter you don't want to plug the reader into the computer all the time to charge it. I bought mine from J&R which has free shipping on the reader and I bought the reader and the ac adapter together which charged me 2.95 shipping which J&R kindly and promptly refunded. So if you can't get the reader from Amazon, I would recommend J&R. I've done business with Databazaar before, and would not recommend them. J&R also has the best return policy for the reader (not that I've used it, but just comparing all the businesses selling the reader).

Good luck!Buy Sony PRS-505/LC Blue Digital Book Reader!