Service Manuals For New Sony Readers 'Leaked'

Whether it's a stealth marketing ploy or just someone out for a little fun, leaked service manuals for two new Sony digital book reader devices, the PRS-300 and PRS-600, have appeared on the Internet.

While most readers of the service manuals will not be able to use most of the information contained because they don't yet have a PRS-300 or PRS-600 to service, page one of both manuals does include basic specifications.

The PRS-300 digital book reader includes memory of about 440 MB, with a battery life measuring about 7,500 pages in the BBeB Book format, or about 6,800 pages in the EPUB format.

Those specifications are measured using a fully charged battery and counting consecutive page-turns at about one page per second. That is a good number to know for those of us who can read at a speed of one page per second.

BBeB is Sony's proprietary Broadband eBooks format. EPUB is a standard eBook format recommended by The International Digital Publishing Forum, and is basically a ZIP format.

The PRS-600 digital book reader has a memory of about 380 MB and a battery life of about 7,500 continuous page turns with the BBeB and EPUB formats, again assuming the user can read the pages at one per second.

Both the PRS-300 and the PRS-600 have a USB connector. In addition, the PRS-600 also seems to have slots for an SD memory card and a Memory Stick Duo, according to the service manuals.

The photo of the PRS-300 on page one of its service manual shows four buttons and an iPod-type wheel on the bottom of the digital book reader, along with 10 buttons arranged vertically down the right side of the device.

The PRS-600, on the other hand, seems to have a touch-screen display along with five slim buttons on the bottom of the screen, according to its photo.

Sony's current digital book reader, the PRS-550, has an internal memory capacity of 256 MB, and a battery life of up to 7,500 page turns or 14 days, "based on normal use of up to 300 pages per day when in sleep mode," according to Sony's Web site.