Compatibility with Adobe digital rights management (DRM) protected PDF and ePub files allowed Sony Reader owners to borrow ebooks from lending libraries in many countries.

[3] The DRM rules of the Reader allowed any purchased e-book to be read on up to six devices, at least one of which must be a personal computer running Windows or Mac OS X.

From April 2007, Sony Reader has been sold in the US by multiple merchants, including Fry's Electronics, Costco, Borders and Best Buy.

Waterstone's is the official retail partner and the Reader is available at selected stores such as Argos, Sony Centres and Dixons; while a red edition is available exclusively from John Lewis.

It was also the first to feature free 3G wireless through AT&T to access the Sony eBookstore without the need of a computer, and to increase the grayscale level, from 8 to 16.

The launch of the new models also represented the introduction of the Sony Reader into the Australian and New Zealand markets for the first time.

[6] On August 31, 2011, Sony announced a new reader replacing all of their previous models, the PRS-T1, featuring a 6" screen.

It has a touch screen, and two GB of Memory but lacks an SD Card Slot and does not support MP3 playback.

This edition has been criticized for having a very reflective screen, making it hard to read unless it is angled just right in relation to the light sources.

Improvements of PRS-700 vs. the PRS-505 include the following: PRS-700 specifications The PRS-505 was launched on 2 October 2007, a software and hardware updated version of the PRS-500 Reader, which it replaced.

Version 1.1 firmware, available as a free download since July 24, 2008 adds support for the EPUB format, Adobe Digital Editions 1.5 and Adobe DRM protected PDF files, automatic reflow of PDF files formatted for larger pages enlarges the text to improve readability, and support for high capacity SDHC memory cards.

This update "will allow your PRS-500 to support the ePub and Adobe DRM format and add the ability to re-flow PDF documents".

[17] Specifications Launched in April 2004, it has a six-inch E Ink display and a Qwerty keyboard that was released in Japan.

Typefaces in PDF files formatted for 216 × 280 mm (8.5 × 11 inch) pages may be too small to read comfortably.

Audio: MP3 and DRM-free AAC (except on the PRS-T2, PRS-300 & PRS-350) Image: JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP (Loading an animated GIF will freeze the Reader) RSS: Limited to 20 featured blogs such as Engadget and Wired, no ability to add others and no auto-update (as of 2006-12-01) The Reader supported TXT and RTF documents with Latin character set only.

[citation needed] Sony Customer Support have confirmed that units sold in the US only work with Latin characters (as of 2007-03-02).

64-bit MS Windows Vista and 7 is supported since Sony eBook Library version 2.5 for all but the 500 models.

In March 2014 the Sony Reader store was closed and account holders received an email with a link that enabled them to transfer their library to Kobo.

[23] Sony eBook Library was not officially supported on Linux-based systems or other operating systems, although when the device is connected it grants access to its internal flash memory and any memory card slots as though they were USB Mass Storage devices (on all models except PRS-500s that have not received the free EPUB upgrade from Sony), allowing the user to transfer files directly.

See the Third party tools section below for a third-party software utility that provides comprehensive support for MS Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Linux.

It has both a command line and graphical interface, and is available for MS Windows, Apple Mac OS X and Linux.

Specialized on notes, annotations, bookmarks and other input by the user, noteworks allows for listing, exporting and other handling of this data, extracted from the device.

[25] PRS+ project seamlessly integrates into Sony UI and adds support for folder browsing, dictionary, key binding, book history, custom epub styles, games (Sudoku, Chess, Mahjong, etc.

), localization (Catalan, German, Czech, English, French, Georgian, Russian, Spanish, and Simplified Chinese) and has built in fb2 to EPUB converter.

[27] The PRS-T1, PRS-T2 and PRS-T3 run a heavily modified version of the Android operating system, which Sony mentions in the Legal Notices installed on the device.

Its predecessors run the MontaVista Linux Professional Edition operating system with Kinoma FSK, a JavaScript virtual machine, optimized for devices with limited resources.

[28] In December 2008, Sony disclosed that it had sold 300,000 units of its Reader Digital Book globally since the device launched in October 2006.