has anyone tried LARGE pdf files, e.g some of the user manuals

12 MB DVD Studio Pro User Manual
42 MB Final Cut Pro User Manual


what are your experiences in large files with alot of figures?
thanks.

Um, I didn't, but I think Bob mentioned he had a complicated PDF with him that day.

You may have to wait 'til they start arriving at people's homes. And 'til the euphoria wears off. :)

haha, indeed. i am about to go to the sony corporate store on east 55th street to see if they have them on display.

Large files are a weakness on the Librie. I hope they fixed this on the Reader, along with a whole shopping list of other BBeB issues...

For example, I noticed on the book store last night that many titles were noticeably bloated compared to other ebook formats.

BBeB you usually get sentence/format unit level compression.
PDF you usually get page compression.
LIT you get whole book compression.

Don't worry, I have many 150MB to 300MB PDF files I'll run on the Reader the day I get it. Euphoria won't keep me from reporting back. :)

I was asked to contribute to this thread by taking pictures of
two fairly large manuals - a DVD Studio Pro User Manual (12 M) -
and the Final Cut Pro User Manual (42 M). This are rather elegant
manuals - page size is 7.5 x 9 inches but I suppose meant
mostly to be viewed at a terminal. They zoom all the way
to 400% while maintaining their crisp look.

They loaded OK from a SD card to the Sony reader, and page turning
was reasonable once opened. The larger could take up to 45 seconds
or so to load and maybe 30 seconds or so to exit - I suppose the closing
time was caused by the updates to cache.xml. On the Sony reader the
pages looked "washed out", i.e. type seemed less than black, but of course
the type size was very small. In landscape view they could at least be read
but they were still washed out. They might load quicker once the cache
is updated. Not quite good enough to be useful but almost. Note that
they are apparently ver 1.5 PDF's not necessarily supported by Sony.

I did two pages - 443 of the DVD Manual and 1040 of the Final Cut
Manual (Page III-253 - absolute page 1040). For comparison I also loaded
page 1040 to the Iliad. The Iliad does not yet have a landscape mode.
However the display is larger and it handles big PDB's without difficulty.
The page is also washed out on the Iliad but not as badly. It's
readable but small - tantalizing close to being really useful.
The Sony reader pictures show both portrait and landscape views - the
two landscape views are combined.

The pictures are fairly high resolution jpegs - 200 - 300 K taken outdoors
in full sun - Not too big I hope. By the way none of the pages I looked at
caused trouble - all viewed OK. Note the highlighted line on page 443.
This is an active link on the Sony - links are not implemented on the Iliad.

Paul,

Thank you so much for the photos! That gives us a much better idea of Sony's usability with real world full manuals. The Illiad indeed looks more promising because of its increased resolution.

jake

The resolution is the same (~160 dpi), it's the size that makes the difference. And it does make a difference for that. :grin:

It seems the Sony Reader uses a lighter font to display the smaller fonts, but the iLiad uses a bold one as Librie does. Right?

Or just the resolution difference between Sony Reader and iLiad caused that?

It's the size difference, I tried to display a pdf like that and the smaller the text is the lighter it looks. Your best bet is to rotate the pdf.