Shiny New E-Book Gizmo: The Amazon Kindle


View Full Version : Is the iliad 4 me?


Kirys
12-16-2006, 02:16 AM
Hi all,
After reading almost silently all the discussions I was thinking to buy the iliad as my first ebook reader (next year :) ).

But before I would like to ask some question to you that already own one of those.

The main use for me is reading books, comics, but also putting slides (pdf format) of university courses (i'm a student :scholar: ), the possibility to take notes on the slides is quite handy.

So, how much is safe the notes system of the iliad? I mean how sure I am that the notes i've taken on the slides wont get lost for a crash or other reason?

How good is the landscape mode for pdf (expecially for notes)? Cause often the slides of my courses are released as A4 pdf with 2 slides for page

Is the included charger compatible in all europe (I'm in italy)? :P
Thank you
Kirys

DHer
12-16-2006, 04:14 AM
you can backup your notes on the pdf, it's simply a file with the stroke data. If your iliad crashes while taking notes, you're out of luck, but it didn't happen yet, as far as i know.

The charger is delivered with different pin adapters, i assume an italian adapter should be included.

CommanderROR
12-16-2006, 04:53 AM
Italian should be no problem.

If you can live with the slow software-developing process, the long booting times and the less-than-adequate-for-reading battery life then the device should be OK for you. Annotation/scribble works fine as far as I can tell and as DHer said it doesn't really crash often...hardly ever anymore.
Reading A4 books seems to work now with landscape and zoom/continuos mode, but since I reformat all my books anyway I can't really say how well it works.

splat
12-16-2006, 05:28 AM
What is the current battery life like, now that you can get an extra 10% with 2.8?

CommanderROR
12-16-2006, 06:10 AM
about 11 hours if I remember correctly.
I think tribble measured it...

Kirys
12-16-2006, 08:31 AM
First thank you for your answers.
then some more questions :D
I can take notes at any zoom level?
What happens when you zoom in or out on a page with notes?

Battery life is my real fear, 8-10 hours of working time means mainly that i will have to recharge it at least 3-4 times a week. So the number of recharge cicles of the battery will be an isse like on my laptop.
I just hope it uses a good quality battery :D

Thank you

splat
12-16-2006, 12:58 PM
I just hope it uses a good quality battery :D

I assume it is not user replaceable?

Mambo
12-16-2006, 01:18 PM
First thank you for your answers.
then some more questions :D
I can take notes at any zoom level?
What happens when you zoom in or out on a page with notes?

Battery life is my real fear, 8-10 hours of working time means mainly that i will have to recharge it at least 3-4 times a week. So the number of recharge cicles of the battery will be an isse like on my laptop.
I just hope it uses a good quality battery :D

Thank you

Number of charges: if you love the iliad you will probably charge it every day. At least I have to do it almost every day - I am also studying, but I use it for work as well.

As far as notes concerned at zoom level, I thought this will be the main problem with the software. My second fear was that notes will slow down the page-turning. On the contrary!

Page turning with notes on it is as fast as page turning without notes. Zooming works perfectly! It is crazy how well it works and how precise at every zoom level. Note that if you zoom in and take notes after zoom out the lines will be not as thick as at zoom level. So the line thickness is also zoomed in and out.

I am very "sophisticated" but I could not find any problems with note taking in zoom mode, also no crashes whatsoever, I haven't lost any notes yet. In fact iLiad did not crash for me since version 2.6. (last time it crashed was with 2.4)

yokos
01-05-2007, 06:42 AM
in fw 2.8 you can not scribble on the left & right beyond the end of page of the pdf. So if you have a pdf file which has no margins next to the text, you can't scribble on the margin on iLiad's screen.