Edit: Added a poll;
Hey, everyone;
Thought many have have used enough e-readers to give me good advice. I'm getting ready to purchase my very first e-reader, so I'm somewhat of a novice for the actual user experience. I'm reasonably familiar with the internal hardware and OS of embedded systems, as I'm a comp engineer by trade; but in terms of actual user experience with these things, I have little to no experience.
So the number one thing that I need would be the ability to read PDF documents, with some ability to annotate them somehow. The ability to journal would also be a nice extra, as I'm still muddling through grad school. E-books I will probably read a few, not as frequently as some on this forum I'm sure. The capability for office docs would be a nice bonus, although not absolutely necessary.
I would also like to have some capability of accessing email, twitter, skype, and the web in general, on the same device. Of course, I would expect some sort of multimedia functionality, at minimum being able to have a music library (mp3 or ogg), and to play a couple of basic video formats.
So after some research, I've narrowed it down to a few devices, each with a couple caveats:
- Ipad
I guess the most generic choice, probably have apps for all the functionalities that I require. Although it seems to be the jack of all trades and master of none.- How is the reading experience on the ipad, is it passable for multiple hours of staring at PDF articles at a time?
- What kind of apps are there for annotating PDF documents, if they exist?
- Is it really worth the high cost, given that it doesn't have the same HW functionalities that others in the group have?
- Nook Color
Seems like a neat device and costs, although a lot of the same questions as the Ipad.- Practicality at reading on the screen for a long period?
- Text annotation and/or journaling abilities?
- Adam tablet
Looks like an extremely promising device, would probably be the ideal if everything works as promised.- Is the pixelQi screen really as good as advertised for e-ink like quality?
- Is there really any guarantee that it would come in time?
- Entourage Edge
Probably the device that fits my specific need the most, but also a couple of significant drawbacks.- Is the size and weight of the device really going to be a huge hinderance for its intended function as a reader?
- Software doesn't seem to be very up to date, still running 1.6 "donut"
- Seems hasn't been updated for a while (the full-sized version I'm looking for), when would be the timeframe for a refresh of the model; I don't want to get something that soon would be obsolete or limited in functionality/performance.
Any comment in any of these areas would be helpful, Thanks in advance.
--HB