Hi readers,
I'm looking for an ebook reader suitable for reading pdf journal articles. At the moment I'm a bit ambivalent on the merits of the newer large format ebook readers, especially the ones which nobody's actually seen (cough Kindle DX). I expect that within 6 months to a year we'll know more about them, they'll have had their firmware debugged, and the price will have dropped. So assuming they can handle pdfs reasonably in landscape mode, I think I'd rather buy something like the Sony PRS505 ($268 on Amazon/Buy.com, half the price of a Kindle DX and 3/4 the price of Kindle2) to tide me over until then. I can always sell it or use it as a fiction reader if I upgrade.
So onto the details:
E-Ink is a must - I already have a laptop, but currently print out the articles I refer to often to avoid eyestrain.
Long battery life is a must - on the ebook matrix some seem to have battery lives of thousands of page turns, while others just have a few hours. They're all using the same display, so is the difference just marketing or due to a forelight or input device? I'd need at least 8 hours on one charge.
Ability to read pdfs is a must - most journal articles come in pdf format and it's easy to print other documents to pdf (using e.g. cutepdf). Being able to zoom and rotate are high priorities: so that single column pdfs can be read in landscape mode and double column pdfs (a form used by many journal articles) can be read a column at a time.
Dictionary lookup isn't that important, since dictionaries seldom provide useful definitions of technical words. Wikipedia lookup has the potential to be extremely useful - but I can probably use a laptop for that most of the time.
The Sony PRS505 seems to satisfy most of these, although one review said the battery life was only a few hours. Does that match with other people's experience or did the reviewer perhaps not charge it fully?
Any advice is appreciated
