Quote:
Originally Posted by cze
Dear mgmueller (or anyone else who can help), thank you for your very helpful comparisons. If it would be possible for you, I would be most grateful if you could answer the following question for me.
Background: I very often read scanned pdfs, where usually the ocr-text-layer is below the page image or not present at all. I am deciding on buying a prs-505 vs. a kindle dx (other suggestions also welcome). My concern is that such images might display much slower than mere text files.
Now, can you tell me how slow such files display (is it also around 1 second per page turn, or how much more)? And is one the the two (or other) devices considerably faster? That would be very nice!
(In case i did not explain clearly enough what kind of pdfs i mean, here are 2 examples of pdfs technically like the ones i often read: http://muslimphilosophy.com/sina/art/marmura4.pdf . http://muslimphilosophy.com/sina/art...chotRev.03.pdf )
Thanks alot! |
Dear cze,
I'm travelling and only got 2 of my readers with me. So it will take some time to check your specific documents.
In general, concerning scanned PDFs:
I love the daily Garfield and Dilbert strips. (Text documents I usually use in different formats).
On the Kindle 2, I've used the graphics. But most of the times, I generate a single PDF per year or month, only about 1.5 MB.
My experience:
Sony 505:
For PDFs, I often found the Display too small. I very often have had problems to even read the text.
And: Many posts (for PDF text) praise the reflow capabilities, since Sony's firmware update about 1 year ago. Actually, I don't like it at all. I prefer the zoom capabilities of iRex iLiad, I'll describe below.
Kindle 2:
For the graphics it's okay. For PDFs, I don't really "like" Kindle 2. There's no native support, you have to convert via calibre or other 3rd Party tools. The conversion from Amazon usually delivers less convincing results than 3rd party.
iRex iLiad:
You don't list that unit, but I'd like to mention it anyway. On the iLiad, via its touchscreen, you can mark any region you'd like to zoom in. You don't even have to draw a rectangle or circle around the respective area. Just draw a diagonal line, for example from bottom left to top right of the respective area. You don't have to use fixed zoom levels, i. e. 200%, simply blow the respective area to full screen.
That way, I don't have to care about margins, I simply expand the view once and use it for the entire book.
I'll test boot times and time for page turns anyway for all of my units. But in general, I experience Kindle 2 faster than the other units.
But in my opinion, it's not really an issue. My wife HATES (she's got the Sony 505) the page turns of eInk devices. In her opinion, waiting for 1 second and watching the "inversion" is absolutely annoying.
I don't have any problems at all with that.
Usually, startup time for "big" PDFs might be a bit annoying. But page turns usually don't differ that much.
I'll give some figures in a few days.
Over all, scanned PDFs in general same to be slower than sole text files. I guess, that's mainly because of sheer file size. Text files probably are about 700k, PDFs easily can be more than 5 or 10 MBs. (You easily will find PDFs, way bigger than that. 100 MB for technical documents will be easy to find. The few I've tested all could be handled. But startup time alone was no fun at all.)
Anyway: From personal experience, iRax iLiad would be my suggestion for (scanned) PDFs. I LOVE the "free" zoom and the display is significantly bigger.
Kindle DX is about the same size. But lacking any kind of "clever" zooming, I find it less convincing.
iRex 1000S with its even bigger display of course would be the "safest way to go". But most people I'm talking to, consider this unit kind of "overkill".
.....Just downloaded one of your documents. It's just about 500k. Startup time and page turn won't be a problem for that, you won't see any difference.
But still: No native support for PDF on Kindle 2. Kindle DX still far from being benchmark for PDFs.
For a scanned PDF like that, I still don't find Sony's zoom the ideal one.
My personal ranking would be:
iRex iLiad, Sony 505, then Kindle DX.