Hello all, this is my first post. Please forgive the rant, I needed to vent a little. If you want to get to the point just skip to the TL;DR at the bottom.
I have had a Nook 1st edition for about 2 years now, and it has spent most of that time just lying around unused on an end table or nightstand. Why is this you ask?
In short: PDFs.
Almost all of my ebook collection is in PDF. These are not novels, these are textbooks and other technical material that have graphs, equations, diagrams, etc. etc. (I am a math student, physics minor, with interests in many other sciency fields). These are things that do not convert to ePub so well.
So, why did I buy a Nook? Because it seemed obvious to me that one would be able to zoom in on these dense pages, and then move the view about as necessary to see different parts of the page. That is how all PDF readers on computers work (pretty much all readers period actually), so obviously a device designed to read books would do that, right? Wrong.
Apparently it is so obvious no one has thought to include it yet. This is a MASSIVE screw up on B&N's part, and they have no legitimate defence for omitting what has been obvious to software devs since at least the early 90's. They have made the Nook completely worthless for entire segment of the book market.
TL;DR So my actual question is this: Are there any firmware hacks that will allow me to zoom in on dense PDFs so that they actually become legible? I really like my Nook, and wish I could make good use of it. Thanks.