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jdedecker · 03-29-2009, 08:59 AM

Dear all,

I am now considering to buy an e-ink device for quite some time now but I am a bit stuck and as I don't know a shop nearby my living place with the different devices on display I am turning to you in helping me decide. I made a list of requirements that I search in a e-reader device:

1) Good native PDF support: this means that PDFs should be supported, including those with images of course. Although I currently don't have many DRM PDFs this might change in the future when I would start buying ebooks.

2) Good support for A4 pages: I considered an iRex DR1000S first but it seems there are simply too many issues with it (battery life, stability, time to boot up, robustness, ...). Therefore I am willing to settle for a device with a smaller screen that supports A4 pages by displaying them on two different pages in landscape mode. Therefore, it is important that the device has very good usability support for this. E.g. once you've started reading a document in landscape mode it should automatically continue to do so. I heard that for some devices you need re-rotate the document with each page flip over and over again manually. This is of course unacceptable. It would also be great if the buttons on the device are positioned in such a way that reading like this is easy too.

3) Good battery life.

4) Support for Mac. I guess most devices won't have this therefore the device would need to support reading native PDFs on a SD memory card (without any intermediate conversion required).

5) Acceptable speed for flipping pages and reading A4 in landscape mode.

6) Support for taking notes: although this is not a hard requirement. It would be great to have a feature like that on the device.

I know these requirements are probably hard to see fulfilled on a single device out there but I hope that some might give me some hints/recommendations.

Many thanks for all the help you can give me!

Cheers.

PS: if the device doesn't support native PDF but there are *good* tools (preferably also available for Mac OS/X) to convert them to a format supported by the device then I am also interested to hear that.
PPS: of course I am also interested in partial answers that could help me on my way ;-)

03-29-2009, 08:59 AM	#1
jdedecker Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: Mar 2009 Device: undecided yet	Help needed in selecting a mobile reader Dear all, I am now considering to buy an e-ink device for quite some time now but I am a bit stuck and as I don't know a shop nearby my living place with the different devices on display I am turning to you in helping me decide. I made a list of requirements that I search in a e-reader device: 1) Good native PDF support: this means that PDFs should be supported, including those with images of course. Although I currently don't have many DRM PDFs this might change in the future when I would start buying ebooks. 2) Good support for A4 pages: I considered an iRex DR1000S first but it seems there are simply too many issues with it (battery life, stability, time to boot up, robustness, ...). Therefore I am willing to settle for a device with a smaller screen that supports A4 pages by displaying them on two different pages in landscape mode. Therefore, it is important that the device has very good usability support for this. E.g. once you've started reading a document in landscape mode it should automatically continue to do so. I heard that for some devices you need re-rotate the document with each page flip over and over again manually. This is of course unacceptable. It would also be great if the buttons on the device are positioned in such a way that reading like this is easy too. 3) Good battery life. 4) Support for Mac. I guess most devices won't have this therefore the device would need to support reading native PDFs on a SD memory card (without any intermediate conversion required). 5) Acceptable speed for flipping pages and reading A4 in landscape mode. 6) Support for taking notes: although this is not a hard requirement. It would be great to have a feature like that on the device. I know these requirements are probably hard to see fulfilled on a single device out there but I hope that some might give me some hints/recommendations. Many thanks for all the help you can give me! Cheers. PS: if the device doesn't support native PDF but there are good tools (preferably also available for Mac OS/X) to convert them to a format supported by the device then I am also interested to hear that. PPS: of course I am also interested in partial answers that could help me on my way ;-) Last edited by jdedecker; 03-29-2009 at 09:15 AM.