Bought an ipad 1 and now I regreat it... for reading anyhow

[rcuadro]

It is strange. I can use the ipad all day long to play games, read the news, or use some other random app to waste time.
When it comes to reading though... I cant fully explain why but I cannot spend an hour (or more) reading on it as I can on the Kindle.
Maybe I need to give it a little more time to get used to it since I can read on my computer monitor all day.
I guess it is a good thing that I also have a Kindle 3 sitting at home that I can revert back to should I need to...

Anyone else experience something similar?

That is understandable. I've got an iPad 1 and a nookcolor. Both have glossy and highly reflective screens. My LCD monitors are always the matt finished kind to reduce reflection and glare. So it took a while to get used to the glossy LCD tablets. I love them when it comes to reading in dimly lit situations. But they are not so good in brightly lit rooms, especially with overhead lighting, or outside in daylight. I really prefer to see the text and not my ugly face staring back at me!

One thing I do to help my eyes is to strip the DRM from every book then modify the books to use bold text. I do this even for my eInk reader too. It helps me quite a bit.

Another thing that helped was to just experiement with the screen brightness and page background color until I found a solution that suited me.

On the nookcolor I bought a non-glare screen protector and it works really well, although it took a while to get used to. I tried the same procedure on my iPad but the result wasn't very good. I think it worked well on the nookcolor because the non-glare screen protector is in very close proximity to the text displayed on its screen. However the proximity of the non-glare screen protector to the text displayed on the iPad screen was farther away and so the gritty look of the non-glare screen protector seemed to float above the text and it was way too distracting. So I removed the non-glare screen protector from the iPad.

The nookcolor has a better text reading screen, but I've found that both tablets are very readable when you get all the variables just right.

I have the same problem in reverse with my eInk Sony. It craves a LOT of light and without it I'm going to have eyestrain.

[rcuadro]

You may be right... I was anti ipad for a while but I broke down and got a cheap one once the iPad 2 was announced. This thing is great! It is amazing for school... and I started putting books on the Kindle app since it only made sense.
I have not played too much with the brightness so maybe it is time to start tweeking to see what works

For the price I paid for the iPad and Kindle DX... I dont see how the DX is still around. It is a good thing the Kindl3 is so inexpensive because if it wasnt I dont see how it would last either.

[dieterpops]

I was in your boat and found that reading on iBooks is a better experience than Kindle for iPad. With the different font selections and better font size control, it provides a richer contrast. iBooks also seems to have a better implementation of sepia and you can dial the backlight WAY down for night reading.

I'm at the point now where I'm selling my ereaders because iBooks is "close enough" to justify not carrying around two devices when traveling.

[JMikeD]

Originally Posted by rcuadro

I have not played too much with the brightness.

I think that's the key to the whole thing. I can get very satisfactory results by turning the brightness down and tinting the background.

[MsAstoria]

Have you considered trying Stanza? A nice selections of backgrounds, fonts, and even text color. I use it for non-drm epubs.
I also like iBooks. Again, you might reversing your colors, white on black. Sepia seems improved with the lastest iOS update. The lettering appears darker that what I remembered. Nice! I love how I just get lost in the book with the landscape mode. Can't wait for my iPad2 to get here as even a small weight loss will be welcomed!

[rcuadro]

Originally Posted by MsAstoria

Have you considered trying Stanza? A nice selections of backgrounds, fonts, and even text color. I use it for non-drm epubs.
I also like iBooks. Again, you might reversing your colors, white on black. Sepia seems improved with the lastest iOS update. The lettering appears darker that what I remembered. Nice! I love how I just get lost in the book with the landscape mode. Can't wait for my iPad2 to get here as even a small weight loss will be welcomed!

I have been trying Kindle for the iPad at the moment since that is where my books are but I am going to try to strip DRM and try the other ebook apps on the same book and see if I have a better experience with them..

[Loopy65]

I have both and would never be able to use the iPad for extended reading. I do occassionally use the Kindle app on it though which can be useful. Here in the UK the iBook pricing is way higher than the amazon pricing on books and the range available is pathetic comparatively also.
I knew as soon as I had an e-reader that once I'd used 'e-ink' to read I would never go back to using a 'backlit' screen to read. The e-ink is so restful on my eyes and the glossy iPad screen is not (for reading anyways!)
I love the iPad and use it for all kinds of things but will never use it much for reading although it's fantastic for magazines which I will never use the Kindle for!
Loopy

[rcuadro]

I think that is where my ipad is going to end up... Going to use it for school and light reading... and my Kindle is going to be used for bulk reading I tried to read at night with the ipad and it hurts my eyes... I may change my mind as I use it more and more but for the time being I think I am going to need them both with the ipad a productivity piece and kindle for reading

[CBR]

I generally use minimum brightness on the iPad along with about half brightness in the reading app. When reading at night I still have the lights on just as if I was reading a regular book, but I absolutely had to read without any external light then I think the "night mode" is the best way.

IMO if you eyes hurt from reading then it's because of too high brightness on the iPad compared to the amount of ambient light.

[holterzoff]

The ipad screen isn't sharp enough for long reading sessions, i can read for hours on the iphone4. But it is fantastic for magazines and instructive pdfs.
regards

[MsAstoria]

Originally Posted by holterzoff

The ipad screen isn't sharp enough for long reading sessions, i can read for hours on the iphone4. But it is fantastic for magazines and instructive pdfs.
regards

Maybe the ipad 3 will have the retina screen but with the catastrophe in Japan, I imagine ipad's prices are going to have to go up!

Still waiting for my ipad 2 to ship from China............

I think a lot of people believe the Retina screen is some kind of new and improved technology designed to make LCDs easier to read. Basically, the Retina screen is little more than Apple propoganda and marketing. Apple increased the resolution on their 3.5" iPhone/touch screen to 960 x 640 effectively doubling the original resolution of 480 x 320 which was pretty standard in the PDA era. The Retina display provides 614,400 pixels of resolution in a 3.5" diagonal screen. Sounds good, right? Well it is better than the old screens, but compared to many digital point and shoot cameras with 3" screens it is just average. My Canon T1i dSLR has a 3" screen with 920,000 pixels. That is a smaller screen with half again as many pixels as Apple's Retina screen, and more pixels than the current iPads (which have 786,482). There is absolutely nothing magical about the Retina display other than Apple added better resolution, but it isn't as good as many camera screens yet. Oh, and those camera screens have been around longer than the iPhone, so once again Apple is claiming innovation when their product is still lagging behind what others invented long ago.

I do hope Apple will increase the screen resolution of a future iPad. But if they do it will merely be a step up in resolution, though I'm sure Apple will try to make it look like a technological miracle.

[leebase]

Try adjusting the brightness (likely to make it dimmer) and the font size. People react differently, so you may be one of those for whom it's not a great reading experience. But if you increase the font and adjust the brightness to match the light in the room (not too bright and not too dark), you may find the reading much nicer.

Lee

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by jswinden

I think a lot of people believe the Retina screen is some kind of new and improved technology designed to make LCDs easier to read. Basically, the Retina screen is little more than Apple propoganda and marketing. Apple increased the resolution on their 3.5" iPhone/touch screen to 960 x 640 effectively doubling the original resolution of 480 x 320 which was pretty standard in the PDA era. The Retina display provides 614,400 pixels of resolution in a 3.5" diagonal screen. Sounds good, right? Well it is better than the old screens, but compared to many digital point and shoot cameras with 3" screens it is just average. My Canon T1i dSLR has a 3" screen with 920,000 pixels. That is a smaller screen with half again as many pixels as Apple's Retina screen, and more pixels than the current iPads (which have 786,482). There is absolutely nothing magical about the Retina display other than Apple added better resolution, but it isn't as good as many camera screens yet. Oh, and those camera screens have been around longer than the iPhone, so once again Apple is claiming innovation when their product is still lagging behind what others invented long ago.

I do hope Apple will increase the screen resolution of a future iPad. But if they do it will merely be a step up in resolution, though I'm sure Apple will try to make it look like a technological miracle.

I would agree and doubling the current resolution is not likely although any improvement would be nice. Actually they could increase the reading resolution quite a bit if they used sub-pixels for text. Does anybody know if any reading application uses sub-pixels? It is a technique of anti-aliasing that uses one color of a pixel triad to smooth the edges a bit. With only the one small bit you can't really see the color itself but its proximity to adjacent full pixels gives an apparent increase in resolution. Micosoft calls this clear case.

Dale