Which one is the best to read PDFs?

[frabjous]

Originally Posted by brunoalessi

...scanned PDFs in A4/Letter sizes without constantly zooming in and out...

You won't be able to zoom in at all on a scanned PDF with the majority of readers. However, I'm not sure I understand... a PDF wouldn't be both A4/letter sized and scanned -- at least not after the margins are cropped. Almost no one publishes books with A4/letter sized pages, and certainly not without either large margins or multiple columns (which you could split).

[schmolch]

Can i add my question here?
No complaints? Ok, thanks.

I am also looking for a e-ink reader for PDFs.
I dont want the DR or DX since i already have Tablet-PCs.
I probably want a 6" reader (i liked the 505 in the store).

Which reader would allow me to do the following:

1. View a PDF (black & white scan) in Landscape mode (no reflow).
2. Zoom-in to reduce page-margins.
3. Scroll up and down.
4. Switch to the next page (without loosing the zoom).

Most seem to do 1 and 2, but im not sure about 3 and 4.

Thank you!

[frabjous]

No e-Ink reader is going to let you "scroll"; e-Ink readers use almost all their energy when changing the display, and it takes close to a half-second to do so. "Scrolling" would require almost continuously refreshing the screen.

If you just mean move to the top part of a page to the bottom part in one go, many might do that. (Including the Sony when in landscape mode.)

The Sony will let you switch to landscape mode and when doing so it'll cut the page in half if it's a portrait-shaped page and zoom to show that half as big as possible-- but there's no way to manually zoom in on an image or scanned PDF. If you're just doing this to get rid of the margins, you'd need to trim them before loading it onto the reader. It always keeps the same zoom when switching pages, as far as I know.

Perhaps some others would allow you to zoom. Not sure.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by davidspitzer

I fear Irex might have priced themselves out of the market.

It's not that they've priced themselves out of the market, it's that they're in an entirely different market. It's a business device, not a consumer eBook reader. iRex is not trying to compete with the Kindle (yet).

[schmolch]

Originally Posted by frabjous

The Sony will let you switch to landscape mode and when doing so it'll cut the page in half if it's a portrait-shaped page and zoom to show that half as big as possible--

Ok thats fine.

but there's no way to manually zoom in on scanned PDF.

Do you know this for a fact?

If you're just doing this to get rid of the margins, you'd need to trim them before loading it onto the reader. It always keeps the same zoom when switching pages, as far as I know.

I can do that, its not a dealbraker, and those scans already have pretty small margins.


So the PRS600 would probably be ok, even though im not sure if i want a touchscreen. Pressing a button to page forward seems more comfortable to me but im gonna have to try it out.
I dont see any alternatives though. All the other 6" readers have much older hardware and nothing like the 530MHz and 128MB RAM of the sony. Also many of them are not that popular so i would buy a cat in the sack regarding my pdf-needs.

I am very positive though because today i have seen a e-ink screen with my own eyes for the first time.

Thanks for your reply!

[frabjous]

Originally Posted by schmolch

Do you know this for a fact?

I should be clear that I was referring to the 505. I don't know about the 600. But yes, it's a fact. I have one, and read scanned PDFs on it. Other than switching to landscape, there's no way to zoom in on them user the reader itself.

Of course, if you OCR the scan and load it in a different form, then you can zoom in with reflow, but that's much more difficult and, unless you have very good OCR software, bound to produce other problems.

What I usually do is scan the document, and then preprocess it with software that will crop the margins and even cut the text up into screen sized chunks: PDFLRF is my usual tool of choice for scanned PDFs. Nearly always I can get it into readable shape, but some take more work than others.