505 for law reports?

[cookies]

Hi I am a new user here and am inquiring as to the suitability of the 505 for reading law reports. I am a law student and am looking for an alternative to photocopying material that i'd read once or twice and dispose after.

I attached 3 types of formats of the same report, and was wondering if anyone could be nice enough to tell me how readable they are on the 505.

Unfortunately, I cant get my hands on one for demo.

Would be really grateful for any help on the matter.

Thanks

[*i just realized this is in the dev corner* - i thought this was the section for all 505 posts, sorry, cld someone please move it? ]

[Nate the great]

Both of the PDFs look like they could be converted to work on the 505. DOC is a straightforward conversion.

But you should also consider the Kindle. One nice feature of the Kindle is that the contents of the documents are indexed and searchable. True, both types of documents would need to be converted, but Amazon does that for free. I am waiting to get back one of the PDFs. When I do, I will tell you how well the conversion went.

[Patricia]

But there is a strong probability that Cookies is in the UK. (S)he is looking at British case law.

And most of the Kindle features (Whispernet etc) don't work here. So one might argue that the Sony or the Cybook is a better choice for a european.

[cookies]

Thanks guys.


Kinda new to this conversion thing. I understand that the documents need to be converted to be read on the 505, but does this apply to all documents? so for example, .txt or .doc or pdf for that matter will all go through a conversion process and look the same on the screen? (meaning that they will all become one 505 format?)

(Would that mean that all the inherent 'page' format of the pdf would be different?)

I was hoping it would look abit like -> http://www.cogitatio.de/img/iliad1.jpg
(thats from an iliad, but its the only picture i could find of that sort - was hoping it'd be the same for the 505)


Nate - Point about the indexing on the Kindle is noted. Thanks. It would actually be an issue because the more cases i put in i'd really need to organize them properly to use them effectively.

Patricia - I am from the UK, forgot to mention that earlier. Thanks.

[tidixon]

why not download libprs500? it has an LRF viewer that will allow you to see what your conversions will look on the reader. you can play around with it and other conversion tools and then test the lrf files in the lrf viewer.

[JSWolf]

If you convert the DOC to RTF and use 16 point as the font size, it will look fine on the 505.

[cookies]

JSWolf - thanks, will take your word on that =) i take it to mean that looking fine means that it'd look like it has all the right paragraphs n all yea? (btw, dumb question but what is the smallest size that the 505 will go down to?)

tidixon - thanks, i took your advice and the process was enlightening. i ended up using the PDFLRF converter played around with it. Problem is, I ended up adjusting the size of the preview tool to the 6 inches manually (with a ruler on my screen). I was wondering if what i got is close to what i would get on the real thing.

This is the first page of the 2nd attachment. I used the 'fitpage' setting on the converter. I adjusted the image for a landscape mode on the 505 - well.. all i did was make the preview window 120mm on top, and 90mm on the sides.

Could someone check my 'reproduction' ?

[recycledelectron]

ARRGGH! These replies are less than useless. Some are guesses, some are correct but are so short that they are almost misleading. This is why I bought a PRS-505 just to try it out and see what it could and what it could not do.

I loaded the files on my PRS-505, and tried them out.

First, you need to know the name in the document properties to find the thing on the PRS-505. It does not let you browse by file name, you must select author, title, or date loaded then view them that way.

Second, the diagonal measurement on the PRS-505 screen is 6 inches (150mm.) Print these out to scale and see if you want to read them.

Third, I view almost everything in landscape mode. The text will be smaller in portrait mode.

Fourth, the PRS-505 reads .PDFs natively (but the text is small.) See attached for pics of one of the PDFs. (I didn't try the other one.)

Fifth, the PRS-505 does not read .DOC files natively (whatever Sony says) You have to convert them to .RTF using a word processor. See attached for pics of the DOC after it was converted to RTF. Please note that I changed the title of the RTF file to find the dang thing.

Sixth, know that you can use a word processor to enlarge or shrink the size of text in and RTF file, but the PRS-505 ignores graphics in RTF files.

Andy

[soilwork]

Originally Posted by cookies

I attached 3 types of formats of the same report, and was wondering if anyone could be nice enough to tell me how readable they are on the 505.

I took one of the documents and converted it into LRF by using PDFLRF in both portrait and landscape mode. I removed A, B, C, ... on the sides with trim option.

If you don't mind the trouble of converting each document before you read it, PRS-505 with PDFLRF may work for you.

[astra]

I would say, if you want to read pdfs go fo iRex iLiad.
Forget about Sony or any other 6" readers. They are not suitable.
pdflrf does a good job of converting and making pdfs quite readable on sony, however you loose an ability to change fonts size, which is one of the attractions of ebook readers. The best way to read anyting on Sony Reader is LRF format, if you don't need graphics then RTF will be almost as good.

Now. You need to read LAW documentation. Does it mean that your pdfs will not contain graphics/tables?
If there no graphics/tables, you may try to convert them with Adobe Professional v7 or 8 to HTML, then HTML to LRF.
If yours pdfs have graphics/tables, then forget about 6" readers as I said before.

You must understand that you will have to convert every pdf you wanna read. Are you ready for that?