cant decide

[martinmach]

Hi everyone,

I am looking to buy an ebook reader. I read a lot of lecture material, text books in biology and physics(in pdf, doc, ppt). I prefer a portable reader thats strong, reliable and possibly annotate the notes. I dont mind formatting the pdfs to fit the reader with my licensed version of adobe acrobat pro. This reader will only be used to read my own personal material and i would not be buying any books.

Is it possible to import readers from amazon.com to europe without paying VAT? I am on a tight budget and can spare around 300$. Please dont suggest a laptop or netbook as i own one.

Thanks,
Martin

[emonti8384]

Welcome Martin, I hope you find everything you need here.

I have a Sony PRS-600, and I love the features that come along with it. Easy to use and has the ability to highlight, annotate, even hand-write the notes onto the page, to name a few. If I were you, I'd go to the Sony ebook site, BooksonBoard, Fictionwise, Kobo (used to be Shortcovers) and see if they have books that you need. Now that the Nook is out I think you can also go to BarnesandNoble.com too, but hold off on that-I think I read somewhere in the forums that u can buy the book but cannot put it on the Sony (don't quote me, I'm not sure!). See what different stores offer and if they have a wide variety, I don't see what would hold you back. Good luck!

[rireed3]

I've got two, and am learning the hard way. The device sellers don't make things easy, but I learned a couple of things relevant to your tech reading.

The Bookeen Cybook Gen3 has a really good PDF viewer. PDF is tough because the page layout is fixed ('Page Description File'). My other reader, the BeBook I, trys to 'reflow' if you zoom, but just loses all the page formating, so that lines wrap arbitrarily. You can change the page size for BeBook by converting the file with CutePDF, but this doesn't help much. Cybook Gen3 zooms the page so that the screen becomes a window you can scroll around, up and down, left and right, and the page keeps its format exactly. Both these are 6-inch readers, so a little small for tech journal articles, but both also read these in landscape.

Unfortunately, Cybook Gen3 falls down in a number of other areas. It's very thin and light, so not much protection for that fragile E-Ink screen. I had to make my own cover to give it some protection, but you can buy them -- for a price -- even from Bookeen. Some of my USB cables won't work in Cybook Gen3, because it's so thin the plastic part of the plug won't fit the recess, but Bookeen encloses one that works.

Bookeen has fallen afoul of the format wars. Their firmware supports Mobipocket DRM. Over a year ago they began promising a new firmware that would support Adobe epub/ADE, but this has only materialised on new models. They have not issued any flash files for over a year. Their latest detailed promise of alternative Mobi and ADE firmware flash files for downloading was on 27 August. A prospective customer 'leaked' an email to these forums from Bookeen promising this by 'the end of the year'. How we laughed!

BeBook (Hanlin V3 hardware) is chunky, heavy and tough and supports tons of formats, and has implemented the alternative firmwares for Mobi-DRM and epub/ADE since earlier in 2009. Best for tech studiers, it has a DJVU viewer (on the epub firmware, anyway). I downloaded an old standard Fluid Dynamics book by Batchelor, and it looks great. Too bad about PDF journal articles (see second paragraph above). BeBook I is slower than Cybook Gen3, but it runs a lot of people's firmwares, mostly just re-brands of the Hanlin V3 (hardware manufacturer) distribution (not sure they all have the same viewers), OpenInkpot has a firmware for this device with lots of format support, but no DRM, the idea being you will strip any DRM beforehand.

Sadly, Endless Ideas, the seller of BeBook I, seems no more support-responsive than Bookeen. Basically, any real new bugs are not for us mortals to report. There is a lot of help on their forums for all the normal reader/format problems, but unless it's really broken EI won't budge. They haven't wanted to hear about a file incompatibility I found. Still, I'm glad I have BeBook I (£200, with black cover, in UK).

Richard

[martinmach]

Originally Posted by emonti8384

Welcome Martin, I hope you find everything you need here.

I have a Sony PRS-600, and I love the features that come along with it. Easy to use and has the ability to highlight, annotate, even hand-write the notes onto the page, to name a few. If I were you, I'd go to the Sony ebook site, BooksonBoard, Fictionwise, Kobo (used to be Shortcovers) and see if they have books that you need. Now that the Nook is out I think you can also go to BarnesandNoble.com too, but hold off on that-I think I read somewhere in the forums that u can buy the book but cannot put it on the Sony (don't quote me, I'm not sure!). See what different stores offer and if they have a wide variety, I don't see what would hold you back. Good luck!

now I am down to sony and iriver. How is the quality annotations on sony reader, is it really that good?

Originally Posted by rireed3

I've got two, and am learning the hard way. The device sellers don't make things easy, but I learned a couple of things relevant to your tech reading.

The Bookeen Cybook Gen3 has a really good PDF viewer. PDF is tough because the page layout is fixed ('Page Description File'). My other reader, the BeBook I, trys to 'reflow' if you zoom, but just loses all the page formating, so that lines wrap arbitrarily. You can change the page size for BeBook by converting the file with CutePDF, but this doesn't help much. Cybook Gen3 zooms the page so that the screen becomes a window you can scroll around, up and down, left and right, and the page keeps its format exactly. Both these are 6-inch readers, so a little small for tech journal articles, but both also read these in landscape.

Unfortunately, Cybook Gen3 falls down in a number of other areas. It's very thin and light, so not much protection for that fragile E-Ink screen. I had to make my own cover to give it some protection, but you can buy them -- for a price -- even from Bookeen. Some of my USB cables won't work in Cybook Gen3, because it's so thin the plastic part of the plug won't fit the recess, but Bookeen encloses one that works.

Bookeen has fallen afoul of the format wars. Their firmware supports Mobipocket DRM. Over a year ago they began promising a new firmware that would support Adobe epub/ADE, but this has only materialised on new models. They have not issued any flash files for over a year. Their latest detailed promise of alternative Mobi and ADE firmware flash files for downloading was on 27 August. A prospective customer 'leaked' an email to these forums from Bookeen promising this by 'the end of the year'. How we laughed!

BeBook (Hanlin V3 hardware) is chunky, heavy and tough and supports tons of formats, and has implemented the alternative firmwares for Mobi-DRM and epub/ADE since earlier in 2009. Best for tech studiers, it has a DJVU viewer (on the epub firmware, anyway). I downloaded an old standard Fluid Dynamics book by Batchelor, and it looks great. Too bad about PDF journal articles (see second paragraph above). BeBook I is slower than Cybook Gen3, but it runs a lot of people's firmwares, mostly just re-brands of the Hanlin V3 (hardware manufacturer) distribution (not sure they all have the same viewers), OpenInkpot has a firmware for this device with lots of format support, but no DRM, the idea being you will strip any DRM beforehand.

Sadly, Endless Ideas, the seller of BeBook I, seems no more support-responsive than Bookeen. Basically, any real new bugs are not for us mortals to report. There is a lot of help on their forums for all the normal reader/format problems, but unless it's really broken EI won't budge. They haven't wanted to hear about a file incompatibility I found. Still, I'm glad I have BeBook I (£200, with black cover, in UK).

Richard

Thanks Richard for your comments, the problems are one of the reasons i want to stay away from hanlin and bookeen(old hardware). But your comment on Fluid dynamics book is most interesting. i have not seen any comments on technical books so far. it seems most people read fiction, non fiction and blogs on their e-readers.

I am just waiting for the boxing day for any price drops before i make the plunge