How is m92 doing with highly technical books?

[Pithikos]

I am an undergraduate computer scientist. I have a strong interest in reading technical books from programming languages to physics and biology.

How is m92 doing in showing the PDFs? I know that it renders them well. But what about programming code? If the code is color highlightened in the PDF will it be visible in m92? What about pictures of animals, cells, etc where color has a crucial role?

So many reviews and videos but not a single screenshot on how different things are being rendered.

[Read&Write]

Actually, there is a thread that shows how the M92 renders rather complex material, such as music sheets, pictures and mathematical equations. But after searching for some time, I cannot find it, so you will have to take my word for it...

I read lots of books concerning programming on the M92, some of them use colours. Even colored code is readable, although I must admit it does not improve the readability of the text. With very complex technical drawings that use many colours, the M92 is not a good option. Keep in mind it only has 16 levels of grey. If you have a drawing in which you need to be able to tell the difference between five different shades of green, for example, the M92 will simply not be up to the task. Then again, I have never encountered such a problem until now, although I tend to use the device several hours per day for academic use. With regard to physics and programming, I think you are on the safe side. Concerning books about biology, I lack the experience to judge their readability.

If you have a specifically nasty image or piece of text and want to be sure if the M92 fits your needs, send it to me and I will take a photograph for you.

[Pithikos]

Originally Posted by Read&Write

Actually, there is a thread that shows how the M92 renders rather complex material, such as music sheets, pictures and mathematical equations. But after searching for some time, I cannot find it, so you will have to take my word for it...

I read lots of books concerning programming on the M92, some of them use colours. Even colored code is readable, although I must admit it does not improve the readability of the text. With very complex technical drawings that use many colours, the M92 is not a good option. Keep in mind it only has 16 levels of grey. If you have a drawing in which you need to be able to tell the difference between five different shades of green, for example, the M92 will simply not be up to the task. Then again, I have never encountered such a problem until now, although I tend to use the device several hours per day for academic use. With regard to physics and programming, I think you are on the safe side. Concerning books about biology, I lack the experience to judge their readability.

If you have a specifically nasty image or piece of text and want to be sure if the M92 fits your needs, send it to me and I will take a photograph for you.

That's a bummer..

Does it feel comfortable though to read technical books on m92? On many places(stackoverflow) I read about Kindle DX that it's annoying as you can't skim forward and backwards in the same way as in a book, something that is essential for technical books according to some commentors. Don't you sometimes get annoyied and wish you had a book instead?

I am not sure what should be concidered nasty. Never seen the capabilities of ereaders. However I link 2 pdfs down with their pages in case you have time. You don't have to take snapshots. It's enough if you just tell me that they look fine

Some examples I found:
http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/41107...teractions.pdf (page 48)
http://www.earthshineelectronics.com...ManualRev5.pdf (page 51)

[divinorum]

Reading technical books on M92 is quite possible if you can put up with ~1 second lag between changing pages. It does support pdf bookmarks though so if you have a well made pdf it is quite doable. I still prefer real books for technical stuff when you need to switch between pages often. They do take up a lot of space and weight though.

I do not have a camera good enough to take useful snapshots of the reader so I scanned some pages with a flatbed scanner.

The white margins of the pages are cut with the "auto-crop" feature and full screen is enabled. They are still quite readable without auto-crop but there is no reason not to use it since it works great and does not seem to slow the device down.

As you can see, not all images are fully readable.

[Mono]

Originally Posted by Pithikos

Does it feel comfortable though to read technical books on m92? On many places(stackoverflow) I read about Kindle DX that it's annoying as you can't skim forward and backwards in the same way as in a book, something that is essential for technical books according to some commentors. Don't you sometimes get annoyied and wish you had a book instead?

M92 is a way better than Kindle DX. I would not recomend Kindle DX for any serious scientific reading. M92 is doing the job for me. It still needs some improvements, but I can see the great leap in quality of firmware in past 15 months. And many improvements are in development. Really, many thanks to Booxstor.

M92 is faster than K.DX. The flipping of pages is not as fast as with real book, but the advantage to have all your books articles handy with me overweights most of disadvantages.

The biggest disadvantage is, if you need to work with several texts at the same time. In that case, I use paper and floor. :-)

It will get better, when M92 will get multitasking ability (is currently in development), but still... Sometimes, I need to see several sheets at the same time. Only buying several M92 would do the job.

Another thing that might make a problem is, if the book is written with two page layout in mind. In M92, you may see only 1 page, not two pages side by side. It may change in future, if there is enought demand for this feature. Or one may re-structure pdf and "print" it two pages on one sheet...

[joblack]

Originally Posted by Pithikos

I am not sure what should be concidered nasty. Never seen the capabilities of ereaders. However I link 2 pdfs down with their pages in case you have time. You don't have to take snapshots. It's enough if you just tell me that they look fine

Some examples I found:
http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/41107...teractions.pdf (page 48)
http://www.earthshineelectronics.com...ManualRev5.pdf (page 51)

For big scripts / books (DIN A4) it's advisable to rotate to landscape mode. Then it's fun to read.

I'm still waiting for a real DIN A4 e-book reader but for the moment the M92 is a fine device for scientific literature (and papers).

If you want color support a JetBook Color 2 would be an alternative reader.

[markom]

Originally Posted by Mono

M92 is a way better than Kindle DX. I would not recomend Kindle DX for any serious scientific reading. M92 is doing the job for me. It still needs some improvements, but I can see the great leap in quality of firmware in past 15 months. And many improvements are in development. Really, many thanks to Booxstor.

M92 is faster than K.DX. The flipping of pages is not as fast as with real book, but the advantage to have all your books articles handy with me overweights most of disadvantages.

The biggest disadvantage is, if you need to work with several texts at the same time. In that case, I use paper and floor. :-)

It will get better, when M92 will get multitasking ability (is currently in development), but still... Sometimes, I need to see several sheets at the same time. Only buying several M92 would do the job.

Another thing that might make a problem is, if the book is written with two page layout in mind. In M92, you may see only 1 page, not two pages side by side. It may change in future, if there is enought demand for this feature. Or one may re-structure pdf and "print" it two pages on one sheet...

Kindle DX is good for scientific reading and is fast enough, but we must immediately install kindlepdfviewer because it is much better pdf reader than native one.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=157047

As with all b/w readers we also need to have some tablet there by our side when color really matters.

Icarus had some problems with slow landscape mode though.
Don't know if it is the same with M92 and if this issue has been resolved by now ?

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/att...0&d=1334707173

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=175647

[Mono]

Originally Posted by markom

Kindle DX is good for scientific reading and is fast enough, but we must immediately install kindlepdfviewer because it is much better pdf reader than native one.

Might be just for reading, but what about annotations and scribling? Also the books cannot be organized in filefolder tree structure. If you have 1000+ scientific papers, you get lost in K DX, unless there is some alternative tool...

Even if annotation is added somehow to K DX, it has no pen ability, so scribling is and will be impossible.

[joblack]

Originally Posted by markom

Icarus had some problems with slow landscape mode though.
Don't know if it is the same with M92 and if this issue has been resolved by now ?

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/att...0&d=1334707173

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=175647

No it's fine. Even djvu files looks great. I do have a Kindle DX as well but I would say it is not as good in displaying scientific documents.

[Pithikos]

I actually bought the m92 from Blextor (or what his name is). The e-reader is fine actually. I don't mind the 1sec lag when I can have so many ebooks in one device and many of them for free.

What bothers me is the navigation though. The things I really need when reading a book are just:

• Scribbling
• Skip page(going down one screen)
• Dictionary

It seems that I can't use all of these at the same time. If I have my m92 in comic mode for skipping pages downwards, I can't scribble. If I change to turning pages in some other way, i can scribble but then it becomes hard to navigate. It feels kind of sucky that I have to choose between the three most important things

[markom]

Originally Posted by joblack

No it's fine. Even djvu files looks great. I do have a Kindle DX as well but I would say it is not as good in displaying scientific documents.

Scientific documents are usually in A4 format and i really don't have problems reading A4 format pdf's on Kindle DX using kindlepdfviewer.

All it takes is either to zoom in using fit-to-page-content for textual pdf's or to remove white borders of scanned pdf using two-point-cropping (takes about 15-20 seconds for left and 15-20 seconds for right pages if there is need for such separate cropping) and then rotate pdf in landscape mode that will spread text all the way across the screen i.e. there is no useless 5 mm border as with native kindle reader.

In this way we can usually even get slight text magnification compared to A4 paper original.

The same thing is with djvu, epub and cbz files which can also be opened with kindlepdfviewer.

We can also create folder trees.

What makes Kindle DX (in the eyes of many people) not suitable for scientific use as stand-alone device is lack of drawing capabilities, but as with color recognition we can always simultaneously use some good tablet (or even 6" e-ink reader) for scribbling if reading on e-ink is really our priority.

I'll get myself M92 or another big one with stylus, sooner or later, but for now I can live without it.

[iannis]

I use M92 for "heavy" scientific reading (mainly physics books and papers, no need for colour) for three months now. This awesome product has changed my work life. I carry around a whole library in my bag without any physical constraints (weight, book forgot in the office etc.), this is pure freedom! I have adapted my workflow to use pdf bookmarks and scribbling, and recently I discovered that I prefer reading on the M92 rather than on the real book I had on my desk.

[rem736]

hi,

i've been using a sony prs-950 as my dedicated e-reader and i'm looking for a large screen e-reader for technical docs as well. on amazon, there is only the white version of the m92. i've also checked the onyx-boox site. it seems that the black version is also gone. is there a difference between it and the black version?

the m92 seems to be the best at technical pdfs at the moment. but plastic logic once again was in the news recently with a prototype for a 11x17 display: 11x17 flexible reader? http://www.plasticlogic.com/news/?itemid=MTk5MTMxNjAxNDcwMQ==. they said products will be out around the middle of the year? so i'm wondering if i should just wait to see what comes out...or should i get the m92 now?

hue

[Read&Write]

I would not bet on a new device from Plastic Logic. You have probably read the complaints/requests for improvements concerning the software of the M92. It is already good for technical decouments (I use it on a daily basis for several hours for just that reason) and probably the most advanced piece of software for your purpose. Still, lots of thing can be improved. If Plastic Logic made a product superior to the M92, they would not just need matching hardware specs (probably not a big deal), but also really good software right from the start (huge problem).

In essence, I think it's safe to buy an M92 right away. If you don't mind the extra €, I would recommend you buy at ereader-store.de. The owner of the shop is THE most helpful man with regard to the M92. Plus, he is the only one that seems to be able to make developers at Onyx work on specific tasks to improve the M92. I imagine that by buying there, you support future improvements. Nevertheless, the M92 is great as it is, so you will probably be quite happy for several years.

[rem736]

thanks, read&write. i just ordered the m92.