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Old 03-11-2008, 03:05 AM   #1
Corporate Raider
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Looking for a reader (for reading financial documents)

Hi

I read a lot of financial documents (reports and balance sheets) as well as financial textbooks and business. Most of them are in the PDF format, but there is an occasional DOC, RTF and excel. At the moment I do not own any mobile devices, and have no other option but to read them on my desktop computer or print them out. My eyes hurt when reading them on the computer for extended periods of time, so I try to print out as much as possible, but lately it is not cost effective because of the price of paper, ink, etc. And most of all, I'd like to be able to read on the go.

First, I Googled the web in search for some service which would printout my pdf's in a double-sided book/booklet form and then mail them to me. Couldn't find anything like that. Pity, because it would be useful if it was cheaper than buying a high-end printer.

I've also thought about getting a PDA, but the screens are waay too tiny, and I dont want my eyes to shrink with fatique.

I will definitely get a device. I've thought about my options, and the directions in which I am leaning at the moment are:

1) Tablet PC.
2) Sony Reader
3) iLiad

I am considering a Tablet PC because the books and documents I read tend to contain highly technical information using graphs, colors, and often small fonts. Tablets are well utilised for that due to their large colour displays. But their drawbacks are price and battery life. What do you think about using Tablets? How are they for reading ebooks? Any particular models that are suited better for reading than others?

Sony Reader also looks good, because it is relatively affordable and because it is a popular choice, which means that it is tried and tested, a "dependable dog" in the US but sadly it has not gained any exposure here in UK.

iLiad is also considered, because it was mentioned in this section of the forum that it is the best for reading A4 type PDF documents and has the best quality of the screen.

So what do you think? Any other options I should consider?

thanks, regards
C.R.
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Old 03-11-2008, 03:10 AM   #2
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The Sony is tried and tested and well-loved as a book reader but if you look around these forums for awhile you'll see that for reading technical PDFs it's not well-loved. It can read PDF without conversion which the other 6" readers can't but it doesn't do it well. Iliad is a more popuar option amongst e-ink readers for PDF. The tablet PC would give you generally the best support for reading PDFs and the only color option but you would be back to the eye strain we get from regular screens. I wish I had the perfect option to suggest to you. Sadly good large e-ink screens are still in prototype phase.
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Old 03-11-2008, 04:03 AM   #3
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I love my Sony but it is really only good for reading basic flowing text such as novels. Any tables, footnotes, illustrations, PDF's are poorly handled.

jkontherun is currently reviewing the Fujitsu P1620, a tablet PC to lust after.
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Old 03-11-2008, 07:45 AM   #4
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Welcome to MobileRead.

The Iliad is quite good with PDFs. We're still waiting on decent PDF support for the Sony Reader. It does not suit your purposes at the moment. Instead, you should look at the Cybook. Same size, much better at displaying PDFs.

That said, I would recommend a tablet convertible, because it can do so much more than the Iliad or the Cybook. And also because a tablet running Windows can open DRMed PDFs, and neither the Iliad or the Cybook can.
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Old 03-11-2008, 10:25 AM   #5
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... if you look around these forums for awhile you'll see that for reading technical PDFs [the Sony Reader is] not well-loved.
That gets the award for understatement of the week!


Welcome to MobileRead, Corporate Raider.

I too would suggest, strongly, that you stay away from a 6" screen for A4/Letter sized PDF viewing -- you wouldn't be pleased with it.

Many folks find that the iLiad handles it pretty well for some applications, but with a specific application I'd suggest more research. One thing you might do is ask the folks in the iLiad forums here if one of them would load up a file like you're looking at reading from it and take & post a picture for you. That would give you a less subjective idea.

Hope that helps some.
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Old 03-11-2008, 11:16 AM   #6
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oops Im so sorry for the doublepost, must've clicked on the Edit Done button twice. And thanks for the Cybook suggestio , I'm going to research it some more

Dear Mod, could you please delete this thread? Im so sorry again
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Old 03-11-2008, 11:27 AM   #7
Nate the great
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Originally Posted by Corporate Raider View Post
oops Im so sorry for the doublepost, must've clicked on the Edit Done button twice. And thanks for the Cybook suggestio , I'm going to research it some more

Dear Mod, could you please delete this thread? Im so sorry again
It's no big deal. I merged the two threads, and deleted one of your posts.
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Old 03-11-2008, 11:37 AM   #8
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Thanks, Nate the great and thanks to everyone for a warm welcome and replies . I am carefully processing the wealth of information that you have so kindly dispensed in this thread

This is a great website, so much information. Please bear with me while I read through reviews and explore older posts so that I can make the right decision given the options. Meanwhile, more comments and suggestions are welcome, especially from people who use devices to pile through financial data and textbooks.

Here's an example of the stuff I read through on a daily basis:
Statement: http://www.barcap.com/static/BarCap/...une%202007.pdf

Textbook: http://rapidshare.com/files/74259137...in_Finance.pdf

Page dimensions tend to vary wildly between companies and publishers, but A4 size and dimension tend to be the most common.

If you haven't tried reading these kind of pdfs on your respective devices, could you please try these documents and share your experience so that we know which device is better suited for this kind of literature? (I've watched some youtube demos of most devices but none of them shares the experience of viewing numbers, tables, equations, charts and abstract graphs.)

Thanks a lot.

Last edited by Corporate Raider; 03-11-2008 at 11:44 AM.
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Old 03-11-2008, 11:42 AM   #9
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see above

Last edited by Corporate Raider; 03-11-2008 at 11:46 AM.
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Old 03-11-2008, 12:30 PM   #10
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see above
The only current product is the iLiad (see the wiki for a description) that has a large enough screen to view the pdf's you like adequately. This is accomplished best by using landscape more displaying 1/2 page at a time on its 8.1" screen. It is possible to display in portrait mode but the page must be shrunk considerably. To display a full page that you might be able to read is coming in some new products using a 9.7" screen. The latest is from Netronix and a earlier annoucement was from Hanlin V9 using this same size screen. Check the forums for Hanlin and future products.

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Old 03-11-2008, 12:36 PM   #11
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Hi,

I am an iliad user and a PhD student in Image processing so I read a lot of A4 sized books or papers on iliad, which contain images, tables, numbers and equations. As far as book reading goes it is quite good infact after a while you get so used to reading on iliad that printed books feel awkward and bulky ... but thats my opinion.

To be fair you need to zoom in on the page a little bit to read easily especially if there are tables.

Also if you need to evaluate color coded images or chats & graphs then forget about it .... you will not understand whats going on in those graphs on any of the e-ink devices (believe me I tried)......

So I would suggest that if you have to do a lot of work on color coded charts and graphs then go for a tablet PC (but the eye strain will be there) otherwise if you need to read a lot but look at few images then buy an e-ink device (I would obviously recommend iliad ) and just view the occaional image on the desktop. Atleast thats what I do

Hope this rant helps ....

Asim
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