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Old 09-01-2010, 08:09 AM   #4
fjtorres
Grand Sorcerer
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Posts: 11,732
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Join Date: May 2009
Location: 26 kly from Sgr A*
Device: T100TA,PW2,PRS-T1,KT,FireHD 8.9,K2, PB360,BeBook One,Axim51v,TC1000
If PDF is your primary source of ebooks you have a lot of conversion ahead of you. PDF is not a good fit on 6in readers, much less a 5in reader.
If the PDFs are mosty text, you might be able to salvage most of the info using the free Mobipocket Creator from Mobipocket.com. Just make sure to do the Publisher install instead of the Home install (it's the same install file). In addition to creating a .prc version of the converted PDF, Creator leaves behind a very clean HTML that can be converted to FB2, epub, or whatever.

If the PDFs are technical (tables, eqns, etc) you have a serious mismatch. Abbey Finereader is best for those kinds of documents (athough ScanSoft is pretty good, too) but complex documents are simply not a good fit.
PDF isn't a true ebook format, but rather its "pretend-paper", more of a digital microfiche than an ebook. And trying to shrink a page intended for 300-dpi A4 reading to 200dpi 5in screen is simply not a good experience. Put it this way; a typical PDF page, laser printed, has 8.4 million pixels vs an eink screen's 480000 pixels. You're looking at a 16x reduction in resolution just in pixel count.
The PB360 is a great ebook reader but it's still bound by the laws of nature and PDF is not what *any* ebook reader does best.

(Keeping the motion sensor on full-time will likely reduce your reading time from 2-3 weeks to 1-2 weeks. Less if you don't have it actually power down. The worst I ever got was about a week with the sensor on and leaving power-on full-time. Since the PB360 has such a fast boot time, I turn it off and set the start image to "Last page". This gets me back to where I was reading in seconds. I usually disable the sensor and get around 3 weeks of time between charges.)

Have fun exploring what the PB360 does best; ebook reading.
And check the threads here for links to Themes (I favor FIVE), dictionaries, FBReader180, and the hacked AdobeReader, among other enhancements and tweaks.
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