Quote:
Originally Posted by lasherlaz
Hello everyone,
I have decided that I will make the plunge into an e-reader. The ability to subscribe to newspapers and magazines has finally won me over.
However, I cannot decide between the Nook Color and the Kindle 3G.
Here is some information about me:
* I am a 2nd year law student. I use Westlaw often to download cases and secondary materials. These can be converted to .pdf or .doc format. I would love to able to read these on my device.
* Thompson West publishes some casebooks (for courses I will take) as ebooks. How does annotation work on the two devices?
* I subscribe to: the Economist, the New Yorker, and the New York Times. Does anyone here use an e-reader for their subscription? How does it work? How is the display? How is your reading experience?
* Novels. I do read them, but not as much as I would like as I am a student. However, general novel reading (particularly classics) is very important to me.
* The Bible and the dictionary. My fiance and I frequently get into debates about word meanings and Biblical happenings. Which device, in your opinion, provides products which would have the most overall utility for us to settle these debates? How do these large books work on the devices?
I am absolutely torn, at the moment. I love that the Kindle seems simple, however, it seems to have poor .pdf support and no ePub support. My university library uses ePub, and I imagine that I will use that often.
On the other hand, I love the Kindle's 3G support.
So...does anyone have any advice? As I said the important things to me are: 1.) periodicals, 2.) reading experience - for hours on end, and 3.) .pdf convertability (in this order: 3 > 2 > 1).
Web browsing, etc does not matter to me at all.
THANKS!
|
I own an K2 and was gifted an nookColor for christmass, (my wife rocks).
So like any good eBook enthusies the first order of busniess I did was to load up my nookColor with PDFs to see how it could handle them. Since the K2 is not very good with PDF I was hopping the nook was.
Unfortunately there is no clear winner they both have draw backs.
Here is what I say
Good:
- Color made for a nice experience, since I do have some color PDF it was nice to see the color and not grayscale
- Pinch zoom makes it easier to zoom, but it is poorly implemented. You can't see the text while zooming so it's guess work how much to zoom in/out.
- PDF engine is not that good. Out of the 10 PDF I tested two did not display. (One was an image based PDF(scanned), the other was a plain text PDF)
- 7" makes it easier to read than 6". But it's narrow so it still fits in ones pocket.
Bad:
- No navigation, bookmarks(these are PDF bookmarks) are not supported and neither are hyperlinks
- No annotation (notes, highlights, bookmarks--place holders).
- Zoom does not stick, you have to unzoom to move on to the next page.
- No reflow
- No dictionary
- Not searchable
K3 (Note I have the K2 not the K3, so my knowledge is from what I read
here and the demos at the store)
Good:
- Full navigation (hyperlinks and bookmarks work)
- Zoom sticks so when you go to the next page you don't have to re-zoom.
- Perl screen is very nice and has great contrast.
- Full annotations (notes, bookmarks--page holder, highlight)
- Dictionary
- Searchable
Bad:
- No color
- smaller screen
- No reflow
My conclusion for the PDF is if you plan to read 1-10 page PDF that are color the nook is the clear winner.
However if you have to annotate and read lager PDF the kindle is a much better choice. One think you cannot under estimate is the ability to navigate and search with eBooks. With out these features you will have to page turn one page at a time to find your spot.
On 3G, I was not a 3G fan and did not even consider this when I got the Kindle, all I got to say about it is it's great and a HUGE plus for the kindle. It's not something I user everday, but when I need it I really need it and it's been a huge benefit to have. Also it is the way I download my books from anywhere in the world onto my device.
Also if money is not so much a concern and PDF is what you want you might want to look at the iPad or the Galaxy Tab. Both will do a fantastic job reading PDF. (Though none beat the Kindle)
Last point I'll make on the nook. If you are tech savvy and are willing to root the nook and install a full blown Android on the tablet it will be a much better experience. The reason the nook PDF support is so poor is because they chose a poor third party PDF app to support them (Quickoffice). Had they chosen Adobe or RepliGo it would have been a good choce. If the nook is rooted the user has the ability to install these apps