What the iLiad does well for my research needs:
- Read PDF journal articles, which are most of my class reading assignments these days, as well as the articles I need to read for dissertation prep and other writing. I'm able to read any PDF I've tried, though multiple column PDFs are still a nuisance (but see Community iPDF, below).
- Mark up those articles with my notes
- Take notes in class and at meetings and conferences, or (sometimes) while reading paper references or thinking about research ideas
- One thing I think is strongly in favor of the iLiad is the very active developer community. Some of the applications I have loaded aren't intended to help me with my research (though since I'm researching learning games, I suppose I might be able to make a case for some of them...
)
What I hope it will do soon:
- With the new Community iPDF, add "comments" to pages that can consist of text one can quickly find on the iLiad and/or export to a bibliography database
- Also with the Community iPDF, handle multi-column documents more easily, by changing the scroll pattern. There's a patch now to do this with text PDFs, but I'd like a manual option for scanned PDFs, too.
What I struggle with:
- It can't make notes on non-PDF files. iRex keeps talking about a new super-reader that will handle multiple formats and perhaps that would allow notes on HTML or whatever, but there's no solution for this right now. Some of my journal articles and other references are in HTML, so this is a nuisance.
- Finding text or written notes quickly -- one can't flip through the pages on e ink quickly, because of the speed of the display technology, and there is no search function across multiple files for text (any format). For text-based files, grep -r could probably help. I use FBReader for everything other than PDF files, and it has an internal search. We still need PDF search, though. I'd like to see a thumbnail view of notes or marked up pages that one could scan to find the desired page.
- Converting written notes to text -- I could probably do this on my Mac using my OCR software, which can recognize handwriting, but that's a pain -- I think it should be on the device.
- Access via the USB port from the Mac seems to be iffy, but that might be my CF card. By "iffy," I mean that if I am exporting the CF card on the iLiad, I plug the iLiad into the Mac USB port and I can see most of the content of the CF card, but if I try to make any changes the card gets corrupted and I lose everything.
- Backups are a pain, in part because of the corruption problem above. If I used a PC I might be able to use the companion software to make this simpler. I'm looking into setting up Samba on a linux box or on the Mac to see if I can make this simpler.
The only time I notice the slow start time is between activities (e.g. classes or meetings) if I want to make a quick note.
I do use it for pleasure reading, as well, but I haven't found an adequate light that will let me see the pages well (the display contrast can be a problem here) but won't keep my husband awake. This time of year I don't read outdoors much, but in the summer I really enjoy being able to read in sunlight, whether journal articles or novels.
Overall, if I could get a full linux tablet computer that would last as long on a charge as the iLiad, I'd probably rather have that (at least, if someone finally comes out with HWR for linux!). The e ink screen doesn't matter as much to me (except in the summer). But I couldn't afford a tablet computer right now, and the batteries don't last nearly as long anyway. I guess that's where the e ink
does matter to me.
I hope that helps-- feel free to post more specific questions if there's something else you're wondering about.