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daudi · 01-13-2008, 03:53 AM

Slow start:

No sleep mode and the 45 secs start was something that I thought about a fair bit before buying. It made me think more carefully about how I want to use this device and why I want to buy it. I decided in the end that I should not be thinking of this as being a PDA, but as an addition to my computing equipment, something for reading at length that is kind on my eyes and something that will allow me to makes notes on what I read.

Also, it should run for 10+ hours on a full charge so it is also possible to turn it on in the morning and leave it on all day. If you also have the charger by your desk during the day (assuming that's how you work) you can also plug it in and leave it in and have it charging when you are not reading. That's what I do, so I've side-stepped the start up time.

A4:

If you rotate the page and zoom in a little you can usually get to around 90% of the natural size of an A4 page (but only half a page at a time). Using continuous mode the flip bar takes you down roughly half a page at at time, so this works well for single-column A4 docs.

Try getting a piece of cardboard and cutting out a window that is about 124mmx164mm. Then print something out at about 90% full size and view it through your cardboard iliad to see what it is like to read. Bear in mind that the "print" quality/resolution is very good (better than I usually get from our office laserjet) and that the background is a colour that is almost but not entirely unlike white (the sort of grey you get when you mix up your white and coloured clothes in the washing machine).

If you have multi-column docs (like journal articles, Guardian/Telegraph PDF newspapers, etc) you can zoom in and pan around. You having several options for panning/moving around, including dragging the page with the pen, and a modified version of the PDF viewer that is aware of columns of text and follows then (mostly correctly, and it is easy to correct with the pen if it gets lost). Try reading something at full size, portrait view with your cardboard iliad.

And if your eyes are reasonably strong it is possible to read a whole page. As a test try printing on a very high resolution printer and shrink to around 45%. Then put your cardboard iliad over it.

01-13-2008, 03:53 AM	#2
daudi Addict Posts: 281 Karma: 904 Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Kent, UK Device: iRex iLiad, Psion 5MX, nokia n800	Slow start: No sleep mode and the 45 secs start was something that I thought about a fair bit before buying. It made me think more carefully about how I want to use this device and why I want to buy it. I decided in the end that I should not be thinking of this as being a PDA, but as an addition to my computing equipment, something for reading at length that is kind on my eyes and something that will allow me to makes notes on what I read. Also, it should run for 10+ hours on a full charge so it is also possible to turn it on in the morning and leave it on all day. If you also have the charger by your desk during the day (assuming that's how you work) you can also plug it in and leave it in and have it charging when you are not reading. That's what I do, so I've side-stepped the start up time. A4: If you rotate the page and zoom in a little you can usually get to around 90% of the natural size of an A4 page (but only half a page at a time). Using continuous mode the flip bar takes you down roughly half a page at at time, so this works well for single-column A4 docs. Try getting a piece of cardboard and cutting out a window that is about 124mmx164mm. Then print something out at about 90% full size and view it through your cardboard iliad to see what it is like to read. Bear in mind that the "print" quality/resolution is very good (better than I usually get from our office laserjet) and that the background is a colour that is almost but not entirely unlike white (the sort of grey you get when you mix up your white and coloured clothes in the washing machine). If you have multi-column docs (like journal articles, Guardian/Telegraph PDF newspapers, etc) you can zoom in and pan around. You having several options for panning/moving around, including dragging the page with the pen, and a modified version of the PDF viewer that is aware of columns of text and follows then (mostly correctly, and it is easy to correct with the pen if it gets lost). Try reading something at full size, portrait view with your cardboard iliad. And if your eyes are reasonably strong it is possible to read a whole page. As a test try printing on a very high resolution printer and shrink to around 45%. Then put your cardboard iliad over it.