Originally Posted by paula-t
Hi! I have read your thread and I would like to offer a piece of advice based on my own experience.
1) I am doing research, academic research, for my Ph. D. I have to process, annotate, highlight, classify lots of PDFs and files.
2) I have recently developed eye-strain due to reading on a plasma or LCD display many hours a day. When you have to spend most of the day reading on a display, health becomes an important issue, so I put my stakes on e-ink for sight preservation.
3) It is a whole lot better to use web capabilities to process academic texts, such as linking paragraphs, quotes or sentences with metadata from wikipedia, erudit, jstor or other places, and also linking sentences to other articles. A simple ereader would not let me do this.
4) I preferred a device with a longer battery autonomy.
5) And I didn't want to use a small device. In fact, I had a reader whose display was so small that I couldn't really feel comfortable while reading. So my choice was inclined toward a 10" gadget.
So I spent TEN months investigating ereaders and reading forums (fora) while I saved money to spend wisely on a gadget. I made long lists with for and againsts comparing 12 different devices.
Finally, after reading many users' feedback about Entourage Edge, I decided to buy one.
So far, it has lived up to my every expectations, and it was VERY WELL spent money.
Let me tell you how it worked for me:
1) The display is big enough and the reading experience in the e-ink side is very comfortable.
2) The PDF files handling is superior to that of other devices. Even so, I have found that using Calibre I convert PDF to Epub and the performance is even better.
3) The battery lasts around 16 hours, which is REALLY good.
4) The WACOM technology makes writing very smooth and only with a small delay, shorter than the delay in Sony devices, for instance. In this regard, it works splendidly, so I can comment, underline, take down long notes in the Journal and also add handwritten information in the PDF or Epub files.
5) Wifi works really well. The tablet on the opposite side of the reader is very complete. I am using Email client programs, synced Calendar with my Google Calendar, Documents-to-Go (so I use Office applications), a good Library manager, and the audio quality is very good for listening to audio files. You have a camera for chatting or recording videos and you can watch movies in the tablet with a very fine performance. So it a very complete tablet on the right side, with gravity orientation-change, bluetooth and wifi, plus you can use a 3G stick. You have 512 Mb ram and 4Gb storage capacity, which makes it a reasonably powerful device.
6) The concept is very intelligent. You can use it open as a book using both sides of the "pages", or fold it completely back so you can read the e-ink side as a book, or use it as a stand and tilt the tablet back a little... The design is excellent (mine is a beautiful red, very sofisticated, sturdy and small at the same time), very well thought. You don't get the physical feeling that it is a fragile gadget made with fragile materials. On the contrary, it really feels solid and well manufactured.
7) You have sim card slot, SD card slot (I will use it with a 32Gb card), two USB slots. You can download and transfer files in many different ways: from the internet through Dropbox (I do this too), with a USB cable, with USB pendrives, with SD card, by email, and by bluetooth connection.
8) But the most astonishing thing I am doing for research (and in this regard it beats any other device and this is why I finally bought it) is the following:
You have interconnectivity between both displays. This means that your e-reader communicates with the tablet. Let me show you what I do.
I am reading a journal article, for instance. The author quotes another scholar. I do not know anything about this other researcher, but I want to search and see what this person has done or in which theoretical school he is working. So I highlight the name in the PDF and press an icon in the bar above. This opens up (in the tablet) a search box with the name I highlighted in the reader. I can choose where to search from: a book, the library, Wikipedia, Google, etc. I select my choice and a window opens up in the tablet with the information about this scholar. Let's say, a Wikipedia article. I press another icon in the tablet, and INSTANTLY the webpage is linked to the highlighted text in the PDF, showing a small icon in the margin. I can do this search-and-link for an article title mentioned in my PDF, for instance, by highlighting, pressing icon and searching for the article in Scribd. If I find the quoted book or article in Scribd, this URL (or the downloaded article) is linked INTO my pdf. So your PDF becomes much more than a formatted text: it becomes a knowledge repository including all metareferences.
Plus your own underlining, handwritten notes (which you can export to PDF as an independent file) and the like.
In this regard, your research goes to a different level. You can read for hours without eye-strain, but be connected to the web for sources, downloading other articles, writing docs in Word and getting email.
All this I found with the Edge. I had a couple of adjustment issues when I got the device and the Support people were great. In 15 minutes they solved a registration problem, and the people at the forum are even greater than the Support staff. It is like having a team of probono experts at your service, and they share their knowledge almost on the spot with a very efficient, enthusiastic and generous attitude. This also weighed in my choice, because support environment is sometimes extremely important to find fast solutions and eliminate worries.
I cannot have words enough to say how happy I am with my Edge. I have bought a lovely carrying bag at Roocase, a USB lamp for the e-ink reading at night, and a more professional stylus which improves handwriting even more, feeling much like using a roller-ball on thick paper.
So I have found exactly what I was envisoning for my research. It is a bit more expensive than a Kindle, yes (498 USD), but it is much more than just an e-reader. And you can also buy it used at E-bay, as I did, saving 200 USD...!
I hope my report as a researcher will be enlightening for you. I guess your needs are much similar to mine.
Good luck with your academic work!
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