MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - the eeeNote

sarah11918 · 03-05-2011, 10:30 AM

Actually, this appears to handle pdfs well. The pan/zoom feature by dragging the stylus is something even the Entourage Edge can't do. The edge does pdf reading/annotating in a very similar way but on actual e-ink. It, too, cannot do landscape mode yet, but that's a very requested feature by our community and we believe they are working on it. (Unfortunately, the fact that it runs Android on the LCD screen means they have to divide their time between updating the e-ink features and keeping up with new Android releases, and right now we're awaiting Android 2.2).

On the edge, you can zoom and pan, but it's through physical buttons or pen clicks on menu items, and means an e-ink refresh for not only a zoom request but also a pan request. The zoom isn't too annoying, of course, but to refresh the page in a different position (and with set amounts of position change) for panning is annoying. Using the stylus to just kind of drag the viewable portion of the pdf as the video shows seems to be much more convenient.

Other than that, I think the edge is a bit more sophisticated in how it can annotate (and save) pdfs, but it's also a more expensive machine and interacts with an LCD tablet screen as well. One of the coolest features is the "send to e-ink" command in the native browser that converts any web page to a pdf or epub (you can choose) on the fly and displays it on the e-ink side so that you can then mark it up, save it, etc. I noticed the guy in the video also mentioned ePub has a better table of content system. Through use of the mark up features, the edge can allow you to create a custom table of contents for a pdf that does not come with its own table of content. (Every time you draw, highlight or insert a note, you create a table of content entry.) So if you're reading a long "10 ways to...." article, you can simply go through and highlight each of the 10 headers and you've created a table of contents.

But for half of the cost and less than half the weight, I can certainly see the appeal of the Eee Note over the edge for some users. If all you need is an infinite notepad and want to be able to also read documents, it looks like a no-brainer. This is the only thing I've seen that comes close to the edge for journal/pdf use without going for a full tablet PC.

03-05-2011, 10:30 AM	#94
sarah11918 Tablet Enthusiast Posts: 335 Karma: 30400 Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Canada Device: Kobo Aura One (formerly: Asus Eee Note, enTourage eDGe EE, Nokia N810)	Actually, this appears to handle pdfs well. The pan/zoom feature by dragging the stylus is something even the Entourage Edge can't do. The edge does pdf reading/annotating in a very similar way but on actual e-ink. It, too, cannot do landscape mode yet, but that's a very requested feature by our community and we believe they are working on it. (Unfortunately, the fact that it runs Android on the LCD screen means they have to divide their time between updating the e-ink features and keeping up with new Android releases, and right now we're awaiting Android 2.2). On the edge, you can zoom and pan, but it's through physical buttons or pen clicks on menu items, and means an e-ink refresh for not only a zoom request but also a pan request. The zoom isn't too annoying, of course, but to refresh the page in a different position (and with set amounts of position change) for panning is annoying. Using the stylus to just kind of drag the viewable portion of the pdf as the video shows seems to be much more convenient. Other than that, I think the edge is a bit more sophisticated in how it can annotate (and save) pdfs, but it's also a more expensive machine and interacts with an LCD tablet screen as well. One of the coolest features is the "send to e-ink" command in the native browser that converts any web page to a pdf or epub (you can choose) on the fly and displays it on the e-ink side so that you can then mark it up, save it, etc. I noticed the guy in the video also mentioned ePub has a better table of content system. Through use of the mark up features, the edge can allow you to create a custom table of contents for a pdf that does not come with its own table of content. (Every time you draw, highlight or insert a note, you create a table of content entry.) So if you're reading a long "10 ways to...." article, you can simply go through and highlight each of the 10 headers and you've created a table of contents. But for half of the cost and less than half the weight, I can certainly see the appeal of the Eee Note over the edge for some users. If all you need is an infinite notepad and want to be able to also read documents, it looks like a no-brainer. This is the only thing I've seen that comes close to the edge for journal/pdf use without going for a full tablet PC.