[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by radleyp

Dennis, the Kindle, which came as a surprise over the holidays, changed things for me in a way I did not expect. I had been carrying my MotoQ only, reading on it as well (I even read two full-length novels), but when I began reading on the Kindle, I quickly realized that I would never again read anything of even moderate length on a phone or pda (I had previously been using a T/X) and this for two reasons: there was no longer this annoying backlight

I've never found backlight annoying. And one of the pluses about the Zodiac is that I can turn backlight off, which makes it usable out of doors in sunlight.

and the screen was now a respectable size, so that I could actually judge paragraphing.

I just finished an essay by John Stuart Mill who writes in often paragraph-long sentences with paragraphs that can sometimes stretch to more than a page: it is impossible to get a feel for such text on any pda (the Zodiac included) that I know.

And judging paragraphs has never been an issue for me. Some folks do write run-on sentences, but reading those has more to do with leading and measure for me than screen size. In Mobipocket, for example, I use a converted 10pt Cambria serif font using Mobi's standard line spacing that I find readable. The Zodiac defaults to landscape orientation, and I get 15 to 17 lines at ten to twelve words per line (depending on whether I have the toolbar visible), which I find quite readable.

SO, now I carry the MotoQ (on which I sometimes read newspaper headlines) and the Kindle. And my phone must be email-capable.

I used to have a Blackberry that was an email capable phone, courtesy of my former employer. It pretty well defined how connected I didn't want to be. I never saw email that couldn't wait till I was at desktop or laptop to respond to it, especially since a lot of the business email I got were requests to do admin chores on servers that could not be done from the phone in any case.

There may be folks for whom it is critical to get all email instantly, regardless of where they may be and what they may be doing. I'm not one of them, and don't want to be one of them. Push email tends to blur the lines between work and private life, and there's a limit to how much blur I'll accept.

As it turns out, color on the reader is less important to me. So you and I will continue our search for the ideal device.

I've got a fair bit of stuff that began life as illustrated versions. I'm sorry, but there's no way I'll settle for Arthur Rackham or Ralph Caldecott illustrations in four shade gray scale.
______
Dennis