View Single Post
Old 07-11-2011, 12:02 PM   #3
Hellmark
Wizard
Hellmark ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Hellmark ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Hellmark ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Hellmark ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Hellmark ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Hellmark ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Hellmark ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Hellmark ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Hellmark ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Hellmark ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Hellmark ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Hellmark's Avatar
 
Posts: 2,592
Karma: 4290425
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Foristell, Missouri, USA
Device: Nokia N800, PRS-505, Nook STR Glowlight, Kindle 3, Kobo Libra 2
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arrghus View Post
IMO, no such device you seek exists. E-ink simply can't compete with a physical textbook. With a book, you can quickly flick and skim through the many pages to find exactly what you need. As fast as the refresh on e-ink is becoming, it is still too slow to allow the user to effectively do this.
That is what table of contents, glossaries, and search functions are for. I've never really just skimmed through willy nilly for things in books. I jump to a section that is within a few pages of what I need, and the fraction of a second refresh rate of eInk is suitable for the few page turns I need to do.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arrghus View Post
As for PDFs and the like, they are a much better read on a larger screen. They do not always reflow well on a smaller screen. And the bigger e-ink devices like the Kindle DX and Sony Daily Edition are so prohibitively expensive that the iPad (or similar tablets) you speak of are not far off their price range. And navigating a PDF document is a lot nicer on a tablet, as is annotating one. The current crop of e-ink devices are designed primarily to read dedicated ebook file formats.

Keep your eyes peeled. I'm sure if you still require such a device in a few years there WILL be one to fit your needs. Technology is moving fast.
You are right there. Most PDFs are set up for A4 (or the US 8.5"x11") pages, with margins and such for that. If they're not setup for reflow (which many are not), when they're loaded on a the average reader (with a 5 or 6" display) the default fit to screen view makes things unreadable. Some people view in landscape mode, which makes things a bit better. Things are scaled down a tad, but you can read it, however it makes one normal page end up being two screenfuls. eInk makes screens that are big enough for use with PDFs, but not many are used in readers, since most people just want for fiction, and a 6" is the popular size for that.

Another issue you will run into is that many text books are in proprietary formats that are not supported by any reader. Blame the publishers at that point.
Hellmark is offline   Reply With Quote