Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeKing
I am college student @ Uo Arizona and many of my books are Adobe PDF formatted. Are these files easy to convert? (My major is computer science/mathematics, so I wouldn't mind having to write code to convert files). If it is near impossible to convert these files (and I'm sure someone has tried by now) what reader would handle PDF format well? Is there a universal format most readers will be able to read without problem and displays correctly?
And the real question... Is this worth my time and money? I would love not to have to carry around huge text books all day.. but if this isn't a practical solution, someone stop me now.
|
Most eBook readers will read PDF (exception is the Kindle) but the ease of use and readability is often a problem. PDF is a page oriented format, like a paper book. The page is often too large to fit on the smaller eBook screen. You should check the size of the various pages that are used on the books you are interested in. If they are huge (like notebook paper size for example) then you will need a large screen to view them as a page. Really Large screen eBook readers are just appearing and they are very expensive. If you don't mind reading them 1/2 page at a time then the reader can be turned sideways and the iRex iLiad gives excellent results but it is fairly expensive as well.
The smaller 6" devices approach the problem different ways. The Sony uses reflow to view the page. That is it displays the text with reasonable sized fonts but rearranges it to fit the screen. This is ok for some books but probably not for physics books with lots of equations. You didn't say what kind of text books you have. The Cybook zooms in on the page and then you pan the page around on the screen. You can read this way and look something up but it is awkward for long term reading. Perhaps, as a reference in class it would work but when you got home you would need the paper book. Other solutions are even worse in that they can only zoom the page to 1/2 size and even then the text is usually too small to read easily.
Bottom line is that you can solve the problem with expensive units but otherwise you will have to determine if the compromise solutions are acceptable to you. By the way, if the book has large pictures then there is no easy way to see them as a full view with all the detail on a small screen.
Read the wiki on PDF for more details.
Dale