Quote:
Originally Posted by dmaul1114
Some general questions to help on this decision:
Is there a difference in the amount of free books you can get across the two?
Is it true that PDFs with lots of figures and tables and in 8.5x11 page design (again scholarly journal articles) are a lost cause on both and will probably always bee on small ereaders?
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I think if you're dealing with free eBooks, it doesn't make much of a difference. Free eBooks aren't going to be DRM'ed (generally), and can be converted from one format to another.
For your pros and cons, you might want to also remember that Kindle has free wikipedia, non-DRM mobi support, and "read to me". The Sony 505 is physically smaller (with same size screen), and has the best PDF support among 6" readers, as well as epub support.
As for PDF readability, IMO any normal-sized PDF is readable. Reading A4 in portrait may not be fun, but it's actually possible. Reading it landscape is reasonably easy. If you can read the fine print on the side of a cereal box, it's easier than that. If the PDF plays nicely with the reflow feature, then it's very readable.
I wouldn't want to read a whole book in PDF form, but if I wanted to bring along PDFs of technical papers for reference, I wouldn't hesitate to put them on the 505.
Also, while mobi is currently the predominant format in books stores, epub is an emerging standard. IMO, it's a nicer standard than mobi, from a technical standpoint. epubs are xml-based and I'm still researching the format, but it looks very flexible and easy to produce. It seems like it would be very easy to convert any other xml-formatted file to epub, using basic xml transformations. I've read that publishers like it, and are adopting it quickly, so hopefully it'll enjoy an increasing selection size.