MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - It's Crunch Time- I need opinions!

ddave · 03-31-2009, 05:39 PM

Rules.r and ooo,

It is also important for me to have a reader capable to displaying PDF files and so I've been experimenting with different PDF documents on a 700 at the local Borders store. The fact that I can simply copy the desired documents onto an SD card and drop it into the reader is encouraging. I began by comparing the 700 and the 505, quickly I focused on the 700 because 'turning the page' of a PDF file on the 505 seemed to take too long. The 700 was much quicker.
The default view is to display the PDF in a full page mode where the text becomes very small. In my case (especially without my reading glasses), I need to make the text larger.

There are 2 ways to read PDF documents on the 700. You can either 'zoom' the page view and pan around the page. This works well and the touchscreen allows panning the screen by swiping the finger. However, turning the page is tedious because the next page first appears in full-page mode. To read it you have to go back into zoom mode and pan around to the desired section. The zoom mode seemed ideal to view images or graphs.

The 2nd alternative is to increase the font size. Here is where not all PDF's are created equal. An older, image based PDF, could be read this way but some of the text was misplaced in the reformatted document. For example, figure captions may be separated from the text and equations don't show properly. Nevertheless, the paragraph text was usually readable.
This is when I began experimenting with different PDF files, so far I haven't tried reprocessing the PDF file with 3rd party programs (time...). Newer PDF's reformat better when the font size is increased. I had the best results with Wikipedia PDF-books. I created a few using subjects that contain several images and/or equations, for example Mayan civilization and script languge or Maxwells equations. These PDF files were processed by the 700 very well and the text was re-flowed around the images and the images were resized to fit on the screen. This made me hopeful that PDF's could be read on the 700.

Regarding the screen itself: I'll admit that the 505 looked clearer, but I never had trouble reading the 700 screen. And, navigation with the touchscreen seemed more natural.

I've just started reading about the dust issue and I'm not sure how much of a problem it really is.
I also looked at the behavior and print quality of the 700 with ebooks such as epub. Again, very readable.
Good luck with the decisions.

03-31-2009, 05:39 PM	#12
ddave Enthusiast Posts: 35 Karma: 10 Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Minnesota, USA Device: none	Rules.r and ooo, It is also important for me to have a reader capable to displaying PDF files and so I've been experimenting with different PDF documents on a 700 at the local Borders store. The fact that I can simply copy the desired documents onto an SD card and drop it into the reader is encouraging. I began by comparing the 700 and the 505, quickly I focused on the 700 because 'turning the page' of a PDF file on the 505 seemed to take too long. The 700 was much quicker. The default view is to display the PDF in a full page mode where the text becomes very small. In my case (especially without my reading glasses), I need to make the text larger. There are 2 ways to read PDF documents on the 700. You can either 'zoom' the page view and pan around the page. This works well and the touchscreen allows panning the screen by swiping the finger. However, turning the page is tedious because the next page first appears in full-page mode. To read it you have to go back into zoom mode and pan around to the desired section. The zoom mode seemed ideal to view images or graphs. The 2nd alternative is to increase the font size. Here is where not all PDF's are created equal. An older, image based PDF, could be read this way but some of the text was misplaced in the reformatted document. For example, figure captions may be separated from the text and equations don't show properly. Nevertheless, the paragraph text was usually readable. This is when I began experimenting with different PDF files, so far I haven't tried reprocessing the PDF file with 3rd party programs (time...). Newer PDF's reformat better when the font size is increased. I had the best results with Wikipedia PDF-books. I created a few using subjects that contain several images and/or equations, for example Mayan civilization and script languge or Maxwells equations. These PDF files were processed by the 700 very well and the text was re-flowed around the images and the images were resized to fit on the screen. This made me hopeful that PDF's could be read on the 700. Regarding the screen itself: I'll admit that the 505 looked clearer, but I never had trouble reading the 700 screen. And, navigation with the touchscreen seemed more natural. I've just started reading about the dust issue and I'm not sure how much of a problem it really is. I also looked at the behavior and print quality of the 700 with ebooks such as epub. Again, very readable. Good luck with the decisions.