Quote:
Originally Posted by ZodWallop
Of course. That was my whole point. Not that reprinted items cannot look good. But that many of them don't.
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Fortunately we (as a family) seem to have escaped the ineptly re-published stuff.
But on "reading on a PC":
For decades I had no choice, though sometimes printed content. The CRTs terrible but the April 2002 laptop with 1600 x 1200 LCD wasn't too bad, though tiring. It had first screen I could read A4 PDFs on and later so-called HD (1920x1080) was inferior. I'd have liked the Sony eReader I saw in a shop in Dublin in either 2006 or 2007, though very grey, but I couldn't afford it.
About 2013 I got a Kindle but a bit later gave it to my wife as the DXG was being remaindered at a bargain price by Amazon with free USA to Ireland shipping and no extra charges. I still have it and i regard it as the most useless thing I ever got. I wanted to read PDFs as well as ebooks and annotate them and was shocked how poor it was compared to the Kindle I'd given away (I forget model). Wife passed it on to grandson and got a PW3. A bit later I got an original Kobo Aura HD H2O, but disappointed that the chess had just been removed. However it was my first decent ereader. Shortly after in 2014 we got a Kindle (7th basic?) for my daughter that was mysteriously more than the 167 dpi. Seems like 300 dpi. She still reads on it. Better for PDFs than the DXG
I regard the Kindle DXG as one of the worst gadget purchases I ever made. I should have researched why DX(G) was a failure in the Education market and why Amazon flogging so cheap.
Edit: Amazon USA order history tells me Kindle DXG was ordered on October 18, 2013
I think we bought some Kindles and Kobos in the local Argos (now gone) as mysteriously cheaper than online and easier returns. The odd Kindle "Basic" 7th Gen (no frontlight) that's maybe 300 dpi was 19 Nov 2014. Seems to be same panel as PW3, but without lights. Till I think 2022, all Basic models were 167 dpi, but originally called Touch?
I'd looked at eink for a 4G tablet/notebook project before I ever bought an ereader and concluded it would only be OK for a dumb phone and text chat on Internet and that colour (other than maybe Mirasol, but it was still unavailable when the project was cancelled).
I've had a variety of phones and tablets and none are good for prolonged reading. A comic-strip style book is mostly a much shorter read than a novel so I find them OK on the 10" Lenovo Yoga Tab which has a stand built in.
I got the Kobo Elipsa to read & annotate PDFs maybe last April or May 2022 and was so impressed with the Advanced Notebooks I bought a Sage even though I had a Libra. I found the Elipsa too heavy for notes/writing and reading.
My LG Electronics UHD 4K Monitor 24UD58-B was bought last September 2022. It's the first screen (desktop or laptop) in about 40 years of reading text on screens that's not tiring. With low ambient light, no windows or lamps reflected on it and brightness at 11, contrast 36, it's almost like paper. It would be even better if 18" to 20" or higher resolution as it's 23" (about 60cm). Good for two PDF pages side by side to preview a book layout or single page "fit page" to read PDF docs. I use Okular which can read many document types.
I did get a new laptop in Nov 2016, and again this year, but both are only 1920 x 1080 screens (15" and 17"). I put a second-hand Optiplex 7050 with 4T HDD added to 512G SSD and a UPS (big advantage of laptops is that's builtin. Somehow we get a power cut just before an autosave or manual save when writing) and put the 4K screen plus a new Cherry Stream TKL keyboard.
The 4K screen has no flicker, even viewed at edge of vision. Any still camera setting and video camera works without banding. Less tiring than perfect matt paper large format books, but it's not portable, so all reading of novels is on the Sage. The tablet is most used for text chat with family & friends, which apart from the odd gif or video might work on eink, I might try Viber on the eink Android Mars (really only used for the local library ebooks).
So though I read all novels (inc some PDF scanned ones) on the Kobo Sage now and any comics on the tablet, I'd now read any PDF technical document on PC screen rather than print. We do have a Brother colour duplex laser printer/scanner that Wife uses for patterns. I've stopped as I use screens.
The Elipsa is now the least used screen, but used to mark format errors on PDF for our own POD.