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Peake · 06-26-2009, 07:56 PM

Hi Teyrnon!

I am looking at a Kindle for my husband, and recently borrowed a Kindle 2 and a Kindle DX from one of his colleagues at university to see if either one would be a good holiday gift later in the year.

For reading PDF journal articles, love the Kindle DX. The PDFs looked nice on the big screen, and even those with complex mathematical formulas displayed well. One article had a few quirks in the display, but was still quite readable. It was not any heavier than a clipboard and paper, and held a lot more. It is a strong candidate for a birthday present in a few months

However, I am hoping that other manufacturers will come out with a large-screen, PDF-enabled reader that overcomes the Kindle's lousy sort system (Author, Title, Most Recent are only choices). This makes a large library cumbersome to work with unless you know what to search for to narrow down the list. also found the lack of support for a PDF table of contents to be quite cumbersome. On the plus side, for non-DRM content, most of the freely available classics were available in mobipocket format, so he has been able to avail himself of those resources.

The Kindle 2 I found quite delightful for novels and other books that were mainly text. Being able to increase or decrease the font size was a treat for when my eyes were getting tired, and I was able to read on the Kindle 2 for longer than I could read my printed books. The size was right for portability -- while it would not fit in a shirt pocket, it did fit nicely in the inside pockets of my jackets

Yet the Kindle 2 suffers from the same sort problem as the DX. The Kindle 2 I borrowed had a huge number of books loaded onto it, so it was not easy for me to browse to find a title to read, especially at it seemed as if our friend had loaded everything he liked from Project Gutenberg onto it, which was a LOT, lol. I am intending to explore other readers as an alternative for myself.

The owner of the Kindles did point out that Kindle books from Amazon are not readable on his computer. So if your Kindle breaks, you will not be able to read your Kindle books from Amazon on your computer. There is a software reader for the iTouch, but not for the PC.

Anyway, I'm still trying to decide also, but hopefully these impressions of the Kindles you will find useful.

Regards,
Peake

06-26-2009, 07:56 PM	#3
Peake Member Posts: 22 Karma: 32 Join Date: May 2009 Device: none	Hi Teyrnon! I am looking at a Kindle for my husband, and recently borrowed a Kindle 2 and a Kindle DX from one of his colleagues at university to see if either one would be a good holiday gift later in the year. For reading PDF journal articles, love the Kindle DX. The PDFs looked nice on the big screen, and even those with complex mathematical formulas displayed well. One article had a few quirks in the display, but was still quite readable. It was not any heavier than a clipboard and paper, and held a lot more. It is a strong candidate for a birthday present in a few months However, I am hoping that other manufacturers will come out with a large-screen, PDF-enabled reader that overcomes the Kindle's lousy sort system (Author, Title, Most Recent are only choices). This makes a large library cumbersome to work with unless you know what to search for to narrow down the list. also found the lack of support for a PDF table of contents to be quite cumbersome. On the plus side, for non-DRM content, most of the freely available classics were available in mobipocket format, so he has been able to avail himself of those resources. The Kindle 2 I found quite delightful for novels and other books that were mainly text. Being able to increase or decrease the font size was a treat for when my eyes were getting tired, and I was able to read on the Kindle 2 for longer than I could read my printed books. The size was right for portability -- while it would not fit in a shirt pocket, it did fit nicely in the inside pockets of my jackets Yet the Kindle 2 suffers from the same sort problem as the DX. The Kindle 2 I borrowed had a huge number of books loaded onto it, so it was not easy for me to browse to find a title to read, especially at it seemed as if our friend had loaded everything he liked from Project Gutenberg onto it, which was a LOT, lol. I am intending to explore other readers as an alternative for myself. The owner of the Kindles did point out that Kindle books from Amazon are not readable on his computer. So if your Kindle breaks, you will not be able to read your Kindle books from Amazon on your computer. There is a software reader for the iTouch, but not for the PC. Anyway, I'm still trying to decide also, but hopefully these impressions of the Kindles you will find useful. Regards, Peake