MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - JetBook for Scientific and Tehcnical PDFs-- First Impressions

syrex314 · 03-16-2010, 05:33 PM

Howdy,

About a month ago I ordered a JetBook Lite from NewEgg. I've spent a lot of time looking for a e-book reader suitable for scientific and technical PDFs, and concluded I had better wait until I can afford an iRex. But for $120, even if the JetBook isn't perfect, it's certainly worth a shot.

One month later, I'm very happy with my purchase. The screen is much crisper than I anticipated. To my surprise, most PDFs work just fine! There are a few, such as scanned documents, that show up pixellated. But I have had luck with anti-aliasing the pages on my computer before loading on to the device. One PDFs caused the reader to crash and kick me back out the the main screen. Another PDF left me with a few pages that rendered blank on the reader. I'm guessing these are bad PDFs that would work on the device after some tinkering.

Equations, charts, and graphs render fine, though they would be better with anti-aliasing. Any newer documents created with pdflatex or dvipdf look great! Most two-column documents are quite readable at 200% zoom. It's also nice that the reader remembers where you left off with each individual PDF, including your zoom setting and whether you had it in landscape or portrait mode.

All in all, I would recommend this device for scientific/technical PDFs as long as you're willing to put up with a few documents here and there that don't work, or if you don't mind editing PDFs.

As for me, this is the most awesome portable device I have ever owned! It's especially nice for 50+ page documents that I don't want to print, but certainly don't want to read on a computer screen.

03-16-2010, 05:33 PM	#1
syrex314 Junior Member Posts: 6 Karma: 10 Join Date: Feb 2010 Device: JetBook Lite	JetBook for Scientific and Tehcnical PDFs-- First Impressions Howdy, About a month ago I ordered a JetBook Lite from NewEgg. I've spent a lot of time looking for a e-book reader suitable for scientific and technical PDFs, and concluded I had better wait until I can afford an iRex. But for $120, even if the JetBook isn't perfect, it's certainly worth a shot. One month later, I'm very happy with my purchase. The screen is much crisper than I anticipated. To my surprise, most PDFs work just fine! There are a few, such as scanned documents, that show up pixellated. But I have had luck with anti-aliasing the pages on my computer before loading on to the device. One PDFs caused the reader to crash and kick me back out the the main screen. Another PDF left me with a few pages that rendered blank on the reader. I'm guessing these are bad PDFs that would work on the device after some tinkering. Equations, charts, and graphs render fine, though they would be better with anti-aliasing. Any newer documents created with pdflatex or dvipdf look great! Most two-column documents are quite readable at 200% zoom. It's also nice that the reader remembers where you left off with each individual PDF, including your zoom setting and whether you had it in landscape or portrait mode. All in all, I would recommend this device for scientific/technical PDFs as long as you're willing to put up with a few documents here and there that don't work, or if you don't mind editing PDFs. As for me, this is the most awesome portable device I have ever owned! It's especially nice for 50+ page documents that I don't want to print, but certainly don't want to read on a computer screen.