Glad you're letting non-owners post, b/c I have some questions...

I'm seriously considering the eDGe - I've been searching for a while for something that works like I think the eDGe does. I was hoping that iPad would be useful, but it was very disappointing when I was finally able to try it out. I've seen several concepts fail (like microsoft courier) and I was starting to think nothing existed that met what I needed, until someone posted a comment on one of the articles about iPad competitors and said "why isn't the enTourage eDGe listed?" Needless to say I started Googling - I don't know how long it's been out but I hope you're working on spreading the word! I think it's lost as an e-reader when it's so much more (at least I think so far...). So my questions...

I'm a student in History/English, and my main goal is to replace the huge laptop I carry around campus. I hate using paper, it's a huge waste and so disorganized. I have a desktop at home, so I don't need it for major computer usage. I want to take notes, read books/pdfs, check email, maybe chat a little. I use Microsoft Office Live a lot to store my documents, as opposed to carrying around a flash drive. Is eDGe compatible? They just launched an upgrade that allows editing online, so you don't actually need Office on the computer. What about e-book selection? I know I've been very disappointed in e-books for school in general, but I saw several announcements about partnerships... I saw another post about it not being 3G or flash compatable, but that updates are coming? I also saw a post about not having access to android market. I have a Moto Cliq - which runs on android - so would I somehow be able to get apps from my phone onto the eDGe?

I know it's a lot of questions - but I saw that y'all seem to be very helpful in other posts, so I hope it's not too much. Thanks!!!

Hey Kimberly,

I'm starting a PhD Economics program and cutting down on the number of books and articles that I carry around was a huge motivating factor for me getting the eDGe. I didn't buy it until after the spring semester ended, but I have found it to be very helpful in organizing material for my MA thesis as well as reviewing some math texts that I found online.

In answer to your question, the eDGe comes with a version of "Documents To Go" which allows you to open Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and PDF files on the LCD side (you can also view all PDFs on the eInk). I don't use MS Office Live so I can't say either way whether it will work. Google Docs definitely does (which is similar).

You can actually browse Entourage's ebook store (http://www.entourageedge.com/e-books.html) and etextbooks (http://www.entourageedge.com/e-textbooks.html). You can also use Sony's ebookstore. Amazon is releasing a version of the Kindle that will run on Android soon, so you will be able to buy anything on the Kindle store *HOWEVER, UNTIL/IF AMAZON ADDS SUPPORT FOR THE EDGE, PURCHASES MADE ON KINDLE FOR ANDROID WILL ONLY BE ACCESSIBLE ON THE LCD, NOT THE EINK* You can also download books for free from a variety of places like Project Gutenberg.

Honestly, I haven't found any of the texts that I will use in EPUB format and, generally speaking, conversions from PDF to EPUB are pretty disappointing (particularly if the text contains a lot of math). FWIW, I mostly will use it for academic journal articles (i.e., free pdfs) rather than texts.

Right now, there is no official support for 3G from eDGe. But you can connect to 3G via mifi-type devices. For me, I plan on using a combination of a Broadband2go USB modem (pay-as-you-go 3G from Virgin Mobile) with a Cradlepoint PHS300 for when I travel.

Right now, the eDGe has Flash Lite--which isn't all that useful. Full Flash support will come if/when the eDGe upgrades to Android 2.2. Right now, it ships with Android 1.6, but Android 2.x has been announced as something that will happen later this summer (although not clear if it will be 2.1 or 2.2).

If you have an Android phone with a microSD or SD card, then you can purchase apps off the marketplace using that phone and then transfer the programs with the card.

Hi,
I'm a student too, and I LOVE MY EDGE. All of my notes go on my Edge now, if I need to print I use Printer Anywhere or transfer it with ES File Explorer to my computer. It syncs with my Gmail account using the email client, setup was easy and Meebo or Fring take care of chat. Meebo online works too. I can log in and view Documents on Live using Dolphin Browser, I have not tried editing though. As for textbooks browse the book store, novels from many other places work too. You can backup apps to SD on your Android phone with Astro and send to the Edge, also there is SlideMe and/or andappstore for apps. Keep reading through the forum, you will find a lot of answers and links here.

Hey guys, funnily enough, I'm also a student! I'm in the process of trying to get an edge to Australia for my study. One thing I'd like to ask you fellow students is if you have experienced using java applications such as Blackboard CE or Moodle that uni's often use as a Learning Management System? It would be great to know if the edge has full support for such interfaces.

Entourage has some sort of partnership going on with Blackboard in order to make sure that the device is completely supported, but I don't know if any of that has been unveiled yet. There have been a few threads discussing it, so you might want to use the search function on the forum to find them. IIRC, the speculation was that something would be in place before the start of fall classes (but nothing official, just forum user speculation). The only official word on the subject was a press release back in February or so.

cool, thanks walt :-) I tried searching java, but i never thought to search blackboard.

Thank you so much for the information. I really think I'm going to try eDGe out - it seems to fit my needs better than anything else out there!

On the subject of blackboard I will say that the eDGe had problems a couple months back. I converted to the eDGe the week I got it in February. I found that I was able to log into my university blackboard website but content would not load and I would have to clear the browser cache and settings afterwards. Again this was a few months ago. Since that time enTourage has announced a partnership with blackboard that will hopefully correct all of the issues.

Originally Posted by kimberlymavs

Thank you so much for the information. I really think I'm going to try eDGe out - it seems to fit my needs better than anything else out there!

You will not be disappointed. I'm an engineering major and the eDGe was able to fill in a netbook or tablet or my ebook reader did not work. The most difficult part of using it is teaching yourself how to write on the e-ink screen and learning about every tool it has available. I've had it for months and I still find a new feature from time to time.

I have been able to use Moodle on my eDGe without any problems. There are a couple of other secure campus sites (internal wiki, etc.) that I can access but can't load or download files using the built in browser but I can if I use Opera.

As far as textbooks, I've found that many of the etextbooks you have printing rights (check the details before you buy). I use a mac so I print to a pdf file and transfer it to my eDGe. It's not a perfect substitute but it works (and is compliant with fair use standards) if you can't get a pdf or epub version from the publisher.

Hi all!

Boy am I glad to find this thread. I'm a student too, and I've been hunting up and down for a suitable e-book reader. I was almost starting to give up and find another solution.

I work a lot with PDF documents and I'm after the e-ink screen. It's just simply too difficult to read on a LCD screen due to the glare.

My "deal-breaker" requirements:

1) Direct annotation to PDF – highlights, comments, bookmaring etc.
2) Reflow a properly tagged PDF, preferably on PDF with images.

I've looked at all the popular ones and eliminated them one by one!

Sony PRS-600 - annotations are stored in a separate XML store.
QueReader - no expansion slot, no stylus support
Irex DR-800SG - no annotation support at all
Foxit eslick - Does not show PDF's bookmarks.
Kindle DX - poor annotation support as well, it seems judging from the outcome of the Princeton pilot study.

Can't blame them on the other hand since they are actually targeted people looking for a nice gadget to leisure read (chronologically) instead of working with documents (search, annotate, reference).

@cheyennedonna, @ChrisF
Good to hear you love your eDGe. Have you worked with PDFs on it before (on the e-ink side)? Is it practical for document reading and annotating? Are the annotations stored directly on the PDFs?

Just a little background. I'm pretty attracted to the idea of a paperless work style. It seems to me to be the only feasible way of staying on top of documents and overwhelming information. The in-content indexing search in Win 7 allows me to look up something I've archived or annotated very quickly. The accessibility it gives is so powerful - it makes searching hard documents, filings, and books primitive in comparison. Right now, I'm trying to build on it by having a way to work on-the-go - reading, annotating digitally, and synchronizing back to my desktop. Without being able to work digitally on the go (desktop is definitely impossible, a laptop still is not as portable as a e-book reader and neither does it have the e-ink screen!), I doubt the paperless concept can go very far.

The annotations are normally stored as a separate file and overlayed by the eDGe on top of the PDF; however, you can "save as pdf" in which case a new PDF is saved with the annotations, highlighting, etc. is saved overlaying the original PDF. The main drawback is that if you do this, the entire PDF file is all image (i.e., no longer text), which renders keyword search within the document inoperable.

The PDF flow is not one of the devices strengths, IMHO. Navigation on a PDF page in general remains an area that needs improvement, including adding support for viewing eInk as landscape. enTourage is apparently working on improving this functionality, but at present I suspect that you will find this aspect of the device to be lacking.

Walt and Boris seem to have addressed it, the PDF reflow is the only issue I really find annoying, although tech says they are working on it.

I thought the PDF reflow feature was greatly improved in the last major release. But it's still hit or miss. Eink in landscape mode will help whenever it comes out. But overall, I really love the device. I am not a student but I read and study like one.

Thanks for chipping in!

Walt, I was afraid to hear that. That the annotations are saved back to the PDFs as a flattened image would mean that the PDF is no longer searchable by the Windows Desktop Search ifilter. On the other hand, for reflow, I've spent some time doing some experiments that might be helpful.

I decided to approach it differently - instead of finding the perfect e-reader for reflowing, I'll look at the PDF files themselves.

The softwares I used were Adobe Reader desktop, Foxit on Windows Mobile, and Mobi Pocket Reader.

The "categories" of PDFs:

1. Scanned PDFs OCRed with Acrobat Searchable Image/ Image Exact
2. Scanned PDFs OCRed with Acrobat ClearScan
3. Scanned PDFs OCRed with my scanner's bundled ABBYY.
4. Web articles printed to PDF
5. Downloaded eBooks.

I won't bore you with the results for each, but what was surprising and exciting for me was that there was A HUGE difference in reflow quality for scanned PDFs depending on how they were OCRed.

PDFs OCRed with Acrobat's Searchable image CANNOT REFLOW in Foxit on WM, reflows alright on Adobe Reader desktop, and CANNOT reflow as well on MobiReader.

PDFs OCRed with Acrobat's Clearscan were reflows BADLY in Foxit on WM, REFLOWS BADLY (funny that clearscan is worse than searchable image on Adobe Reader) on Adobe Reader, and had lots of defects when coverted to MobiReader's PRC.

Now, the optimistic part. The SAME pdf OCRed using ABBYY reflowed well for all three. I guess it has to do with how ABBYY adds in formatting info to the PDF such as paragraph marks etc.

So for reflow problems, I guess one way to solve it is to run it through an OCR application.

Web articles printed to PDF reflowed well for all three.

As for my search, I've kind of changed tack and given up on PDF as a format for annotations. I doubt I'll find any device (less laptops and tablets) that'll do it. Actually to be honest with myself, PDF's annotation support isn't that good anyway. For e.g., in the comment panes showing all annotations, highlights have no titles to them, making a review/ revision of a book/ article quite difficult.

I'm looking at MobiReader's PRC format as my format of choice for e-books and storing my annotations. What do you guys think? Are there any other formats that you would recommend? The only holdback is still the search issue; I'm not sure if the PRC format has an ifilter (to allow Windows Desktop Search to do in-content search and indexing).

Unfortunately, it seems (from the specs page) that the eDGe only supports ePub (know nothing about it) and PDFs. I still find the idea of a dualbook quite fancy though. I was still thinking how nice it would be to use the eDGe with something wackily ergonomic like a Kinesis split 2-piece keyboard!

Regardless, I would love to hear from you guys how you use the eDGe in school, at home and outside!

The PDF only becomes a image with the original and annotation file if you choose to save it as such and export it from the eDGe. If you simply keep the file on the eDGe (i.e., only view and edit it there), then you can have access to both the annotations and keyword search. I'm not sure whether it's possible to transfer the pair of files from one eDGe to another.