Will the PocketBook 360 work for me?

[n0b0]

Hello
I don't know if this should have been posted in "Which one should I buy?", but here we go.

I'm currently looking at the PB 360 (not the plus) since it is cheap at the moment in Europe (where e-book readers are normally pretty expensive). I study economics and it is therefore primarily for these kinds of books that I will read on it.
Mostly it will be PDF with a lot of formulas and sometimes graphs. I therefore don't know if the 5 inch screen is just too small or if it will work.

Hope you can help me decide

[Yar-PocketBooker]

The rule of thumb with PDF: " the larger the screen the better is your PDF document displayed. Therefore, PB902/3 or Onyx M90 is the best device for handling PDFs.
5" display, even on such a marvelous device as PB360 - won't do well on PDFs
All my IMHO

[kacir]

Originally Posted by n0b0

I study economics and it is therefore primarily for these kinds of books that I will read on it.
Mostly it will be PDF with a lot of formulas and sometimes graphs. I therefore don't know if the 5 inch screen is just too small or if it will work.

Hope you can help me decide

I do not want to rain on your parade, but here you go.
The size of the screen on my PB360 is 75x101mm.
Take a representative sample of your pdf (it is most probably A4 or Letter) and print it on a piece of paper 75x101mm large. You can also use copier where zoom can be set, and make a copy with zoom factor of about 0.36. Then measure the width of text and change zoom factor, so you get *text* that is 75mm wide (PocketBook can strip away the empty margins at the sides). The result is not very readable, is it?
Even if you turn the reader sideways (90°) and use the 101mm width of the screen to display the width of text, you still view that pdf in 1:2 scale.

PocketBook can reflow the pdf text, but results are not great if you use the function in a complicated text with a lot of formulas and/or graphs.

You see, I just LOVE my PB360, but I only use it for reading strictly linear fiction. I have tried to read some programming books, and it IS doable, but you are far better of if you print out and bind the book, which is what I do with programming books I wish to read away from my computer.

[kacir]

If you have few texts you wish to use on your reader for reference I strongly recommend to use OCR program to parse pdf file and create rtf document. Then you can convert that rtf to epub or whatever format that you reader can display with formatting and reflow.

Readiris OCR (that we got "free" with a multifunction HP printer/scanner/copier/fax combo machine) works great converting pdf files to text. Of course Fine Reader - considered by many to be the best OCR commercially available to casual user - works well too.

I have tried all [freely available] Linux solutions out there. Most of those you have to use in concert with Ghost Script or Image Magick that will parse pdfs to plain bitmaps that those not-very-mature OCR solutions require. The results were *very* disappointing.

[n0b0]

Thank you for your input. I also read this comment in another thread, which pretty much made me decide.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

And PDF support ranges from "mediocre" to "atrocious" on all ereaders; this is mostly because of how the PDFs are made. (My PDFs work beautifully on my ereaders... because I make them with pages sized for 6" screens.)

If you intend to read a lot of PDFs for academic/research, you need a larger screen, like the Kindle DX; trying to read letter-sized PDFs on a 6" screen is a recipe for madness. You can do a few of them, but you're really not going to want that as a permanent method.

...

Worth noting:
No e-reader is really good for academic support. The navigation software doesn't support flipping back & forth between multiple books or chapter sections; the bookmarking/annotation options are rudimentary; display of PDFs is, charitably, limited. E-readers are designed for leisure reading, and they're incredible for that; using them for anything else takes creativity and causes frustration.

Guess I won't be buying an e-reader this time around, since I don't have much time for leisure reading. Also ebooks are not as big in Denmark, so we don't have a lot of them here, and I read much faster in Danish. Maybe one day I'll buy one with a bigger screen, but for now I don't have the money.

[Dulin's Books]

PocketBook does support flipping back and forth between the last 10 books with a 2 click pop up menu - click to bring up the menu, select and click again to jump to the other book at the last page it was open.

book marks are shown in the table of contents so if you want to flip back and forth within one book book you can click menu click TOC and pick where you want to go

[paola]

Originally Posted by n0b0

Hello
I don't know if this should have been posted in "Which one should I buy?", but here we go.

I'm currently looking at the PB 360 (not the plus) since it is cheap at the moment in Europe (where e-book readers are normally pretty expensive). I study economics and it is therefore primarily for these kinds of books that I will read on it.
Mostly it will be PDF with a lot of formulas and sometimes graphs. I therefore don't know if the 5 inch screen is just too small or if it will work.

Hope you can help me decide

Hi n0b0,
i've got both a PB360 and a PB903 - when traveling, the PB360 is unbeatable as for portability, so I use it also for scientific reading (papers, textbooks): you can live with that, but I doubt I would use it everyday as a working tool. Depending on your finances, you could still give it a go, as it is such a mighty little thing - but (perhaps because I know how much better it is on the 903) I wouldn't bank on it as an everyday reader for textbooks.

[frostschutz]

The PB360 is outdated, and it can't compete with current models which offer both a better screen and better software. The strong community behind the PB360 is mainly because of its size and concept (built in plastic cover that protects the screen etc.). I bought the PB360 for this reason alone. It's really only suitable for text only, it can't handle graphs / images particularly well. Also, the PB360 is not cheap; it's in the same price range as many other entry level readers, at least in Germany. None of them are suited for your use case.

Pick a reader with a larger screen and/or higher resolution. Maybe the Iriver HD could do, otherwise the large Kindle or Sony or whoever else makes readers with more PDF and graphs in mind.

If you want to make sure before you buy, maybe you could upload a sample PDF that represents your needs and ask device owners if they'd be willing to load them on their device and make a couple of pictures.

Personally I might go for an LCD screen / tablet if I had to deal with PDFs; those devices aren't suited for PDF either but you have a wider choice of reader software and smooth touch scroll/pinch zoom is worth a lot when something does not quite fit on the display. In many ways my 4" Smartphone is better at handling PDFs than the 5" PB360, although I really prefer to do PDFs on my desktop PC.

[n0b0]

Thank you for your reply. I don't want to buy a tablet, since it is basically as reading on a computer. I might just get the new kindle touch, since one of my friends, who lives in the US can take one home for me. Would it be better? I can't afford the Kindle DX, it is WAY too expensive.