Science/textbooks on kindle

leha · 11-22-2007, 10:00 PM

Hi,

By any chance did anybody try to buy some science/textbooks or say programming books from Amazon for kindle? The collection of scientific books for kindle is quite big something like 16k what I am interested in is how they are formatted. Does Amazon just sell a "pdf" copy of printed edition or was layout changed to fit small screen? The later seems to be too difficult to do but the former means that most of these scientific books are unreadable on kindle.

PS: I have sony prs500 and reading textbooks on such small screen is quite difficult unless you do some tricks.

JSWolf · 11-22-2007, 10:55 PM

To be honest, I don't think any of the current eink readers are good enough for reading text books. I (IMHO) would not bother with them until such time as a eink device that is better suited to text books appear.

CCDMan · 11-22-2007, 11:26 PM

Yeah, graphics are critical and for that we need a slightly bigger screen, a higher res screen, and at least more grayscale and possibly color. It will be a while...

leha · 11-23-2007, 01:21 AM

I agree that 800x600 is a little too small to read a textbook but disagree that it is impossible. Irex iliad is pretty good for this purpose not only it is 1024x768 but also it has 16 lvl grayscale. Hell, my laptop has 1024 screen and you dont really need colors for technical literature. Even sony prs is ok as long as you can delete all margins and fonts are not too small (obviously you have to read half a page at time).
In any case question still is if amazon reformatted its books for them to be more readable on a smallish screen.

11-22-2007, 10:00 PM	#1
leha Member Posts: 14 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2006 Device: prs-500	Science/textbooks on kindle Hi, By any chance did anybody try to buy some science/textbooks or say programming books from Amazon for kindle? The collection of scientific books for kindle is quite big something like 16k what I am interested in is how they are formatted. Does Amazon just sell a "pdf" copy of printed edition or was layout changed to fit small screen? The later seems to be too difficult to do but the former means that most of these scientific books are unreadable on kindle. PS: I have sony prs500 and reading textbooks on such small screen is quite difficult unless you do some tricks.

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
will kindle dx help publishers see they need to hyperlink textbooks?	med007	Amazon Kindle	8	10-16-2010 04:08 PM
Classic Reading math and science textbooks..	zaqwsx170	Barnes & Noble NOOK	7	09-01-2010 08:37 PM
Update on the Textbooks on Kindle Experiments	poohbear_nc	News	5	10-14-2009 05:05 PM
anyone tried medical textbooks on kindle yet? any docs here?	med007	Amazon Kindle	20	04-16-2009 01:04 AM
Textbooks on the Kindle	Nate the great	Amazon Kindle	20	12-07-2007 05:15 PM

11-22-2007, 10:55 PM	#2
JSWolf Resident Curmudgeon Posts: 78,925 Karma: 143098300 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Aura H2O, PRS-650, PRS-T1, nook STR, PW3	To be honest, I don't think any of the current eink readers are good enough for reading text books. I (IMHO) would not bother with them until such time as a eink device that is better suited to text books appear.

11-22-2007, 11:26 PM	#3
CCDMan *** Posts: 335 Karma: 5759 Join Date: Mar 2006 Device: ***	Yeah, graphics are critical and for that we need a slightly bigger screen, a higher res screen, and at least more grayscale and possibly color. It will be a while...

11-23-2007, 01:21 AM	#4
leha Member Posts: 14 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2006 Device: prs-500	I agree that 800x600 is a little too small to read a textbook but disagree that it is impossible. Irex iliad is pretty good for this purpose not only it is 1024x768 but also it has 16 lvl grayscale. Hell, my laptop has 1024 screen and you dont really need colors for technical literature. Even sony prs is ok as long as you can delete all margins and fonts are not too small (obviously you have to read half a page at time). In any case question still is if amazon reformatted its books for them to be more readable on a smallish screen.