Sony PRS T1 question

[vxf]

Originally Posted by celticgirl

Does anyone know if jet book would work?

As has been stated above, you need a tablet.

I read a lot of academic papers too (PDFs from SSRN, JSTOR and the like). I have also started with eink - after many iterations, I found the best option was the SONY PRS950, with a 7" screen and decent PDF handling. Said so, it still was a miserable experience.

Buy an iPad, or some other tablet. My advice is, an iPad, a good stylus, iAnnotate, Dropbox... and you can annotate PDFs and store your annotated PDFs on your PC easily.

[celticgirl]

Ok jet book is out. What about the pocketbook 912? This device looks good and have read some pdf reviews. The 902 won't work b/c another key thing- I want to be able to underline text, highlight and and then be able to come back some time later and still be able to see where I originally highlighted or underlined. I don't want to have to go to another file to see where I highlighted or made an annotation. (That's what you have to do for the 902) Plus I live in the US- but it looks like I can order direct from PB.
Thank you again everyone for all your advice!!!

[jojoba]

Originally Posted by celticgirl

Ok jet book is out. What about the pocketbook 912? This device looks good and have read some pdf reviews. The 902 won't work b/c another key thing- I want to be able to underline text, highlight and and then be able to come back some time later and still be able to see where I originally highlighted or underlined. I don't want to have to go to another file to see where I highlighted or made an annotation. (That's what you have to do for the 902) Plus I live in the US- but it looks like I can order direct from PB.
Thank you again everyone for all your advice!!!

I would pay 40 dollars more and get a refurb iPad2.

[MCSmarties]

Here's my 2c on this issue: at the risk of alienating the hordes of iPad fans, I never saw the point of buying a 10" device for the main purpose of reading PDF publications or magazines.

Instead, I would recommend a "real" convertible Tablet PC with at least a 12" screen. Yes of course they are more expensive (> $1000) and also somewhat heavier than all the 10" tablet "toys", but unlike the latter they have a full-fledged OS and are powerful enough to truly work with.

Fujitsu's Lifebook series has served me well, but there are many others (HP's Elitebooks, Lenovo's ThinkPad X Series, Dell's upcoming XPS 12...) It's a pity that these powerful devices are almost exclusively labeled as "business" or "premium" products (and not very visibly marketed).
I will never buy a "regular" laptop again.

Back on the topic at hand: I doubt many people read academic papers for fun. Rather, they will need to be annotated, managed in a database (EndNote, BibTex, Mendeley...) and maybe eventually cited in your own publications as you write them. Using android or iOS apps to do these things are at best a stop-gap measure! Or can anybody here honestly claim to have written an academic or technical publication (including figures, references etc.) entirely on an iPad or Android tablet? (and no, quick touch-ups or minor edits do not count!)

/rant mode on
Incidentally, it would sure be nice if scientific papers were released in open-source ePub instead of only PDF format. But hell will freeze over before that ever happens...
/rant mode off

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by MCSmarties

Here's my 2c on this issue: at the risk of alienating the hordes of iPad fans, I never saw the point of buying a 10" device for the main purpose of reading PDF publications or magazines.

Instead, I would recommend a "real" convertible Tablet PC with at least a 12" screen. Yes of course they are more expensive (> $1000) and also somewhat heavier than all the 10" tablet "toys", but unlike the latter they have a full-fledged OS and are powerful enough to truly work with.

You can buy an iPad AND a decent laptop for the price of a tablet PC, so if you're suggesting that you can save money by your suggested solution, I don't think that's true.

/rant mode on
Incidentally, it would sure be nice if scientific papers were released in open-source ePub instead of only PDF format. But hell will freeze over before that ever happens...
/rant mode off

PDF is just as much of an open standard as ePub is, and ePub doesn't support the complex layouts that many scientific papers require. ePub 3 perhaps will, but ePub 3 devices don't yet exist.

[MCSmarties]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You can buy an iPad AND a decent laptop for the price of a tablet PC, so if you're suggesting that you can save money by your suggested solution, I don't think that's true.

Generally speaking I guess you're right, although I would still argue that it depends on your definition of a "decent laptop" - my impression is that a tablet PC adds about $300 to the corresponding non-tablet laptop version.

In fact I wasn't so much thinking about saving money rather than saving on the number of devices you tote around (and need to maintain, and sync, and backup... )

For me, a 12-13" Tablet PC makes much more sense than a laptop + 10" tablet solution. That's also what I was using to read ebooks until the weight of the device on the go finally got to me and prompted me to buy a PRS-T1 for my fiction needs.

But to each their own of course

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by HarryT

PDF is just as much of an open standard as ePub is, and ePub doesn't support the complex layouts that many scientific papers require. ePub 3 perhaps will, but ePub 3 devices don't yet exist.

I am not so convinced that ePub is inferior when it comes to complexity of the layout that it can handle. O'Reilly layouts are not that far away form the norm for scientific papers. SVG overlays can help a lot, how sophisticated (and capable) are the tools is a separate issue.

However, I am very much convinced that ePub capabilities are irrelevant in comparison with a widespread dominance of A4/letter PDF's as format for corporate world in general. Lingua franca, the corporate standard for any paper that leaves the door of respectable corporation. Ditto for tech specs, academia seems to be more in love with LaTeX than with PDF itself.

Oh, and I totally agree with statement that the best device for handling A4/letter sized PDF's at this moment is iPad. I had chance to test drive tech spec PDF's on iPAD3 and I was left speechless.

[bibahbuzemann]

Originally Posted by Ankh

I am not so convinced that ePub is inferior when it comes to complexity of the layout that it can handle. O'Reilly layouts are not that far away form the norm for scientific papers. SVG overlays can help a lot, how sophisticated (and capable) are the tools is a separate issue.

The newer epub 3 standard addresses some of the technical issues with support for mathematic notation. Assuming all the options for user-defined adjustment of the output remain, I would consider an academic text published in epub 3 superior to pdf. The vehement disregard of people's personal viewing preferences has always been a major weakness of pdf.

I wonder if the Sony T2 will be able to do epub 3.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by bibahbuzemann

The newer epub 3 standard addresses some of the technical issues with support for mathematic notation. Assuming all the options for user-defined adjustment of the output remain, I would consider an academic text published in epub 3 superior to pdf. The vehement disregard of people's personal viewing preferences has always been a major weakness of pdf.

PDF was never intended to be an eBook format. It's a digital representation of a printed page, and that's both its strength and its weakness.