Why I want a big screen ereader

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

I appreciate fine illustrations. But I don't think that only a PDF can deliver them properly. A lot of e-book formats support images, and only have to be viewed on a sufficiently large device to be enjoyed. In most cases, the illustrations are not so tightly tied to the text that they cannot simply be placed nearby the relevant paragraph to do the job. And although I see the point of your observation of Alice In Wonderland's "tail" of words, I am just as satisfied to have digitally-created, reflowable and resizable text for a book like Frankenstein.

I only recently discovered an easy way to rotate my laptop screen, allowing me to resize a PDF or Zinio window to a roughly letter-sized page image, and making it possible to read magazine pages without having to enlarge sections of type. (I set up hotkeys, allowing me to jump back and forth easily.) Most tablet PCs could do the job you describe with other e-book formats as well, basically having the display window fill the screen. So if you require some of your e-books to display full-sized pictures and illustrations, that method would work for you right now. (Psst: You also get color!)

So, don't despair: You can do what you want right now. About the only thing you might have to suffer with is the weight and battery life of larger devices.

I do hope that the someday-coming color e-ink readers allow me to run PDFs and Zinio-formatted magazines on them, at less weight and longer battery life than my laptop. But until then, I can still get enjoyment out of larger-format documents.

[Studio717]

Two interim solutions that have worked (somewhat) for me:

I have used an old Fujitsu tablet that I bought off ebay for not very much. It runs WinXP (the tablet version) and works well, though the unit itself is quite heavy (for a tablet pc; it's lighter than a lot of books). It's a bit clumsy and awkward, and it's not e-ink, but it works fairly well.

The other option I've used is to rotate my 19" monitor to portrait and read that way. Since the monitor is on an arm attached to the wall, I can position it for a fairly long research session without too much discomfort. That, in addition to a Wacom tablet and either Skim or Acrobat Pro, is a good combo.

Drawbacks to both (which a large e-reader would solve), but still workable, imo.

Edited to add: I'm fond of the PDF image format that GB uses because some of the old books I need have the long 's' which wreaks havoc with OCR engines (at least the ones I have).

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by Daithi

For example, a book like Alice in Wonderland is simply far better as a PDF than as reflowing text. Even when the illustrations are included in the ebook the PDF version would still be far better. In the PDF version the text flows around the images that are in the book, and in one section of Alice in Wonderland the text is written in such a way that it looks like a mouse's tail. It curves around the page and it uses a font that gets smaller and smaller. Ereaders like the Kindle can try imitating this mouse tail effect but they do a poor job of duplicating it without displaying the text as an image.

This is the kind of thing that ePub is significantly better at than earlier reflowable formats. For example the Adobe Sample eBook Library includes a good ePub version of Alice in Wonderland. See the attached screenshots, illustrating text wrapped around an image and the mouse's tail. One of the problems is that ePub is new, and so the knowledge required to produce good reflowable ebooks isn't widely disseminated.

I agree, by the way, that PDF might still "win" on larger screens. However, small screens are here to stay so ePub or something similar may give PDF a run for its money. An ePub can in principle degrade gracefully on a small screen while giving a "professional" layout on a larger screen. Most current ePubs are not doing this though.

[Sonist]

IMHO, my iLiad's 8.1" screen is more enjoyable to read, than the 6" screen on my Kindle v.2. I like the larger screen better for text, and it is, of course, better for images.

I am currently reading The Bible Unearthed by Finklestein (http://www.amazon.com/The-Bible-Unearthed/dp/B000FBJG86) and the timeline tables and site drawings, which are for practical purposes unreadable on the K2, are noticeably better on the larger iLiad. (Very well written book, BTW :-)

Up to 10", IMO bigger is better. I am waiting to see what the new 9.7"-ers are like, when they start popping up later this year/early next year, and unless prohibitively expensive, I'll probably get one.

[amgoforth]

Originally Posted by awi

This nonexisting problem can be solved by an Irex Iliad or an irex 1000.

Yes all you have to do is chop all the white around the pages off and then print it again to a size that will display well on both the illiad and the Digital Reader.

[bhartman36]

The idea of a large format ebook reader is nice, but alas, it is not for me.

For me, ebook readers satisfy two needs:

1) They store lots of books at once.
2) They're portable.

I'm handicapped, and use a wheelchair. Anything much bigger than an iLiad or a Kindle and it wouldn't be portable enough for me, I think. Luckily, my first ebooks were read on Palms, so the Kindle seems like a widescreen TV to me, by comparison.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

... Anything much bigger than an iLiad or a Kindle and it wouldn't be portable enough for me, I think....

If the concern is about the device's overall size, a device with a 9" or so screen, but with a thin bezel, like the iPhone, wouldn't be much larger, than the total size of the Kindle.

I must say, I don't mind the Kindle's physical keyboard (which I would normally consider wasted space), because I read mostly in bed, and I rest it on my stomach. The space for the keyboard places the screen at a good position for comfortable reading.

If it didn't have the couple of inches at the bottom, I'd have to actually hold it up in order to see the bottom of the page (or grow a larger stomach )

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by Sonist

If the concern is about the device's overall size, a device with a 9" or so screen, but with a thin bezel, like the iPhone, wouldn't be much larger, than the total size of the Kindle.

Actually, for me the main issue is fitting it into the backpack on the back of my chair. The Kindle (with the case) fits well in there, even with the other things I have to carry. I'm not sure if something with a 9" screen would do the same. The extra inch and a half (I have a Kindle 1) might be significant.

Personally, I'm waiting for the kind of epaper displays we can roll up. Anyone know offhand how far away we are from those?

Originally Posted by Sonist

I must say, I don't mind the Kindle's physical keyboard (which I would normally consider wasted space), because I read mostly in bed, and I rest it on my stomach. The space for the keyboard places the screen at a good position for comfortable reading.

I find the Kindle a little awkward to read in bed. I mostly lay on my stomach in bed, and lighting is such that it doesn't work out well. I should probably get one of those wireless light switches for my nightstand.

[Studio717]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

...

Personally, I'm waiting for the kind of epaper displays we can roll up. Anyone know offhand how far away we are from those?

...

Sorry to say, over on teleread.org there's a post saying the company, Polymer Vision, has had to delay it because of cash problems. Apparently, it's ready for production, but they don't have the money to go ahead and start producing them.

[andrys]

Originally Posted by solitarywolf

I dont know much about it, but Hearst Publishing is talking about releasing an E-Reader that will be larger for use with their publications; newspapers and magazines.

Can anyone chime in and provide more info on this? Perhaps this could be what your are waiting for?

-Seth Williams,
San Francisco, CA

Hearst was one of the big money-men behind the founding of E Ink in Cambridge. I did a blog entry on an article that looks at the Esquire E-Ink cover used for its 75th Anniversary issue (Oct '08). There are details of his involvement and history, in the article , so it's no surprise that he would be behind the switch to an E-Reader (they say it will be either Plastic Logic- or iRex-based) as a last-resort.

It's in the middle of http://kindleworld.blogspot.com

The SF Chronicle, Hearst says, is going under, and he's said they're banking on the e-reader version to save it if it can be saved. That' s the last I read, but there was more news yesterday though I didn't see the details.

- Andrys (from San Francisco and not happy about the local paper going under)

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Daithi

The only reason I don't get an iRex device is that they are expensive and not tied into any of the major book content providers (i.e. Amazon and Sony).

That's really not true. The iRex devices can read MobiPocket books, which are most definitely a "major content provider". Mobi are owned by Amazon.

[jgray]

Originally Posted by amgoforth

Yes all you have to do is chop all the white around the pages off and then print it again to a size that will display well on both the illiad and the Digital Reader.

This brings up a point that has been bugging me for quite some time. Why is it that none of the PDF reading software has an option that lets you display a full page without the whitespace margins? This alone would make reading a PDF on smaller screens much easier. I shouldn't have to crop the pages and save them as a new PDF. I thought computers were supposed to automate things for us.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

This is the kind of thing that ePub is significantly better at than earlier reflowable formats. For example the Adobe Sample eBook Library includes a good ePub version of Alice in Wonderland. See the attached screenshots, illustrating text wrapped around an image and the mouse's tail.

The "mouse's tail" can be done very nicely in Mobi - it's used as an example of text formatting on the Mobi developer's site.

[GuillaumeJay]

Originally Posted by Studio717

I have used an old Fujitsu tablet that I bought off ebay for not very much. It runs WinXP (the tablet version) and works well, though the unit itself is quite heavy (for a tablet pc; it's lighter than a lot of books). It's a bit clumsy and awkward, and it's not e-ink, but it works fairly well.

Same here, with an old Toshiba M200.
Agree for the clumsy/akward feeling (compared to my "regular" ebook reader, a Dell PDA).

Some netbooks are going to (alreay are ?) 10", with tablet mode. That should be big enough for pdf, and lighter/smaller (the M200 is quite thick). Anyway, since I bought my tablet (Dec 08) planning to use it at least half the time as a pdf reader, I've read maybe 400 pages on it. But as a small laptop which i can take everywhere (not like my 17") to program on it, I'd like it a lot

[idum]

I'm not agree with the thesi.
We all always want that non-digital, personal experience can be replicated in one of that beautiful technologic toys that we love to owe. But it is not possible.

The strenght of digital ebooks is portatibily of the informations. We want to read books, lot of books, on a simple, light, environment-like device. So a 6" more o less e-ink e-reader is the product we need.
For specialistic situations, as technical ebooks, or newspaper-like pubblications, a 10" o more e-reader is a must, but we lose portability, so it is a different product.
It don't exist an handy 12" ereader, because 12" ereader is not handy.

But if you want to feel the entire book experience, and if you want to capture all of the message that a book want to trasmit you, a *real* book is the right media for you, you will be never satisfied with a piece of plastic/metal.