Academics: which e-reader do you use?

[hermance]

Please forgive the length of my post. I am new to this and am really searching for feedback:

I’m an academic, interested in hearing from others about what e-reading device is useful for them, particularly for work. I can see a lot of reasons why an e-reader would be fantastic. The idea of being able to travel and work without having to lug an extra 5-10 pounds of books (and figure out *which* 5-10 pounds of books I’ll use at any given time) is so alluring. In addition, it’s amazing to think about being at a conference or archive and have easy access to a source I didn’t even know I might need access to. To be able to pull it up on a reader would be so helpful.

I'm sufficiently tech-savvy, but I really don't have the time or the curiosity to convert a whole bunch of file types or learn to hack devices or to strip DRM. And this is what makes it hard for me to figure out which to buy. I really don't want to have to learn a whole new technology to take advantage of an e-reader.

Here's what I'd like to be able to read, in order of priority:
(1) Public domain books that are out of print and not available from my university's rather small library. Currently, I save most of these books to my laptop via Google Books. It'd be great to have access to them without needing to lug my whole laptop around.
(2) Academic journal articles. I get most of these in PDF or HTML format. Does anyone know about remote access to databases via the wifi capability on e-readers?
(3) Fiction for pleasure. I imagine this would be a mix of new books available via Amazon (or other ebook retailer/site) and public domain books.
(4) Mass market periodicals—probably only free content.

Here are some of my usage concerns:
(1) Searching is really important, which may altogether eliminate the Sony 505.
(2) I’m moderately interested in being able to annotate and underline. However, I'm not sure how much I would use such features because it just doesn’t seem like a very efficient way to annotate. Anyone care to weigh in on this?
(3) I want it to be easy to transfer and read PDF files, especially since I predict that most of my e-reader content will be from Google Books and PDFs of journal articles.
(4) I’d love to be able to access my Zotero library through the e-reader but am not sure how practicable that is.

The biggest advantage to me is not having to figure out which books I’ll want to work with while I’m away. However, I also am intrigued by the idea that I might be able to travel without books *or* a laptop, especially for conferences when I will not primarily be working at a computer much.

I’ve considered just getting an iPod Touch for now but worry that the LCD screen is too small and headache-inducing for “serious” reading. It seems that the people who like reading on iPod devices are warrior-travel types, who spend a lot of time on various planes, trains, and automobiles. I don’t have a long commute and only travel about once every 6 weeks. The appeal to me of an e-reader is the ability to have access to lots of content, not for the ability to read when I have some down time here and there. That said, I don’t have a smart phone or PDA, so I might be willing to sacrifice the optimum e-reading experience in order to have such functionality built into one device. (But I worry that I really won't read that much on the Touch and that I'll be hesitant to store too much reading material on it, which takes away from what I am really looking for in an e-reader.) I'd be really interested in hearing from academics with iPhones or iTouches.

Kindle—not sure whether the 2 or the DX would be right. I’d like a smaller size, but if I understand correctly, the DX is the device for PDFs.

Sony reader—I had thought that I wanted the 505 because of its usability, but the lack of searchability is, I think, a deal-breaker for me. I’ve heard enough mixed reviews of the 700 that I’m not sure it’s a good choice, either.

I’ve thought about just getting an iPod Touch for now and waiting another year or so until the e-readers improve even more. I could buy both a Touch and a reader, but I am really not that gadget-loving of a person to justify those kinds of costs. It seems like for me it would be overkill.

I suppose I’m frustrated because the academic market seems like an obvious, albeit limited, target, and yet it’s been hard to get a sense of how any of these devices would meet our professional needs. I’d love any advice that anyone could offer.

Thanks for reading all of this mess.

[richman]

Gee, this would be your first ereader and you are doing your research and asking around. That is the way to do it.
The 505 as you suggested is probably ok for some of your needs and you will love the 2-3 week battery life on it. The sony-google stuff will work and lots of pdf's are converted easily with calibre. And if you are older person you can make the font sizes any way you like it. If you can pick one up cheap for 150 like I did with sony deal , or get one like borders had on sale for 199 a few weeks ago, that wouldn't be bad way to go with minimum expense. You are right about no search feature so you have to go into it knowing that up front , like you do. But you can put text files, pdf's in book format, and other formats on it and convert stuff . You could go high end but you are just starting and I would start out low end and good low end, that is why I went 505.
If you pleasure read you probably will like it, but if you want search and other features , you could spend 800 for irex 1000s , but you could pick up touch screen hp laptop for 750 , so I don't know if I would spend 800 on ereader.
You can go itouch for 200 dollars and I do have an itouch, but I prefer to read on the 505 and the 505 does seem a lot like reading a book. I have 30 or 40 books on mine, and newspaper feeds Newsweek, USA today, and a number of others, and it is nice to change books in 20 seconds and it remembers last page I was at.
You are right , new ones are coming out, so you could wait another year, and something that does what you like probably and hopefully will be cheaper. The other guys here will give you good suggestions too, some of these guys have a number of these devices.

[tmoody]

I'm in pretty much the same situation. My thread, "Thinking out loud," is a few down from this one. I'm leaning toward the Kindle 2, not because I think it's ideal for academic work by any means, but because the various trade-offs seem to point in its direction. From what I've seen, the content on Amazon really is cheaper than most of its rivals (I don't know that you're in the US, which is a factor), and there's more of it, particularly in non-fiction. Whether your academic field is well-represented in Kindle is another question. In mine (philosophy) it's mediocre, but seemingly better than the competition. And since academic publishers are dealing in lower volume, I'd expect them to be even more interested in Kindle's (or somebody's) DRM scheme, as time goes on. But that's just a guess.

Like you, I want to be able to annotate, or at least highlight.

I'm also considering just waiting a while. I don't have an iPhone or iTouch, or any plans to get one. I do have a Blackberry Curve, with Barnes & Noble's eReader on it. I've been doing some reading on it, and it's not nearly as bad as I expected it to be. I keep the type size jacked up to about 40 pixels, which is larger than most book fonts, and even though the lines are necessarily short, I don't seem to experience much eyestrain. I keep the backlighting at 50%. I'm actually tempted to swap the Curve for a Storm, which has a larger screen, if I use it in landscape mode. In addition to the B&N reader, Mobipocket is available for the Blackberry. And the cost, taking into consideration the sale of my Curve, would be less. Obviously, this won't be the way to go for the academic stuff, for the most part, but for other reading, maybe.

So, I'm still undecided about whether to spring for the Kindle 2 or just get a Storm and wait to see what comes along in a few months or a year.

Todd

[cmhsieh54]

I'm an academic too (assistant prof in business dept at an R1 school in the USA, about to move abroad to a European school), and I am having similar needs. A few weeks ago, I picked up the K2. I use the K2 strictly for Amazon content and the occasional .doc file.

And just a couple days ago, I picked up the iRex 1000s. Basically the iRex appears to be the best bet if you are interested in reading 2-column PDF's with the capability to annotate with your own handwriting. The Kindle DX apparently cannot match the iRex along these lines.

The other good thing is that the iRex comes with an SD card slot, so you can use a 32GB card with it. AFAIK, the Kindle DX restricts you to its resident memory capacity. I'm looking to put my entire collection of PDF articles on my e-reader, so I'm possibly looking at about 5-10 GB worth of PDF's. The iRex quickly became my only option.

I get it delivered in 4-6 days, and I'm likely to add my .02 to the mobileread forum after I've played around with it for a while.

-cmhsieh54

Originally Posted by hermance

The idea of being able to travel and work without having to lug an extra 5-10 pounds of books (and figure out *which* 5-10 pounds of books I’ll use at any given time) is so alluring. In addition, it’s amazing to think about being at a conference or archive and have easy access to a source I didn’t even know I might need access to....

Here's what I'd like to be able to read, in order of priority:
(1) Public domain books that are out of print and not available from my university's rather small library. Currently, I save most of these books to my laptop via Google Books. It'd be great to have access to them without needing to lug my whole laptop around.
(2) Academic journal articles. I get most of these in PDF or HTML format. Does anyone know about remote access to databases via the wifi capability on e-readers?
(3) Fiction for pleasure. I imagine this would be a mix of new books available via Amazon (or other ebook retailer/site) and public domain books.
(4) Mass market periodicals—probably only free content.

Here are some of my usage concerns:
(1) Searching is really important, which may altogether eliminate the Sony 505.
(2) I’m moderately interested in being able to annotate and underline. However, I'm not sure how much I would use such features because it just doesn’t seem like a very efficient way to annotate. Anyone care to weigh in on this?
(3) I want it to be easy to transfer and read PDF files, especially since I predict that most of my e-reader content will be from Google Books and PDFs of journal articles.
(4) I’d love to be able to access my Zotero library through the e-reader but am not sure how practicable that is...

Kindle—not sure whether the 2 or the DX would be right. I’d like a smaller size, but if I understand correctly, the DX is the device for PDFs.

[hermance]

Thanks for these viewpoints.

tmoody, I was actually going to respond to your thread, but my post was getting so long it seemed worth starting my own. I've been following along with it, though, and learning a lot.

cmhsieh, thanks also for talking about your experiences with K2. I'm definitely intrigued by the iRex, but it seems just too expensive for my first e-reader investment. I can't help shake the feeling that this technology is going to improve rapidly and that in a couple of years there will be much better solutions out there, particularly involving this PDF conundrum. Though I think an e-reader would be helpful for me, it would basically be a luxury item at this point, not something I am planning on using seriously long-term. for example, I do not intend to put my entire PDF library onto a device, but I would like the ability to store, say, the PDFs for the projects that I am currently working on.

It is beginning to seem to me that it may make sense to just go for the iPod Touch to get used to e-reading and the technology surrounding it. I'll probably pick up the Kindle App, and if I find that I really am using it, reassess buying an e-reader in another year or so. None of the current solutions seem to offer the ease of use and right mix of capabilities for what I need. I wish Amazon would have done a better job with the DX and PDF technology.

[cmhsieh54]

Hermance,

I definitely empathize with both your obsolescence and priceyness points.

As far as obsolescence goes, that's almost always going to be around. Waiting for 'radical innovation' (whether product- or manufacturing-oriented) is always a bit of a gamble, insofar that there are often bugs that have to be resolved in the first iteration of each new incarnation.

The iRex is supposedly on firmware 1.7 in the next few weeks, and its users seem to be quite passionate about the firmware updates. So I guess I'm hopping on board, until I discover that the gizmo can't possibly be adequate for my needs (i.e. too slow; software not flexible enough).

(Furthermore -- and this is just me thinking aloud -- hardware usually becomes obsolete because it can't keep up with the computational requirements of advancing software. Journal articles are predominantly published electronically as 2-column PDF's, and I'm willing to bet it's gonna stay that way for quite some time. Insofar that memory capacity is likely to continue advancing faster than data coding and compression technology, data formats like PDF aren't going anywhere. (Right?))

As for priceyness, well, I'm purchasing this one right now to use. At the new job this January, I'll have a cushy 'research development fund' to tap, so my hope is to sell my current iRex, and then repurchase with my research funds. I really hope that works out... But I agree, the iRex price makes most anybody pause.

Originally Posted by hermance

cmhsieh, thanks also for talking about your experiences with K2. I'm definitely intrigued by the iRex, but it seems just too expensive for my first e-reader investment. I can't help shake the feeling that this technology is going to improve rapidly and that in a couple of years there will be much better solutions out there, particularly involving this PDF conundrum. Though I think an e-reader would be helpful for me, it would basically be a luxury item at this point, not something I am planning on using seriously long-term. for example, I do not intend to put my entire PDF library onto a device, but I would like the ability to store, say, the PDFs for the projects that I am currently working on.