Academics eye the Kobo Aura One, but need better PDF support. Letter to Kobo-ville

[tnforpaul45]

As an academic myself, I am still wishing that Kobo would put out a 13.3" competitor to the GoodEReader and the Sony DPT-S1. I read a lot of Journal Articles vs. Book Excerpts. Lets get an Innovation war going!

[Ken Maltby]

I really like KOReader, on Kobos, no really I think it's great, you all are shocked at that, I know. But - it still has no notetaking function. So as an academic reader, it lacks a major feature.

Luck;
Ken

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by pinktank

Nope, not unreasonable, but for the sake of simplicity, imagine you get a great car. Great ride, good mileage, and the radio sounds great but there is no cd on it. We are just asking for a new head unit that -also- has a cd. The car can take whatever they throw in there, and as a radio will not make a car run any slower, the radio (in this case the pdf engine) is not going to make the Aura any slower either, and who knows, maybe they'll even improve the wiring while they are at it.

Except that the PDF engine that Kobo is using is the RMSDK. That means it isn't an add-on, but a core function. They could change to another PDF engine, but one of the things they would lose is support for DRM protected PDFs.

[pinktank]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Except that the PDF engine that Kobo is using is the RMSDK. That means it isn't an add-on, but a core function. They could change to another PDF engine, but one of the things they would lose is support for DRM protected PDFs.

Sorry for the bad analogy, I'll go put a note on it. The point stands, Pocketbook is also using RMSDK with lesser spec hardware (both use ARM, the pocketbook has an older version) and has all/most of the features above and is faster. Sony also uses RMSDK and you can even go about doodling on their pdfs.

[Pajamaman]

Originally Posted by pinktank

E-ink doesn't work in that manner, it has to refresh post-pan because you are piling a lot of memory on a single bin. Anyhow, the usage will be the same, the processor is the same, and adding functions doesn't have anything to do with speed. You can install KOReader on your Aura if you want and see that it can work faster, it's just that the native pdf reader is shoddy.

False.

[pinktank]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

False.

Ok, It has to refresh, as in flash the screen white-black-white, because the nature of the e-ink being suspended, charged particles require addressing the 'pixels' in groups. Not only are the cells affected by changes in neighboring cells, but it is also not possible to have contrast consistency when you apply a charge to cells with differing histories.

What I meant to -badly- oversimplify above was that when you pan through an image, you are leaving a lot of history by trudging various shades through a pixel and it's neighbors, this accumulation of information leaves the entire thing a smudgy gray, and the reader has to baseline everything so that it can address a blank slate where everything is a known-ish value like white/black.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pinktank

The Kobo Aura One, thanks to it's size, is what a lot of academic readers have been waiting for. We each have hundreds of scanned book excerpts and articles in pdf format, and we have been wishing for an ereader that can deal with them since the first ereader came out. The one is the only hope so far thanks to its screen size.

You've slightly lost me there - why is it the only hope? There are a number of eInk devices on the market with 8", 9.7" and 13.3" screens. Personally I prefer at least a 9.7" screen for PDFs; I find 8" too small for the purpose.

[pinktank]

I was thinking more broadly available and accessible to many, and with a good backlight / high resolution screen. Mostly though I was just trying to appeal with US drama, bit over the top for the old world

[incumbent]

Originally Posted by pinktank

What I meant to -badly- oversimplify above was that when you pan through an image, you are leaving a lot of history by trudging various shades through a pixel and it's neighbors, this accumulation of information leaves the entire thing a smudgy gray, and the reader has to baseline everything so that it can address a blank slate where everything is a known-ish value like white/black.

So ultimately if you want a PDF reader that isn't excruciatingly slow and rage-inducing you don't even want an ereader because eInk itself is the reason PDFs suck on my Kobo Aura HD.

I can't be the only person that finds viewing a PDF on these things an exercise not unlike having a cavity filled. Even if I could fit the whole page at once on a 13" eReader the page turning itself is tedious enough to make me give up. I am not saying it's terrible for everyone and I'm really glad to see people want and use this feature, I just wish it was better for my use case and selfishly would rather the experience was better at something so basic (viewing a document) rather than adding enhancements that I'll never benefit from. I'm being a bit selfish.

[pinktank]

I'm not sure how we got there, I was just responding to the 'my ipad is not slow comment.' I'm perfectly happy with the page refresh and general limitations of the technology, It's just that the interface makes it untenable where it could compensate for its misgivings.

[ottdmk]

It's known that after Firmware 3.2 Kobos suffered a major performance degrade on certain PDFs.

Here's a link to the thread I started on it way back in the day, complete with amateurish YouTube videos demonstrating a comparison between 3.2 and 3.8. The most recent firmware that we specifically looked for the problem was 3.17, but I can tell from my fully-updated H2O that nothing has changed.

Here's a link to my post where I finally found a freely-available PDF that demonstrates the problem perfectly.

[Barty]

I think 7.8" is still too small for technical/academic PDF. E-ink, in particular, is too slow to refresh and e-ink reader hardware is too under powered, making zooming and panning a painful slog. Therefore, you want 9.7" or even bigger, so that you need only to crop margins and almost never pan or zoom. In other words, you want to use it as digital print. That's what e-ink is best for.

[datanoise]

You're right Barty.

7.8" is better than 6" for sure for PDF but still not perfect. (But in my opinion it's better to read non fiction epub too).

But is there any reliable 9.7 or higher e-Ink device that's not too expensive or can be found for cheap on the second hand market and that could work fine for reading PDFs?

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by datanoise

But is there any reliable 9.7 or higher e-Ink device that's not too expensive or can be found for cheap on the second hand market and that could work fine for reading PDFs?

You might want to check the Onyx Boox sub-forum. I haven't been following the developments closely, but I think Onyx has quite a few larger sized eInk readers on offer.

[pinktank]

Originally Posted by Barty

I think 7.8" is still too small for technical/academic PDF. E-ink, in particular, is too slow to refresh and e-ink reader hardware is too under powered, making zooming and panning a painful slog. Therefore, you want 9.7" or even bigger, so that you need only to crop margins and almost never pan or zoom. In other words, you want to use it as digital print. That's what e-ink is best for.

I also agree, but high resolution large displays seem to be a bit far at the moment. Probably a combination of screen cost and slower refresh with more pixels being updated requiring a better processor / more power.