01-03-2010, 02:43 PM | #136 | |
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01-03-2010, 03:12 PM | #137 | |
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That, incidentally was my entry into world of e-reading. I've never looked back! |
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01-03-2010, 03:14 PM | #138 | ||
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Tablets remind me a bit of the UMPCs that were getting buzz a couple of years ago. The were outgrowths of the Microsoft Origami project, and pushed by MS and Intel. Both had a similar problem: where would growth come from? Just about everything that can run Windows and Office, does. Vista wasn't out at the time. MS was trying to figure out where to get significant revenue and profit growth, and keep their stock price in the stratosphere. Intel had similar concerns, with AMD encroaching on their market share. What to do? A whole new platform that would use Intel chips and run Windows - the UMPC. Unfortunately, this was driven by corporate need for revenues and growth, not customer requirements, and the one thing MS and Intel never could provide was a compelling use case. Just what would the user do with a UMPC that they couldn't do with a desktop, laptop, or notebook (and these days, netbook)? Nothing, really, which is why they never became more than a niche market item. I feel the same about tablets. What will you do with a tablet that you can't do with other things? I can see plenty of specialized uses for a device with a reasonably large touch screen for things where you can just tap or swipe, like checkbox forms, but too many applications still require data entry, which means a keyboard of some sort or dealing with handwriting recognition. It's possible I'm missing the obvious, and if Apple does release a tablet, I'll be fascinated to see what they claim the uses will be. (Thinking about it, I can see one: the YouTubelet, anyone? ) ______ Dennis Last edited by DMcCunney; 01-03-2010 at 04:45 PM. |
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01-03-2010, 03:27 PM | #139 | ||
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One think I found was Plucker, an open source offline HTML reader for Palm OS. A lot of the documentation for things I dealt with was available in HTML format, and could be easily converted for Plucker on the PDA, so I could carry a documentation library in my pocket in a searchable form. I didn't think I'd appreciate fiction in that format, but a few experiments showed me that I could, so things like conversions of the entire Baen Free Library wound up on my device. I no longer use a Handspring, but I still use a Palm OS PDA, and there are close to 4,000 Plucker files on it, as well as about 400 Mobipocket books and an assortment of other things in eReader, PDF, Word, RTF, and text format. I'm gradually reading some classic stuff I'd been meaning to get to, like Macauley's essays, historical works by Schiller, as well as Burroughs, Conan Doyle and the like, and Project Gutenberg gets a daily visit to look for other things to convert. I still buy and read paper books, however. eBooks are an additional format, and not a replacement here. Many of the art, photography, and design volumes in my library just would not work as ebooks. ______ Dennis |
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01-03-2010, 04:00 PM | #140 | |
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I attend a LOT of meetings in the course of a normal work week, and have many steno pads full of hand written notes. Needless to say, organizing those notes is nearly impossible. It is not practical, convenient nor socially acceptable to be typing on a netbook during a meeting. It is, however, acceptable and required to jot notes. I tried using the Advent for that purpose, and it was just too slow. Waiting for the words to catch up with the stylus, and having page turns take tens of second just didn't work. It wasn't a total loss though, it showed me what I need. I just have to wait for technology to catch up. I need a tablet that is adequately powered, wirelessly (WiFi or Bluetooth) connected, email capable, has some sort of pen based note taking ability, 7" or 5" form factor, adequate battery life for a work day, storage for hundreds of pages of notes, price point about where an netbook is, and oh by the way; if I could browse a little, read and occasional ebook, and watch a movie or two, that would be nice too. I have been looking with interest at the Archos 5 32 GB Android. It looks like it has nearly everything I need, but I have not yet found a pen based note taking app for it. The Archos 9 runs Win7, and would work admirably with OneNote installed, but it's a little spendy, and somewhat too large/heavy. |
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01-03-2010, 04:23 PM | #141 | ||||
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Get up to that $800-1000 range and it needs to be a much more functional device as you can buy a damn good laptop or PC for that, so I can't justify dropping that kind of cash to read and markup a handful of pdfs a month. If it's a multi-media table that I can also use for browsing the web on the couch, watching HD video, playing games, replace my PDA/calendar etc., then I'd think more about it for $800-1000. Quote:
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You just can't do that stuff on a laptop, PC, current tablet laptops etc. in a manner that feels very similar to reading and marking up documents on paper. Some people can read on a PC and use the Acrobat annotation features etc. I just have never been able to read documents on a PC screen E-ink is great for just straight reading with no flipping through looking for stuff or making things up. But it's too slow and laggy to have good stylus markup, loses resolution with a touch screen, page turns to slow to flip through to look for a particular passage I highlighted or a table of findings etc. I do agree with you that such tablets that I describe may have somewhat limited appeal and be a niche just for academics and other professionals with such need. But as I said, as long as one comes out that suits my needs, I couldn't care less if it sales 1000 units or 10 million units. But I do think a full fledged multimedia tablet could catch on more for light web browsing, video watching, game playing etc. Kind of replace netbooks which I find pretty useless since they lack the power for most streaming video, games and other stuff I spend a lot of time online. It will be interesting to see what comes of the rumored Apple tablet. If anyone can make it take off it would be them and their marketing tour de force. But time will tell on that. I'd just like a nice solution, at a reasonable price that can allow me to read and mark up my academic PDFs exactly the same way I do printouts now. Until that happens, the trees can suffer as I'll keep printing them out. Last edited by dmaul1114; 01-03-2010 at 04:26 PM. |
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01-03-2010, 04:26 PM | #142 |
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My new phone (got a Droid for Christmas) does most of those UMPC tasks, and my DR 1000s handles all of the tasks that dmaul is interested in. I feel just about right in my gadgetry at this point. I'm comfortable with it.
I know that's just my personal experience, which isn't very useful for anyone else. |
01-03-2010, 04:43 PM | #143 | |
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1. E-ink is too slow to allow me to flip through PDFs quickly and find tables, sections I marked up before etc. Like I can paper. LCD is much better on that front. 2. E-ink limits it to that one purpose, I'd rather have a multimedia LCD (or some future color screen technology) or.... 3. It would have to be a lot less that $859. I'd consider something like the DR1000 or the forthcoming Plastic Logic Que. But only for $300 or so tops as that's about as high as I'd pay for something to use solely for my academic reading--which is just a few hours a month. Paper will suffice until prices come way down, or there's some nice multimedia tablets out that do a great job on that and can also be my main "browse the web on the couch" machine etc. |
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01-03-2010, 05:39 PM | #144 | |||
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If I wanted to go the route you're suggesting, I would actually prefer to have an "Apple iSlate" style device with a built-in cell phone & Bluetooth so that I can link an earpiece to it. But I don't see that anywhere on the horizon. Quote:
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01-03-2010, 11:02 PM | #145 |
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IMO, the only reason we have only one reader with e-ink is because the Sony reader will not access web pages directly. Me and my wife do most of our reading on the computers, because it is news and commentary we most consume. When we can do our Internet reading on an e-ink screen, our computers will be used primarily as computing devices, not web browsers.
We prefer e-ink screens because they can be read outside. We like to sit outside, so she would rather read paper; books and magazines, and I would rather do audiobooks. With an e-ink device that employs wifi, we could spend more time outside. E-ink is far superior to LCD as far as readability goes. When the refresh rate for E-ink improves, people will use it primarily for most of their reading. |
01-03-2010, 11:45 PM | #146 | |
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True about price/features. But that will change with time as e-ink screen costs come down (or some new screen tech is invented), and I'm patient as I'm not dying to move away from printouts. They work fine for me, and cost me nothing since paper and ink is on the University's dime. I'll make the switch to e-versions when there's an ideal device for my needs and budget, and not a moment sooner. |
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01-04-2010, 05:29 AM | #147 | |
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But you are welcome to wait until that day comes. |
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01-04-2010, 01:54 PM | #148 |
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I agree with the "you can't wait forever" aspect. I do own a Kindle 1, bought a DVD player in 1998. A Blu Ray player in 2008 (waited for the format war to end) etc. So I do early adopt.
On this front it's just a case of something I don't need/want that bad. Paper printouts work fine for me and don't cost me a dime so I have little incentive to pay big bucks to early adopt something like the DR that isn't ideal for my needs, just to read and mark up a handful of PDFs a month. If I was reading and marking up a hundred articles a month or something I'd be more pressed to adopt something. But now it's probably 1-5 on average a month since I've read most everything in my niche now and avoid branching out in my research too much a it's good to stay focused and I don't want to have to become an expert on a new area as I hate reading academic stuff. It may well be the case that I never buy any tablet device, as they may never fit my needs or budget, and I may stick with printouts and paper books for my academic work. Time will tell. I'm just no in a hurry. I'm not being confrontational at all, just explaining why I'm not interest in dropping $800+ on technology that I don't really need or want that much. I'm more interested in a tablet that's not Windows based for couch web browsing, torrenting, etc. without much risk of viruses as I only have a work laptop so I stay away from random web browsing after having problems with trojans and malware. So if nothing comes along that fits what I'm looking for in a multi-media tablet device, I may say the hell with the tablet and just shell out for a Macbook for those purposes and stick with paper for my academic reading. |
01-04-2010, 02:11 PM | #149 | |
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01-04-2010, 02:11 PM | #150 | |
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