A Prospective Student User

I'm looking at buying an Edge, and want to know others experiences with using it as a high school resource. Are high school textbooks available for the reader? Does taking notes work well in a classroom? Thanks!

If you want to see what current text books we have available, please check http://www.entourageedge.com/e-textbooks.html It is a ever-expanding list as we more and more deals with publishers.

Originally Posted by glamdringguy

I'm looking at buying an Edge, and want to know others experiences with using it as a high school resource. Are high school textbooks available for the reader? Does taking notes work well in a classroom? Thanks!

Not a high school student, but here are some answers to your questions:

You can peruse the eDGe textbook store to see if it has any of the texts that you'll be using:
http://www.entourageedge.com/e-textbooks.html

As for taking notes, I think that it's an acquired taste. There is a delay in the refresh on the eInk side (i.e., it takes half a second or so for what you write to appear), which really bothers some people while others (including myself) don't particularly mind. I haven't decided whether or not I'll use it for taking notes during class (starting a PhD program in the fall).

I would add that having a stylus larger than the one provided makes note-taking more comfortable.

I haven't tutored high school in 3 years, but at that time it wasn't common to get your *high school* textbooks in e-book form (unlike university texts). Typically, a text book publisher would glue a little insert into the back of the high school textbook that held a CD with the entire book in pdf form. (Nothing interactive, nothing more or less than the actual pages of the text book.) That should work just fine (in theory) on the edge as it's just a collection of pdf files. But, I've only seen this with high school math texts. You may not find this with some subjects like history, but you may very well find the novels/plays etc. you need for English class available (and the study guides, too). Of course, a lot may have changed in 3 years and maybe there's more variety now.

Does your high school make you buy books, or do they issue them to you? If they issue them to you, have you ever noticed a CD in the back? If you have to buy them, can you go to the text book store and check the books?

As for taking notes, you'll probably notice that you write faster than the notes show up on the screen, but at least the notes do show up after a second or so delay. They're there, you just can't always see them right away. I've noticed that the more stuff there is on the background of the page, the bigger the delay. So, if you choose a blank page as a background, the writing is pretty much instantaneous but if you have the graph paper as a background, it can take slightly longer for the writing to show up. It hasn't been a big deal for me.

I ordered the fancy pen everyone's mentioning and it's MUCH better than the included stylus, which is shorter than a regular pen/pencil but longer than a little golf pencil. If you need to be able to keep up quickly then I do suggest a full-sized pen. I find I hold the enclosed stylus a little more like a golf pencil than like a regular pen, and for long periods of time or quick writing, it might be awkward for some. I found one on ebay, but it would be nice if Entourage were able to include it on their accessory page.

First off, thank you all so much for your help. I've never encountered a community as helpful as this, with responses from admins, long time users, and newer members. I just have a few more questions. About how often are updates to the device? I saw a few, but was wondering on the timing. As far as price, I know it's a sensitive subject for some, but I'm wondering where people purchased their eDGes and for how much? In addition, is there a price drop on the horizon? Thank you all so much, your help is greatly appreciated.

Not sure if I'm going to get flamed for this, but if all you're doing is taking lecture notes, the Edge probably isn't for you. A spiral notebook, nice pencil, and a flatbed scanner are going to be way cheaper and consume less power (and you may already have access to a scanner). Also, even with a large stylus, the resolution is too coarse for small writing, so you have to write wide-rule-size in order for it to be legible; the available writing surface is also smaller than a notebook page so you're going to have to turn the page a lot more than you're used to.

When I was in high school, the CDs (if provided) were usually already gone when you got the textbook, as they just handed out the same textbooks that were used in the previous year. I don't remember there being PDFs of the entire textbook on those CDs anyway due to copying concerns, there would just be (for example) some extra tests and exercises or visualization software for math books.

In my view at least, the main advantage of the Edge is the ability to make notes directly on documents. If your teachers give out assignments on PDFs, it might be useful for you to be able to do the assignment directly on those documents. If you often have to do research reports where your sources are available directly on the web, you can annotate those web pages just like you can do with PDFs, and that might be useful for you to keep track of your notes for those projects.

So, as much as I'm trying to promote the Edge to the people I know, I don't want to see someone get it and then be unhappy with it. For most people there are better and/or cheaper alternatives.

Originally Posted by borisb

Your comments are bang on, Chubulor The eDGe, I believe, was meant more for reading all your electronic texts in one device rather than carrying a ton of books, with note taking (and everything else) as a bonus.

The Kindle DX is over $100 cheaper, lighter, with 3G and a much larger selection of books. So the Edge is going to have to do more than that to justify itself (and for my purposes at least, it does -- but most people aren't me).

Netbooks have a keyboard, a more powerful processor, a bigger screen, and an OS that wasn't designed for a cell phone. My intention is not to rip on the Edge, but we should be frank about its limitations.

I agree with being honest. But to compare the eDGe to the Kindle is a bit like apples and oranges. The Kindle is a terrific device for one thing and thats reading books. It is not good for anything else (including reading magazines / newspapers in my opinion). It is also not so good for reading .pdf files, although its possible to so so. On the other hand, the eDGe is a great book reader (eInk side) as well as light web surfing, email, media, apps, etc. Not to mention the fact that Kindle books and Barnes and Noble books are easily read on the eDGe (LCD side). The eDGe is terrific for pdf files because it allows mark-up, etc. So, if you only want to read books, then I think the KIndle is the ideal device. It is cheaper (esp the new one at $139) and lighter than anything else out there. But if you want one device to read books (including books from many sources, not just Kindle books) and do all the other things, then the eDGe is a terrific choice.

Simply check for PDF and epub files. You read them on the ereader part. Video and images on the netbook part. There are many tools to create your own PDF files. Calibre is a fantastic ebook management tool, to keep track of your ebooks like itunes for your music, and to convert almost any format to any other format. http://calibre-ebook.com/

Back to high school. It seems like the high school texts are going to be limited. If, however, you need to read entire classic books, the eDGe may be a good fit. If you are reading The Illiad, for example, you can have one version on the eInk side and have another version, a dictionary, a summary, a video, etc on the lcd side to help with various parts and nuances of the book.

The eDGe is also really good for marking up the text, you can add notes, highlight, add links, etc as you are reading. For class note-taking, I think it depends on your note-taking style. *I* tended to underestimate the amount of space needed and got a 0.3 mm pencil to help me write ever smaller. So, the eDGe would not have been a good fit for me in taking notes. Perhaps it would be fine for you, I don't know.

Again, thank you all so much for your input. Just one last question. When you talk about the eventual Android update to 2.1 or 2.2, what would that include? Would the Android marketplace be one of those things?

Originally Posted by glamdringguy

Again, thank you all so much for your input. Just one last question. When you talk about the eventual Android update to 2.1 or 2.2, what would that include? Would the Android marketplace be one of those things?

If/when Google opens up the Android Market to non-phone devices is not directly related to the fact that the eDGe uses Android 1.6 rather than 2.x. My guess is that we will get a 2.x update sometime in August. A lot of people expect that Google will release a new version of Android Market sometime in late 2010 that will support non-phone devices, but no official announcement has been made as far as I'm aware.

Originally Posted by dcubed2

Back to high school. It seems like the high school texts are going to be limited. If, however, you need to read entire classic books, the eDGe may be a good fit. If you are reading The Illiad, for example, you can have one version on the eInk side and have another version, a dictionary, a summary, a video, etc on the lcd side to help with various parts and nuances of the book.

Well, this can be done with a netbook and a Kindle together costing less than the Edge. Or even cheaper, a netbook and paperback...this is a real stretch as a justification for shelling out $500, especially since the Edge LCD side is significantly weaker than a netbook.

One thing that might change this would be a feature allowing you to open multiple documents on the e-reader side so that they're simultaneously visible (and markable!), each taking up part of the e-ink display. I've had to resort to opening up one PDF on the LCD side and one on the eink side several times, each time giving me the netbook-duct-taped-to-an-ereader feeling, which especially irks me because I already had a laptop and a Kindle before I got the Edge.

The eDGe is also really good for marking up the text, you can add notes, highlight, add links, etc as you are reading. For class note-taking, I think it depends on your note-taking style. *I* tended to underestimate the amount of space needed and got a 0.3 mm pencil to help me write ever smaller. So, the eDGe would not have been a good fit for me in taking notes. Perhaps it would be fine for you, I don't know.

On this I agree. Annotating text is something that puts the Edge above all its competitors in that price range, for those who have use for that feature.