PDA's

[Ghosth]

Several of the ereaders will do PDF's, most of them are not big enough to do a really good job with them.

Even the Jetbook will open a pdf, but its grayscale not color. And in order to actually read it you need to zoom.
Then you end up using the cursor to scroll down, then back up every page.

If your seriously looking at E-readers first place I'd start is mobileread.

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/index.php
They have a very good community there, but as in this community, opinions abound.
Listen to it all and make up your own mind.

Also there is a good video where an author shows 9 different ereaders.
Really gives you a good feel for the size of the device, what its going to look like.
Link is here

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=74902

I highly recommend that anyone even considering an ereader take the time to watch the video.
You'll learn a lot in a short amount of time.

[bj229r]

Very cool forum Ghosth 

[Ghosth]

I mostly hang out in the Jetbook forum there.

Ohh and don't forget to checkout their upload section. Ton of books there, all free.

[Vulcan]

The only reason she is stuck with it is her company requires a phone to sync with thier Exchange server.  It is rare that I can actually reach her on her cell phone.  It seems to be either low on power or locked up.  She misses her Palm Pilot.  It just worked.  Today it seems we are on the path of 'new technology regardless of how inept or useless the implementation is'.

And Microsofts new mobile OS update is not backward compatible with the current OS.  Sheesh.  What a ripoff.

I'm like the last person using my Palm Treo at work skuzzy   - everyone has migrated to iphones. Now they're finding the same crap they moaned about on the treo they now moan about on the iphone with some new 'features' thrown in. There are still things the iphone cannot do so I've stuck with my treo (like changing the battery and call recording).

To be far to MS, they had to lose compatibility on the phone OS, the old version sucked so badly.

[715]

The Amazon Kindle says it can read and display PDFs.  It's only 8" x 5".  Although it talks about "emailing" PDFs to your Kindle, you can apparently also just load them via USB. 

[Skuzzy]

I'm like the last person using my Palm Treo at work skuzzy   - everyone has migrated to iphones. Now they're finding the same crap they moaned about on the treo they now moan about on the iphone with some new 'features' thrown in. There are still things the iphone cannot do so I've stuck with my treo (like changing the battery and call recording).

To be far to MS, they had to lose compatibility on the phone OS, the old version sucked so badly.

Oh, I know Winblows Mobile 6 was a piece of dodo and nothing should ever be compatible with it.

She still sneaks her Palm Pilot V out into the feild, on big jobs.  She just brings it home to do the conversion to AutoCAD.  She says it saves he days of work.  Everyone at her office cannot figure out how she gets those big jobs done so fast.  I dread the day that she drops it and breaks it as there is not another product in the market that can replace it.

[Ghosth]

715, with the kindle it is my understanding that you email them to amazon, they convert them to a proprietary format, and then add them to your bookshelf. I don't think its as simple as load them with a USB connection. But I don't have one, can't tell you for certain. But I'm pretty sure they don't read straight pdf's.

[bj229r]

From all I've seen, Kindles don't natively do pdf's, and furthermore, the e-book community seems to have a very snotty attitude toward pdf's in general. I guess you can convert them with varying success, but I'd rather not have to do that with hundreds of the things...and a lot of older tech sheets are simply poorly scanned in sheets of paper stored as pdf's. Does anyone know what the term 'Reflow' means when describing how small screens view larger pdf's? Whatever it is, it seems to be a significant feature

[eagl]

Palm desktop is repeatedly corrupting my wife's contact database, so we're replacing her old phone and palm TX with a palm pre.  She's reasonably familiar with how palm devices work and I think she'll be happy replacing 2 items with one.

The palm pre and pixi have an installation program that will do a one-time import from her old palm desktop databases into the pre, moving over contacts, calendar, tasks, etc.  I really hope that this works since her contacts and the comments she's embedded in them are a valuable summary/history/archive of her professional career.

The main concerns I have are if she'll be happy using gmail or outlook to manage her contacts, battery life, and device complexity.  I think they're all manageable issues so even though it is an expensive experiment, we're going to give it a shot.

[Ghosth]

(Clippage)..In a reflowed document, text remains at its original size even when the window size changes, so that it's easier to view. In contrast, images reduce in size to accommodate a smaller window size, so that they can be viewed at a glance....

Some readers do reflow, but even the ones that do may have issues with some pdf's. They have to be created correctly, "tagged" in order to do reflow.


(more clippage)....PDF is so widely used because it presents information in a uniform, fixed fashion. This means that whether you view PDF Document A on your computer, a friend's or (just about) anywhere else, the document will be pretty much exactly as it was meant to be viewed, thus ensuring reliable viewing and printing. There are caveats, of course, regarding embedded fonts and such, but it's an extremely reliable way to ensure documents are the way you want them to be when you send them out or make them available to others.

One of the biggest strengths of PDF -- its uniform, fixed formatting for easy viewing and printing -- is one of its biggest shortcomings in the e-reader world. However, you can create a tagged PDF file to resolve this issue. Tagged PDF files can be reflowed, such that when the tagged file is viewed on a reader device its text and images will reflow to fit on the smaller screen. If you are creating PDF documents for viewing on readers, you can create them as tagged PDF files and if the reader supports reflow, you will be able to view the documents in reflow mode......

That said, however, there are better formats for e-readers and the one I recommend is EPUB. EPUB is the industry standard for e-documents and e-books. Any e-reader that supports EPUB fully supports all of its advanced features, which includes advanced support for reflow, tables, figures and graphics. I'll write more about EPUB in upcoming posts, and as I am able.

If you have non-tagged or even tagged PDF files that you want to convert to EPUB, there are tools available that allow you to covert these PDF files to EPUB. Once you do this, you'll have a better viewing and reading experience on your e-reader.


The other option for most readers is zoom, which has the advantage in that the document doesn't change.
However you may have to scroll up down, left right for each page. Which very quickly becomes a very real pain.

In my experience, if a PDF is just text, it converts quite nicely with several different tools to a basic text file.
 *.txt
The better tools will probably have the ability to save as *.rtf, or *.epub.

The only exception to this that I am aware of would be the Kindle DX.
Being large enough to display PDF's without having to reflow or zoom.
But I don't know if it can be loaded directly via computer & usb cable.
Or if it has to be emailed to kindle and "converted" and placed on your bookshelf.

Best chance for exact answers are going to be in the MobileRead Kindle section.

[715]

From all I've seen, Kindles don't natively do pdf's, and furthermore, the e-book community seems to have a very snotty attitude toward pdf's in general. I guess you can convert them with varying success, but I'd rather not have to do that with hundreds of the things...and a lot of older tech sheets are simply poorly scanned in sheets of paper stored as pdf's. Does anyone know what the term 'Reflow' means when describing how small screens view larger pdf's? Whatever it is, it seems to be a significant feature

The Amazon Kindle page implies native support for PDF: "Built-In PDF Reader: Your Kindle can now display PDF documents natively. Native PDF support allows you to carry and read all of your personal and professional documents on the go."  However, they won't "reflow".  For that, you have to send them to Amazon for conversion to Kindle format.

Buried on the Help page for Kindle file transfer (http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200375630#email) is this:

"Your Kindle can now display PDF documents without losing the formatting of the original file. Send PDF documents directly to your Kindle (via your @Kindle address) or drag and drop PDF files from your computer to your Kindle (when connected via USB). You can also magnify PDFs by viewing them in landscape mode.  Some features are not currently supported, including annotations, Text-to-Speech, and zooming and panning."

I don't have one... I'm just going by what the Amazon web page says.

[bj229r]

I was looking at one on wife's Storm2...seemed tolerable, although hard to manipulate

[MutleyBR]

Hi Bj!

IMO, it depends on how long are you gonna be looking at that screen.

LCD and TFT screens used on PDA's and cellphones, are made to be read in situations with different lighting conditions. Even in complete darkness. They cause a lot of eye strain due to backlighting, if used for long periods of time.

E-readers which use E-Ink technology have no backlighting. They need ambient light to be read, just like plain paper. Due to no backlighting, they donīt induce the same eye strain as PDA's and cellphones.

Now 2 questions:

1) Do you intent to be reading e-documents for long periods of time? and,

2) Will you need to read the in complete darkness?

Based on answers to the questions above you can narrow your choices.

Take care!

Mutley