Metropol

So, in my continuing effort to become Sput and at the same time, be the anti-chie, I am working my way up the ladder of knowledge that is a postgraduate course.

Suffice to say it appears the level of PDF digitised reading has increased substantially. Dundee, as I suspect many unis do, tends to scan in books or get electronic verisons when they cba to get enough copies for the library as they'd rather spend the money on replacing the amazing branded handwash dispensers with new amazing branded handwash dispensers.



Anyhoo, in addition to the folder on the intranet a nice 10mb pile of PDFs recently flumped into my inbox and having opened the first one we're talking 150 pages. Not exactly the sort of stuff you want to read on a glary monitor.

Now previously my trick has been to print them 4 to a page, double sided, on the laser in my flat. It does not have a duplexer, however doing the same on campus would be 7p per double sided sheet (not that I pay for printer credits thanks to my way of charming free ones out of IT but that's beside the point).

Essentially I realised I'd go through an entire ream with just that email and shrinking the text down to such as size to save paper sort of made the whole "paper is more comfortable than screens" issue less black and white.

So, I am therefore tempted by...


and most likely the wifi only version rather than the 3g one.

What I'm wondering is has anyone got one of the things and are they any good as a PDF reader? Can you zoom in to pages as sometimes there is an issue where there is a fair bit of whitespace around a page. How exactly do the annotations work? Are they useable?

There is an article on the register suggesting it might not be brilliant for this purpose however given that I'm one of those "you can't write on a book" types, I tend to do very little in the way of scribbling on the actual documents, rather highlighting chunks and then jotting down notes in my notepad.


So what's the thinking? yay? nay? what you getting an education for anyhow, you should be self employed like me and make a fortune so you can laminate your face?

please respond

For the record (since I already told you in MSN) I recommend just buying a black and white laser printer that can do double-sided and print them yourself, thereby saving money overall.

can you get a pdf reader for your phone? not ideal in an ergonomic sense, a good workaround perhaps?

can't comment on the kindle i'm afraid, and i have never considered buying one, but then i don't read a huge number of books.

Dr Lobster* wrote:can you get a pdf reader for your phone? not ideal in an ergonomic sense, a good workaround perhaps?

I have a piece of shit sony ericsson thing with a tiny screen so not really.

My brother got one of these on launch, and PDFs look stunning on them.

You could always order one and return it if you don't like it...

WillPS wrote:My brother got one of these on launch, and PDFs look stunning on them.

Yes I've been doing some research and it does seem a lovely contraption. The thing that is currently getting to me is the fact it says there is a 2-3 week wait on the thing

I've ordered one, if it doesn't email me to say its coming within the week I'll just stick with paper.

Are the Kindle screens colour?

No - why would they need to be on a device intended for reading?

Do they do colour e-ink yet?

WillPS wrote:No - why would they need to be on a device intended for reading?

Indeed, that was why I was wondering. You wouldn't need it for reading books but it might be useful for PDFs depending on their nature (but in Pete's case possibly not if they're scanned in books)