Comments | pmb: Answering a question from my Dad

pmb

Answering a question from my Dad

Jan 03, 2008 15:11

Is Kindle the future of reading?Kinda ( Read more... )

kindle

Comments 15

clipdude January 3 2008, 23:55:05 UTC

I would not want such a device if it were incapable of displaying PDF files.

PDFs are all I read for school nowadays pmb January 3 2008, 23:58:21 UTC

It's like they see all the potential of the device and are so scared of it that they went out of their way to make it something I don't want and can't use.

anonymous January 4 2008, 00:17:31 UTC

That PDFs can't be be read (well, actually they can be converted to AZW in exactly the same manner as HTML and the like -- it's just something that's not advertised, since conversion is so imperfect) is a technical limitation rather than due to a concern over content. The kindle is paperback-sized, and it's difficult, for example, to re-layout the text in PDFs to display nicely on pages with different page widths. I don't know about the feasibility of a pan-and-zoom approach, but I wouldn't guess it'd be a pleasant experience to read whole papers in such a fashion.

That doesn't make the fact that you can't comfortably read PDFs on a kindle any better -- it's a technical limitation that's keeping me from buying a reader, too. But just so you know, it's a technical issue rather than a Trusted Computing issue.

bookerz January 4 2008, 00:21:35 UTC

Sorry -- was me.

maerdi January 4 2008, 00:21:43 UTC

That was my impression, as well.

kirinn January 4 2008, 00:31:16 UTC

Pan-and-zoom, I hear, works basically not at all on this type of device because of the slow refresh rate of e-ink.

Really, it seems like re-laying-out PDFs (or at least all but the 10% most-complicated PDFs) ought to be an easier problem to solve.

Thread 5

erinpie January 4 2008, 00:51:41 UTC

I'm happy with the Sony EReader. Same display, also can display pdfs, which is handy for my pubmed searching. Instead of printing a bunch of articles, I can just transfer them to my ereader and browse them at my leisure.

There are still things I would change about it if it was up to me, but I figure somebody has to buy the early generations of this stuff so they put effort into making more. ;)

(The comment has been removed)

Re: booksniffing enth January 4 2008, 05:32:39 UTC

fwiw i understand the kindle encourages adding marginal notes to anything you read on it. that's what the painful looking little keyboard is for.

Do something abou it...send Amazon a note. mlissner January 4 2008, 07:14:09 UTC

Amen man.

Here's the link to the contact Amazon page:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us/general-questions.html?ie=UTF8&browse%5Fnode%5Fid=508510&jsEnabled=enabled#csTop

I'm not convinced it will do anything, but it couldn't hurt...