Kindle with technical documents

[DaveW]

Dave/anyone else with a 6" screen Kindle

#205 reviewing the Kindle was interesting, but would it be possible to tell us what the Kindle with 6" screen is like reading technical documents, application notes etc, even if one has to scroll multiple times for a page...

Thanks

[ElektroQuark]

Hi:

I have not a Kindle, but I have an iLiad (8") since a couple of years and an ASUS Eeepad Transformer (Tablet based on Android) sice 3 months.
I have read many many PDF documents, notes and books, with the iLiad, and many of them has an excesive little fonts and are difficult and unpleasant to read. Even in zoom mode.
But with the Transformer reading those types of documents is a totally different experience: more easy to zoom and displace the document around the screen with two fingers.
I know that one is based on e-ink and the later on TFT but I, that was an e-ink fan, have seen the light with the Transformer and those types of documents.

I know that is a personal taste thing so I recommend you to try both types of devices in a store before take the decision of what to buy.

[EEVblog]

I did exactly that on the review of the Kindle 3, so didn't see a need to repeat it again for the new model with the same screen.
It's basically hopeless. These devices are not designed to easily view fixed page size documents like PDF files.
You can do it of course, but it's a real PITA to have to scroll around and zoom.
I haven't tried the 9" Kindle, but I suspect that would be much closer to the mark.

Dave.

[DaveW]

Cheers, missed that in the last review-always good to hear from someone who's actually tried it. Shame the 9" is a lot more expensive

[saturation]

One consideration is that e-ink screens I've seen flash or blink to black as it rewrites each page, if you read quickly that flashing can get very frequent and I find annoying.  Also you cannot scroll quickly because of the flash delay which makes large images and pdfs very difficult.  Some are able to get used to it, but I couldn't, so no small kindles for me.

For technical documents you'd really want the reading area to be the same size as it was laid out as many scientific and technical papers, graphs and photos are small and packed, 8 or 9 pt fonts for captions for example, charts with dotted lines and dashed lines and mixes of them in graphs have to be discriminated. 

[TheWelly888]

Well.... I use a laptop rather than a PC and it perfect for reading pdfs! 

[saturation]

I use this one for traveling:



It basically a reader than reads most all document files, from txt to pdf, on an LCD screen and runs off AA batteries.  About $100.  You load material on SD cards.  I think the basic system runs Dr. Yi firmware, and there are many clones that work alike.  It does everything adobe reader does: rotate, zoom, change fonts etc., and as an LCD there is no blinking or flash. 

[ivan747]

I wonder if there's a decent, cheap 9" tablet out there with marvelous PDF support. I tend to like the iPad because the PDF rendering engine is just awesome. It is even better than Adobe's in terms of speed, I think. And the font smoothing is just perfect, and the brightness and contrast of the LCD has no match. I haven't seen a general use LCD screen that beats the contrast of that screen. The only problem here is the price, specially when you want to buy your first decent scope. I guess due to the nature of a LCD screen, reading is also harder.

A cool application for a tablet in electronics is to have multiple PDF's opened somehow along with schematics, online references, etc., but having the tablet stand on the back of the bench, so you can quickly reach it without having to sacrifice too much space as you would with a laptop.

[Semantics]

I use the Kindle DX and it works pretty well with good pdf files (ones that aren't just scanned images). My major issues was that:

a. It remembers your place in the file, which isn't so useful for me because I don't typically read datasheets cover-to-cover and most of them almost read like a pile of spaghetti (see figure 11.6a, refer to table 7.3, written documentation in section 4.
b. You can't open more than one at a time. A lot of time I'm comparing notes.
c. Copying files through the file system is kinda clumsy, and Calibre is really slow and unstable on my system for some reason.

Now that I have a dedicated electronics bench workstation I'll admit I now only use the Kindle for leisure reading.

[Bambur]

In my opinion, you would need at least 8" display to read technical PDF's. It's a pity Kindle is of 6" only, and there is not many 8" e-book readers around. Try to resize the PDF reader window on your computer's display to match 6" and 8", and you will get an idea how it would look like on e-book reader. I wouldn't count on page layout reflow feature, it's worthless in practice.