28 Jan
2011
28 Jan
'11
8:39 a.m.
Instead of going the Kindle route, I purchased a 7" Android tablet through
Merimobiles (mine is a "generation" old, but the closest comparison is at
http://www.merimobiles.com/Moonse_APAD_E7001_Aluminium_Version_APP_Market_p…).
It bears some of the limitations of the Kindle: small screen, relatively slow rendering.
But it does include a micro-SD slot, which makes it easier to have a lot of content. The
app Documents To Go (it's $5 or $10, and definitely worth it) includes a pretty good
PDF reader - it hasn't choked on anything I've offered it, including scanned
papers and large PDF engineering drawings. (It reads *and writes* MS-Office docs, too.)
It does have a touchscreen, making panning easier. It does WiFi, but not Bluetooth. And
it's $145.
There is a site (www.slatedroid.com) that supports a vibrant community around these
things, including a guy (Roger Braun) who creates new flash images for them. I upgraded
mine with one of his images and it was not only easier to use (the stock image contains
several apps in Chinese, that did me no good) but it seems faster. There is an app store,
although one caveat: the device I bought is Android 1.6, and some newer apps just
won't run on it (but they don't appear in its app store, either.) USB will either
support an external device such as a keyboard or mount the device as a USB function-based
storage device on your desktop/laptop, making it dead easy to get things on and off the
device.
Did I mention the screen is color! While I think the eInk is well done and nice to look
at, it's a plus to have the color screen, especially when I'm reading the Sunday
paper and get to the comics. (I don't buy the newspaper anymore - there's an app
for that.)
I am not associated with Merimobiles other than as a satisfied customer -- Ian
________________________________________
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of
Joachim Thiemann [joachim.thiemann at gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2011 7:52 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Cc: classiccmp at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Kindle and bitsavers?
On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 09:01, Tom Uban <uban at ubanproductions.com> wrote:
- are the documents in a format which is presentable
on these devices?
I have a 6-inch Kindle; while it does read PDFs well, the small screen
makes reading standard Letter sized documents a bit of a hassle to
read. Either it's eye-killingly small or you have to scroll all over
the place.
I don't know if any of the documents on Bitsavers are in a format that
can be easily converted, but any document that is fairly simple HTML
with inline pictures can easily be converted using various tools
(Calibre) into .mobi, which the Kindle accepts natively, and you can
read it as any e-book with your preference of font, orientation, etc
etc.
For my own documents, I have played a little with reformatting my
LaTeX documents to generate PDFs with smaller page size (ebooks do not
display math as far as I can tell).
- can large foldout schematics and such be viewed on
these devices?
ISTR that decoding a large page in a PDF can be quite slow and slow to
scroll, too. I think (non-e) paper still wins on this one.
- how much of an advantage would one of these devices
hold over a laptop?
The kindle can be propped up against something on your workbench and
not take up space for a keyboard. But the small screen is a
challenge. The DX is one solution. Maybe the various pads will be
better for these tasks; faster cpus and touchscreens will help.
Joe.
--
Joachim Thiemann :: http://www.tsp.ece.mcgill.ca/~jthiem