28 Jan
2011
28 Jan
'11
6:34 a.m.
On Fri, 28 Jan 2011, Tom Uban wrote:
While I generally prefer the real McCoy to an eBook
reader, it dawned
on me this morning (ok maybe I'm slow) that something like the Amazon
Kindle might be a good way to store/view the collection of documents on
bitsavers? So, with this in mind, here are some questions (please forgive
me if simple research would answer any of these - I guess I'm really just
trying to start a discussion about this):
- how much of the archive would fit onto one of these devices?
- is there an easy way to load/shuffle these documents onto the device?
- are the documents in a format which is presentable on these devices?
- can large foldout schematics and such be viewed on these devices?
- how much of an advantage would one of these devices hold over a laptop?
Hey Tom;
I received a Kindle for Christmas and have been hitting up against the
same sorts of things. I refuse to purchase books from Amazon through this
thing (why pay $5 less for a book you could physically own that they can't
"take back"?), so reading manuals is pretty much all I've done with it.
Mine (a standard current-gen Kindle) has 4G of space. I don't know how big
the full archive is, but I'm guessing somewhat larger than 4G ;)
The Kindle has a mini-USB port which is used to charge it. When you plug
it into a host, however, it will appear as a regular storage device.
Amazon has its own file format that they like to use with the Kindle.
However it will read standard PDFs after you drop them onto it. I've yet
to find one it can't read. You _can_ eMail your PDFs to various Amazon
addresses and it will automatically convert it to their proprietary
format. One address will WiFi/3G it direct onto your device "magically"
fopr a fee, the other will eMail it back to you, and you have to manually
copy it over to the device (no charge).
The device will automatically scale the image to fit, but you can zoom in.
The standard Kindle screen is a tad small, the larger "DX" Kindle has a
9.7" screen which I imagine would make viewing these sorts of things much,
much easier. But it's $120 more.
I'm thoroughly enjoying the portability of packing manuals onto it. I've
come across two detractors which has made me wishy-washy over the future
of using it - firstly, with the standard Kindle, the screen is just too
damned small. My eyesight isn't so hot, so having to hover my nose three
inches above it is getting annoying (especially when you're trying to read
the labels on pins, or worse, from an old scanned manual). The other is
that it just isn't as nice to flip around as a physical book. The Kindle
has a 'bookmarking' system, but when you want to jump ahead or back
between pages, you find yourself memorising the number of page-clicks to
get there, because using the bookmarks is kind of clumsy (something I find
is often easier with a laptop because most PDF readers provide a
'thumbnail' view of all the pages that you can more easily flick
between... if they're in relative proximity).
So. For what it's worth, I think it's a great little device, the screen
quality (eInk) is really quite stunning, and it is feather-light. But
sometimes I wish I had the real thing ;)
(Two month owner)
- JP