On Tue, 1 Jun 2010, Ian King wrote: Okay, that tends to limit its usefulness... Does it have the equivelant of an /etc/hosts file, or will it let you punch in an IP address on your own network? There is that, but I can't get one right now, as supposedly it won't work with my Dual 2Ghz PowerMac G5. You're not alone. I *NEED* a new Mac Pro. This isn't simply a want, I need it for Adobe Photoshop, and because bits of my PowerMac are starting to die (onboard NIC and Optical Drive so far). I refuse to buy a model that is 15+ months old! Most models get two updates in that period of time. :-( Zane

Its Wifi is quite useable, and I don't think there'd be any problem using it on one's home network (or things would be REALLY mucked up). But I want to use it the same way you do, and where I do most of my work *there is no Wifi network*. I need the PDFs stored locally. GoodReader will supposedly do that, and it's only 99 cents - but I think it's stupid to be so aggressive about telling the consumer just how you will use the device. The fact that GoodReader exists should be a clear message that people are not interested in being locked into the use cases written by Apple marketers. When I dropped my G4 AlBook <sob>, I bought another one on CraigsList for $250. I did make one mistake: the new one is a 1.25GHz model, and I didn't realize until after the fact that it doesn't have the improved trackpad that lets you scroll with two fingers. I really like that feature - but I'm managing to live without it. I don't know what I'm going to do when my PPC-based products finally fail, but I'll burn that bridge when I come to it. I run PhotoShop on my dual-proc PowerMac, and I think of it as a *feature* that I have time to go get a beer while it starts up. :-) -- Ian

Why all this discussion about the iPad? For the stated purpose (reading PDFs) would not a similar-form-factor _designed specifically for that purpose_ serve much better? By now there are a bunch of "e-readers" with e-ink displays - which one of those is currently best for scanned PDFs (which is what in this context is the primary application!)? I know that many of the current ones have (fairly) low pixel density (thus bad for scanned text even if adequate for OCR'd documents) and many suffer from bad PDF support; but I'd expect that at this stage _someone_ has made one that is of a good size with high resolution. At least most of these now support slapping an SD card full of files into them, right? This way you're not tied to a network (wireless or wired). -- Joachim Thiemann :: http://www.tsp.ece.mcgill.ca/~jthiem

I'm not in a hurry either. It was an idea that popped into my head, and I wanted to now how well it would work. While it would be nice to use a device of its formfactor for this purpose, this thread has pretty much convinced me against this. I'll be looking into setting up either the SGI O2, or a Sun Workstation for this purpose assuming my remaining SVGA CRT still works. If not I might start looking locally for a used LCD (I'm likely going to do that anyway as I could use one or two). Zane On Tue, 1 Jun 2010, Ian King wrote:

On Tue, 1 Jun 2010, Joachim Thiemann wrote: I've tried a Sony eBook Reader, and while it's okay for ebooks, I was less than impressed with it for PDF's. I would expect simular results from other such products due to the design of the display. Zane

At 10:14 PM -0400 6/1/10, Keith wrote: I was under the impression that the slowness in turning pages was due to the design of the display rather than the speed of the processor. I'm still looking for something to replace my Sony Clie as an eBook reader, and have yet to find anything. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |

We've just gone through this excercise - my wife has been reading ebooks on a Sony Clie for many years and we wanted to update it. We ultimately settled on the B&N "Nook" because it is pretty much the only one that will read her many existing books which are mostly in B&N "PDB" format - so far she's been very happy with it. Whe she was looking at them for ebooks, I evaluated them as PDF readers. I use a *LOT* of PDF databooks, and being somewhat old-fashioned, I like to work with them in my lap or on the table ... so I end up printing them out. I usually try to print only the sections I need, but always end up missing something and having to stop and print in the middle of my work - I thought an e-reader would be a good alternative and would have the added bonus of not having to lug 2-foot thick stacks of paper to customer sites. I haven't gotten the nook away from her long enough to try it yet, but two I did try are the "Aluratek Libra" and the "Sony PRS600 touch". The Libra was pretty much a no-go from the start. It had findamental errors like not handling the table-of-contents in many of my PDFs (they worked in some, not in others) - I use the TOC a lot! It also tried to format them in ways that were unviewable and pan and zoom were pretty much unusable. Other issues were slowness and random crashes requiring a reset esp. with larger PDFs. The Sony was more promising, it formatted PDFs properly - I use a lot of databooks with register descriptions and other charts which need to be viewed in their native format. The 6" screen wasn't "quite" big enough - barely readable if you turned it sideways, and although their pan and zoom worked better than the libre, the slowness of the display to respond made it very difficult to use. It basically wasn't real-time pan and zoom. I found it very difficult and tiring to use even with small PDFs which displayed relatively quickly. The big problem with the Sony was the speed of it's processor. On moderate sized PDFs (3-4 megs) it would often become unresponsive for the better part of a minite, causing you to believe it had crashed. It did however faithfully record all your actions during this time so that once it did get around to finishing the operation, it would then "do" all the things you tried to while wondering if it had crashed. This would tie up the device for many minites, and at the end you would be nowhere near where you wanted to be. Even if you were very careful to not stack operations, taking a minite to go to a new page, link etc. makes it unusable in my opinion. Other than pan/zoom, the second it takes to redraw a page did not bother me at all. The largest PDF I tried on the Sony was the ARM architecture manual, which IIRC is about 12M - I ended up resetting it because it hung and apparently "never came back". One thing I really liked about the Sony was that it had a built-in app for taking notes with a stylus - I'm constantly searching for a scrap of paper to write down a note, work out a registers content etc. all of which I need for only a few minites. The Sony worked quite well as a reusable bit of scrap paper. Couldn't justify it's $300 price tag for just this function however. I have high hopes for the Ipad - although I won't be able to get one for some time yet (I'm not a wait-in-line for hours before the store opens kind of guy). It has a larger screen, and not being e-Ink it should pan/zoom much better. Another big advantage I see to it is that you are not tied to a PDF reader provided with it. The restrictions imposed by Apple regarding file transfers are annoying, however there are work arounds. I have an iPod touch which works pretty well except for the fact that the screen us far too small to be useable as a technical PDF viewer. I've seen references to third party stylus and note taking apps as well. [So even though it's not a classic device - I've been reading all the notes on the Ipad esp. as a PDF reader with great interest] Dave -- dave09 (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Classic Computers: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/

On 6/1/2010 3:03 PM, Dave McGuire wrote: While Dave is right that version 1.0 of anything is usually pretty rough..... Two years for a major company with huge resources to add simple features seems just way way too long. I wonder about the obsolescence of the hardware while the OS develops into a usable form. Copy & paste took Apple two years and two major releases (1.x--->3.0) on the iphone. http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/17/iphone-finally-gets-copy-and-paste/ There are plenty of examples of similar phones, PDAs etc, having these basic features ten years before. yeah, ok, uh huh. :) Keith

On 01/06/2010 20:03, Dave McGuire wrote: Except for the awful (lack of) Bluetooth support. But like Roger, I use fileapp and it works well for what I need. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York