Jan 27 2011
An E-reader for an Academic
Photo courtesy of wired.com
When it comes to technology, I’m not quite an early adopter, not quite the person who gets the gadget when it’s super-trendy and appears everywhere. I like to read reviews from real people, learn about the bugs and limitations, etc. With a limited income, I feel like this is the smartest way to do things.
Even though I certainly wouldn’t be considered an early adopter of e-readers, I’ve been hesitant to get one. Namely, I don’t believe I read enough books per year to justify them, as well as I believe they haven’t really hit their stride in quality. If you follow me on Twitter or know me in real life, I have seriously considered buying an e-reader for the PDF reading features. Two of my classes lack textbooks and are strictly using PDFs, partially out of kindness to our wallets, partially because we’re reading research papers.
Reading PDFs on the computer (last night, I read roughly 150 pages) is very tiring on one’s eyes, and I imagine, not very healthy for the eyes. I honestly cannot justify wasting that much paper (and spending that much money on ink and paper) to print these items. I decided to look into getting an e-reader for this reason alone.
The internet, as well as advice from friends, hasn’t really produced a clear idea of what I should get. The contenders are the Barnes and Noble Nook and the Amazon Kindle. Someone suggested Apple’s iPad, but I’m looking for the E-ink technology that will not be so straining (allegedly) on the eyes.
Right now, in my mind, there is no real winner. I use Amazon significantly more than BN, but you can also get e-textbooks from BN, which may be nice to do in the future. A friend said that some library books can be electronically checked out via the Nook, which may nice as well.
Although I intend to go in person to check out the e-reader situation this weekend, I thought I’d open this decision up to any academic or industry types out there who use their e-readers for PDF purposes. I just want something that loads PDFs at decent speed, shows clear PDFs, uses E-ink, and allows the user to highlight or write notes.
Is this e-reader something currently not in existence, or does one of the e-readers (doesn’t matter if it is the two I’m thinking about) do this?
I am in the exact same situation. I tested the Nook today and was not impressed. I’m leaning towards the Kindle, but I don’t think it’s really what I want. Please let me know if you found a good solution.
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Aleksie Reply:
May 23rd, 2011 at 1:35 pm
I haven’t had a chance to update, but my Sony e-reader (Daily Edition) had a hardware failure of sorts; a black line appeared, regardless of whether power was on or off. I’m waiting for its return.
The Daily Edition is far from perfect but seems to do the job okay prior to the hardware failure; it handles text PDFs decently, though sometimes it splits words oddly. It handles image PDFs okay; some of them were still pretty small but legible for me to get through.
In many respects, I think paper may be the best solution. Best of luck in your search.
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Hi,
I picked up a kindle DX about two months ago and it has been excellent for reading pdf’s with diagrams and the highlighting note taking function is useable…
So much so that I am not kicking myself for missing the new kindle releases this month:)
It is possible that the DX will start to appear as a discounted item. If so I can heartily recommend picking one up! There isnt anything else of the size that has the readability.
If they made a touchscreen dx it would be the only choice for academic pdfs.
R
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