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> I bought an Amazon Kindle. It's very nice. Feel free to ask me about it if
> you care. :-)
I find two things most important with these kind of gagdets:
1) How responsive is the UI? There's no excuse nowadays for the GUI not to
change instantly when you press buttons.
2) How comfortable is the screen to read from? What's the resolution and
does it work under all lighting conditions (direct sunlight, office, dark
room etc).
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On 25/08/2010 11:33 AM, scott wrote:
>> I bought an Amazon Kindle. It's very nice. Feel free to ask me about
>> it if you care. :-)
>
> I find two things most important with these kind of gagdets:
>
> 1) How responsive is the UI? There's no excuse nowadays for the GUI not
> to change instantly when you press buttons.
>
There is a reason. The Electronic papers used have a very low refresh
rate and ghosting can occur. My Sony flashes black then white to
overcome this, slowing page turning down even further. Having said that
I find it acceptable.
> 2) How comfortable is the screen to read from? What's the resolution and
> does it work under all lighting conditions (direct sunlight, office,
> dark room etc).
>
>
Mine has a resolution of 600 x 800 pixels on a 6” screen, 8-levels gray
scale, fits in a jacket pocket and although a bit reflective can easily
be read under artificial light or bright sunlight.
--
Best Regards,
Stephen
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>> 1) How responsive is the UI? There's no excuse nowadays for the GUI not
>> to change instantly when you press buttons.
>
> There is a reason. The Electronic papers used have a very low refresh rate
> and ghosting can occur. My Sony flashes black then white to overcome this,
> slowing page turning down even further. Having said that I find it
> acceptable.
I meant more that when you press a button, there should be some instant
feedback that you actually pressed it (I understand due to the low power
screen technology used the refresh rate is going to be slow, but there are
ways around that like you mentioned with the black/white flash). There's
nothing worse than pressing a button, apparently nothing is happening so you
press it again, only to find the system registered two presses of the button
and you need to go back.
> Mine has a resolution of 600 x 800 pixels on a 6” screen, 8-levels gray
> scale, fits in a jacket pocket and although a bit reflective can easily be
> read under artificial light or bright sunlight.
What about low light conditions? Is it comfortable to read in the dark with
just a bed-side lamp or similar? I'm guessing it doesn't have any lighting
of its own to keep battery usage down?
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On 25/08/2010 1:55 PM, scott wrote:
>
> I meant more that when you press a button, there should be some instant
> feedback that you actually pressed it (I understand due to the low power
> screen technology used the refresh rate is going to be slow, but there
> are ways around that like you mentioned with the black/white flash).
> There's nothing worse than pressing a button, apparently nothing is
> happening so you press it again, only to find the system registered two
> presses of the button and you need to go back.
>
With mine there is the tactical feedback of pressing a button but
swiping the touch screen is less obvious that the command has been
recognised.
>> Mine has a resolution of 600 x 800 pixels on a 6” screen, 8-levels
>> gray scale, fits in a jacket pocket and although a bit reflective can
>> easily be read under artificial light or bright sunlight.
>
> What about low light conditions? Is it comfortable to read in the dark
> with just a bed-side lamp or similar? I'm guessing it doesn't have any
> lighting of its own to keep battery usage down?
>
When using a bedside lamp I increase the font size to Medium as Small is
too hard for me to read. But then my eyes are not as young as they used
to be.
I would recommend e-readers to anyone who can afford them. My wife who
has a penchant for 19th century authors now has an almost unlimited
supply of free books. A good site, besides Project Guttenberg is
http://www.archive.org/details/texts
--
Best Regards,
Stephen
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Neeum Zawan wrote:
> Why?
For one, it's easy to travel.
> Honest question. The things preventing me from buying one are worry
> over how long I can keep any books I buy, and because I've shifted to
> libraries anyway.
That bothered me for a while also. Then I realized I have large stacks of
books that I've read once and will likely never read again. As well as other
stacks of technical books that will be obsolete long before I run out of
space on the kindle. As well as bunches of free books in electronic form
that would be quite annoying to read on a computer screen.
Any book I want to read again in 15 years I'll buy again, or buy in
paperback in the first place, assuming I didn't find it online for free
somewhere without the DRM.
I might have bought a Nook if it had the bigger screen; the fact that it's
android (and hence likely going to have a jailbreak at some point) and the
"loan a book" thing were cool. I thought the UI on the Nook was very
confusing for the half hour I played with one.
I might have bought an iPad if I had any other Apple hardware in the house.
As it is, I bought a Kindle.
Sure, they could take books off the machine in spite of their promises not
to. (After the 1984 thing, they promised that while they'll take it out of
the library, they won't retroactively delete it from your device.) Sure lots
of the books probably have DRM on them. But there's ways around that for the
occasions where it's a problem.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Quoth the raven:
Need S'Mores!
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Jim Henderson wrote:
> Well, that's the reason I didn't get a Kindle, honestly - with the whole
> fiasco Amazon had over 1984, I prefer something where I can back up my
> books manually (which I can do with the Nook).
You can back up your Kindle books. I think most of the new ones have DRM,
but the classics (that Amazon gives you for free) have bunches of readable
words in them (like, Arabian Nights has Knight and Dog and Sand and stuff
like that amongst the gibberish) so I'm assuming that one isn't encrypted.
But you can trivially copy everything off the kindle, reset it back to
factory defaults, and copy the files back on and everything works fine.
Altho I admit I haven't bought a DRMed book yet, so I couldn't guarantee
anything there until I do.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Quoth the raven:
Need S'Mores!
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scott wrote:
> 1) How responsive is the UI? There's no excuse nowadays for the GUI no
t
> to change instantly when you press buttons.
The buttons are clicky. Taking it out of sleep mode takes a couple of
seconds, for whatever reason, turning pages takes a quarter second betwee
n
button push and the page changing. Or, to put it another way, it takes
longer to redraw the screen than to respond to the click. A particularly
nasty PDF gives you an "opening page 3 of 7" kind of please-wait screen.
> 2) How comfortable is the screen to read from? What's the resolution
> and does it work under all lighting conditions (direct sunlight, office
,
> dark room etc).
(Come now. Some of these things are a simple google away. :-)
9.7" diagonal E Ink® electronic paper display, 1200 x 824 pixel re
solution
at 150 ppi, 16-level gray scale, new 10:1 contrast ratio.
It's comfortable to read in all different reading environments. A dark ro
om,
obviously, needs a book light. It's pretty much like a paperback book,
except a touch smoother so there's a bit of radiosity going on. No glare,
tho. It's pretty much the same e-ink that the nook and the sony readers
have, so take a look at those for an idea.
Oh, and I found a very nice hard zippered case, as well as a hard plastic
clamshell and screen protector, if you take it traveling or something. I'
ll
dig up the details if anyone cares.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Quoth the raven:
Need S'Mores!
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On 24-8-2010 19:47, Darren New wrote:
> Kevin Wampler wrote:
>> Thanks! Both this and Jim's replies have been very useful.
>
> As I say, send me a complex PDF and I'll take a photo of the screen so
> you can see how it looks.
what about 3D pdf? The only one I have here ATM is too big to post
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On Wed, 25 Aug 2010 10:28:28 +0100, Stephen wrote:
> On 24/08/2010 8:32 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Ah, I wish I was rich.;-)
>>
>>
> Would it help if I called you Rich(ard) ;-)
Nope, 'cause that's one of my older brothers. ;-)
Jim
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On Wed, 25 Aug 2010 22:32:39 +0200, andrel wrote:
> On 24-8-2010 19:47, Darren New wrote:
>> Kevin Wampler wrote:
>>> Thanks! Both this and Jim's replies have been very useful.
>>
>> As I say, send me a complex PDF and I'll take a photo of the screen so
>> you can see how it looks.
>
> what about 3D pdf? The only one I have here ATM is too big to post
Honestly don't know, if you wanted to e-mail it to me, I could try it and
see. I'm thinking it probably won't have full functionality (at least).
hendersj at gmail.
Jim
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