Kindle Paperwhite For Science Documents

[teroenza]

Hi all. I'm considering buying a Kindle paperwhite (E-ink) for reading publications, textbooks, and some fun reading. Does anyone own one, and have an opinion on how readable the text, equations, and figures are? If so, do you feel the screen size is adequate? ~$100 is about the most I have to spend on this, and the battery life is very appealing to me.

 

[Doug Huffman]

I love mine and it does reasonably well with technical documents properly prepared for it - not many are. Also images are probably not rendered adequately for textbook illustrations. But it is reliable and convenient. ATM I am reading Unger and Smolin's Singular Universe on it, because of the delayed release of the P-book that I ordered in August. I have hundreds of arXiv pre/re-prints archived.

 

[teroenza]

Thank you. By properly prepared, do you mean by the publisher, or is this something you can do via file conversions?

 

[MidgetDwarf]

I would get a refurbished samsung tablet pro or better. It is not constrained by hardrive limitations. Yo u can use a cloud server or usb devices to get around the hardrive limitations. It has a great doc u mentioned viewer etc.

 

[vanhees71]

I'm not owning a Kindle but a tablet with high resolution. I love to read papers and books with it (although I'm of this old-fashioned kind who likes to print out texts and read them on paper :-)). As long as one has a pdf file everything is perfect, including formulae. I've the impression that some ebook-formats are not well suited for technical typesetting, because there formulae usually look not that good and sometimes are even distorted. Maybe that's better on a real ebook reader, but I have none to check. What made me buy a tablet and not a Kindle was also the quite small storage. In my tablet I use a 64GB SD card, where I can keep all my stuff as on my PC.

 

[Doug Huffman]

Thank you. By properly prepared, do you mean by the publisher, or is this something you can do via file conversions?

Well, I don't know the publishing protocol, but yes the publisher is certainly involved, if only for setting a standard.

 

[nsaspook]

I purchased two for work and love them for field use with the latest software. I mainly use calibre to keep the work Paperwhites updated with technical information that's mainly in PDF files. Most of the tablets I looked at were rather flimsy, when the Kindle is enclosed in a https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DIEYL3C/?tag=pfamazon01-20 they can handle just about any amount of abuse and the battery life is great.

 

[teroenza]

Thanks. I'm going to try and find a friend who owns one and run some .pdf papers and textbooks through it. If it renders quick enough, and I find the screen size adequate, I'm going to buy a new paperwhite 2.

 

[SredniVashtar]

I do not own a Kindle, but screen size is of outmost importance when reading technical and science papers and books. Personally I would suggest a 10 inch tablet (I have a cheap chinese 9.6" tablet in 4:3 form factor and I find it just perfect - it is slow for other apps but as ebook reader it's perfect). I've had an 8 inch tablet too, still in 4:3 form factor, and it was usable, but the 10 inches is much, much better.
I use EBookDroid as my main e-book reader app: free, no ads and tons of options.

 

[nsaspook]

It's nice to have something that will fit in a pocket easily. The 7" Kindle will fit in the large pocket of cargo pants. No need for a 'man' purse to carry your electronics on the go.

 

[SredniVashtar]

nsaspook, I see your point. Moreover, battery life of an e-ink device is amazingly longer than any tablet or smartphone. But most technical and scientific documents are not born to be read in a pocketbook format. Even if they can be reflowed (and that would be an exception), screen size is too small to... get the big picture. You can see in the video you posted how small the page is. And if there is no reflow, panning through a magnified text is unnerving to say the least.
But then, I guess it's a matter of personal taste and priorities.

Oh, yes, and I meant to write "utmost", not "outmost" in my previous message. That was grammatically utrageous.