On 04/12/2011 11:57 AM, Bill Bogstad wrote: > On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 7:56 AM, Laura Conrad <[email protected]> wrote: >>>>>>> "Chris" == Chris O'Connell <[email protected]> writes: >> Chris> I'm adamant about buying only ebooks from now on. The >> Chris> problem is that very few publishers provide their books in a >> Chris> DRM free format. O'Reilly is one notable exception. >> >> Baen is another. >> >> Chris> I won't be pirating my books, but I don't like the idea of >> Chris> being tied to one device or company (The kindle for example, >> Chris> or BN & their crappy nook). I want PDF portability. >> >> Chris> Any suggestions? >> >> PDF is good for portability between large devices, but for reading on >> small screens, you'd really rather have something that reflows to fit >> the screen, like html or epub. > >From my experience so far with the Kindle, even ebook formats don't work > that well for books with lots of images, charts, graphs, etc. I think the > screen on such devices is just too small to do this well. The Kindle screen > isn't even as big as a mass market paperback and it seems rare to see > anything published in that format which depends on content which isn't > reflowable. Even when I select the inline graphics to 'zoom' them, they are > often still hard to view and doing so disturbs the reading process. I really > want to look at the graphic at the same time that I'm reading the text. > > Admittedly, this could be peculiar to the books/device (Kindle) that I'm using > and it may work better on other similar sized devices. If the Kindle > did away with its keyboard and went to a touchscreen, it could at least > increase it's screen to the size of a mass market paperback which would > help some, but probably not enough. Since I hoped to read technical > publications > on my 'book' reader, I think I see a tablet of some sort in my future. > I think we might be getting off-topic, but... The Color Nook has a touch screen and has a larger screen than the Kindle. It's not an iPad or Xoom, but it also can read both vertical and horizontal.
-- Jerry Feldman <[email protected]> Boston Linux and Unix PGP key id: 537C5846 PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846
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