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Kindle - pdf reading


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You can get them in Tesco, but I don't think they have the new cheaper version (yet?)

 

The kindle is perfectly good for pdfs. While it's better for ebooks (with ebooks you can increase the size of the text, you can't do this with pdfs - you have to zoom in instead), it certainly beats using a computer screen for reading.

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Beat me to it!

 

Calibre is an excellent piece of software which will convert most document formats to kindle files, and offers an excellent library management feature as well.

 

On the subject of .pdf's, how they are handled by the kindle depends upon how they were encoded. If they were generated properly (from files) then the kindle will read them just like any other document, letting you change font size etc. However, if they are made up of images (often the case with scanned documents) then you will have to pan and zoom as mentioned above.

 

I was sceptical of the kindle until I got to use one, now I think they are a fantastic tool, deserving of far more praise, and use, than they get. The whispersync facility is pure genius.

 

For example the recent idea of councillors getting iPads was laughable, but if they were to be sensible enough to get Kindles to replace the reams of paper, that would be a genuine step in the right direction..

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I don't have a kindle but I read lots of PDFs only iPad. I find it useful because I can highlight and annotate the bits which are of interest, but I believe you can do that on the kindle as well.

It is a lot easier than reading on a pc screen.

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One small thing not mentioned which makes a massive difference to me is battery life. The kindle can literally go weeks between charges, something no other device can match as yet.

 

Re: annotations - yes you can do that, along with bookmarking/highlighting etc however I suspect that may not be possible with one of these new cheaper versions without a keyboard, so may be worth bearing in mind if thats a factor. (I can't find any confirmation one way or the other online, but logic says you need a keyboard to enter notes!)

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I don't have a kindle but I read lots of PDFs only iPad. I find it useful because I can highlight and annotate the bits which are of interest, but I believe you can do that on the kindle as well.

It is a lot easier than reading on a pc screen.

 

That's it - I'm now sold on the idea of a Kindle! I saw one recently at our readers group and thought it was quite an interesting gadget, but I'm a bit old-school in that I like reading proper 'books'. However, I have printed off reams and reams of research papers for my OU courses, using a lot of paper and a lot of ink, because I can't read PDFs online. The Kindle sounds like it might make things easier/cheaper for me in that respect for my future courses, especially since they can be annotated. Maybe Santa will be good to me this year. ;)

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