Kindle DX for textbooks/scientific papers?

WhiteChristmas

Converting pdf textbooks is a bit rubbish; Calibre tends to try to extract any text from diagrams and its picture handling is poor.

I've tried putting the pdfs on my K3 and they're readable, but unwieldy because of their size.

asbokid

WhiteChristmas wrote: »

Converting pdf textbooks is a bit rubbish; Calibre tends to try to extract any text from diagrams and its picture handling is poor. I've tried putting the pdfs on my K3 and they're readable, but unwieldy because of their size.

colour e-ink screens are in development.. amazon is playing catch-up with the competition.

maybe worth holding off with the purchase of a kindle, until a colour version is released. or else consider one of the sensibly priced alternatives to the kindle. These devices are worth little more than $10.

sillygoose

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

Yes it can but often you end up with words wrapping mid word , I need to sort this for my hols next week , if I get it working will post back

Found it works better setting the kindle to Landscape for a lot of pdf documents, the longer lines often let the kindle show with the original formatting and paragraph/line breaks.

If the DX is like a normal kindle, putting documents on is no more difficult than plugging it into the PC with the USB cable and copying the files over as to any external drive.

mr_fishbulb

Reactive wrote: »

I would, but I don't know anyone with a DX, or anywhere where I could try one out!

I meant on a normal Kindle. See how small the text is and if you can read it.

mr_fishbulb

asbokid wrote: »

colour e-ink screens are in development.. amazon is playing catch-up with the competition.

Wouldn't really need a colour version for a text book though. Although I do admit I could do with a colour screen for the photography books I read.

asbokid wrote: »

These devices are worth little more than $10.

Plus all the money spend developing and licensing the technology that goes into them.

WhiteChristmas

asbokid wrote: »

colour e-ink screens are in development.. amazon is playing catch-up with the competition.

Colour e-ink is certainly in development, but don't hold your breath.

The numbers are a closely guarded secret, but the best guesses seem to be that Amazon aren't making much from Kindle hardware sales; like the console makers they're selling at near-cost price.

How much is a commercial colour e-ink device going to cost to produce? To sell?

The Kindle's market is the novel - it doesn't need colour. "Picture books" - all your BBC tie-ins, nature and travel albums, photography books etc - need higher resolution and better colour reproduction than e-ink is ever likely to be capable of.

To be really beneficial to the e-reading experience, the colour screen would have to be significantly larger than the current Kindle screen; magazines and comics are where the volume sales lie. This isn't Amazon's market - direct subscription is likely to win out in this field - so although Amazon is making occasional noises about a colour Kindle, they're not pursuing it with any great vigour.

I just can't see a colour A4+ e-ink device winning a price/format war with an iPad.

That said, I made a similar argument about the introduction of video to the iPod but people seem to have adapted to watching blockbusters on a 5cm screen.

Time will tell, but I wouldn't be surprised if commercial success - or even significant market presence - is a decade away for colour e-ink.

The Kindle follows in the footsteps of the iPod 3G and the Nokia 3330; it is a near-perfect gadget, optimised for its task. No doubt, like the other two, progress will see it being "improved" out of all usefulness.

asbokid

WhiteChristmas wrote: »

The numbers are a closely guarded secret, but the best guesses seem to be that Amazon aren't making much from Kindle hardware sales

Are you serious? The Kindle is a $10 device. Technologically, the Kindle has no components that warrant its ludicrous price tag.

How much is a commercial colour e-ink device going to cost to produce? To sell?

Study the technology and it's clear that a colour electrophoretic display (EPD) costs little more to produce than a monochrome EPD.

In fact, 12 bit colour depth has already been achieved in electrophoretic display panels. This has been accomplished in two ways. Through the use of different coloured charged e-ink particles in the microcapsules or by the addition of coloured filter masks in the top laminate layer of the EPD.

The existing technology of the two cathode array layers to the EPD, which attract or repel the charged e-ink particles, does not require physical modification for use with colour EPDs.

As such, both of those colour technologies - colour filter masks and the colouring of the charged e-ink particles - add nothing significant to the minimal fabrication cost of the display panel. Whether colour or monochrome, the panels still cost just a few pence to manufacture.

The Kindle's market is the novel - it doesn't need colour.

The lack of colour severely limits the Kindle's usefulness for many purposes, in particular, for technical applications. Colour is routinely used in molecular images, for example. The absence of colour also makes the device deeply unattractive to youngsters.

I don't know who would want to read a broadsheet newspaper on a 600x800 pixel display. The task of finding and zooming to the area of interest on the page must be painfully inconvenient.