kindle or similar

Swifty_N

Hi all
I'm starting a PhD in UCD in September and I'm considering buying a Kindle. I have a few reasons for this, some or all of which might be misguided.
1. It might save me lugging big books around, if I can buy e-versions instead.
2. I can use the 3G network for reading my gmail on the bus. I'm locked into a crappy contract on my phone and they want an extra tenner a month to let me read my email on it.
3. Hopefully I can convert journal articles and my own notes so that I can read them on it.
Has anyone else done this and would you recommend a Kindle or some other product? A ipad is out of my budget.
TIA

D-Generate

If you are reading journals that are anyway technical then don't bother. It doesn't really support maths equations or graphs/images.

I use the kindle for reading normal books.... iPad for everything else.

gutenberg

Swifty_N wrote: »

Hi all
I'm starting a PhD in UCD in September and I'm considering buying a Kindle. I have a few reasons for this, some or all of which might be misguided.
1. It might save me lugging big books around, if I can buy e-versions instead.
2. I can use the 3G network for reading my gmail on the bus. I'm locked into a crappy contract on my phone and they want an extra tenner a month to let me read my email on it.
3. Hopefully I can convert journal articles and my own notes so that I can read them on it.
Has anyone else done this and would you recommend a Kindle or some other product? A ipad is out of my budget.
TIA

A friend of mine is doing a postgrad and has one (I think it's a Kindle, not quite 100% sure though!). Anyway, she raves about how useful it is for exactly the kinds of things you mentioned- ebooks, and especially journal articles. The model she has allows you to highlight and annotate, which I think is really handy, and she has saved a FORTUNE in printing, as like myself she likes to be able to write things in the margin etc. She has me wanting one! Though it's a little beyond me financially at the moment

We're both humanities disciplines by the way, if that's any help- I would agree with the poster above about graphs/diagrams, on that screen they would be lost.

Swifty_N

Thank you both.
My field is statistics. Maybe I should ask around the department.

psychward

I am studying engineering in UCD. A lot of my notes are online PDFs uploaded to blackboard. I was considering getting a Kindle to be able to read them on the move.
How is the Kindle font for showing obscure greek alphabetic symbols etc used in mathematics?
Has the Kindle made any progress on displaying simple diagrams ? I see theres a colour version coming out.
Any update on your decision and experiences with the Kindle ? Anyone else like to contribute to this thread on the same subject ?

Jimoslimos

psychward wrote: »

I am studying engineering in UCD. A lot of my notes are online PDFs uploaded to blackboard. I was considering getting a Kindle to be able to read them on the move.
How is the Kindle font for showing obscure greek alphabetic symbols etc used in mathematics?
Has the Kindle made any progress on displaying simple diagrams ? I see theres a colour version coming out.
Any update on your decision and experiences with the Kindle ? Anyone else like to contribute to this thread on the same subject ?

The kindle can natively display pdfs on screen (like an image) and zoom in aswell - although this can be a bit clunky.

Not sure what the kindle format is for symbols - I'll have a go at converting/writing some documents with mathematical notations and let you know how get on.

The colour version is pretty much a mini iPad with none of the advantages of the black&white e-readers, weight, battery life, low glare, etc.

psychward

Jimoslimos wrote: »

The kindle can natively display pdfs on screen (like an image) and zoom in aswell - although this can be a bit clunky.

Not sure what the kindle format is for symbols - I'll have a go at converting/writing some documents with mathematical notations and let you know how get on.

The colour version is pretty much a mini iPad with none of the advantages of the black&white e-readers, weight, battery life, low glare, etc.

Thanks. Good to know about the first point. Most of my diagrams should be pretty simple to understand in black and white and the point would be to use the kindle to keep my memory refreshed.

On the second I'd be very interested in finding out how that looks or if it works at all. Otherwise there could be a risk of my money being wasted if it wont display what I need

And for the third yes I was thinking that theres nothing special about the ''color version'' and no reason to rush out and get one as the whole point is to keep it easy on the eyes and hold an excellent battery life. I would never get a tablet or ipad or a fire as I am already happy with my small netbook. It's the electronic ink of the Kindle that makes it something special and desirable.

thusspakeblixa

I'm doing an MA in Development so I have a lot of economics-related journal articles to read. I bought a Kindle (the older one with the keyboard) in September for college.

I find it really handy. It's great for 70-80% of stuff I have to read for college. For .pdf files, you can read them natively but you'll often have to fiddle around with screen orientation and zoom settings to read them. So I generally convert my files to a Kindle-native .mobi file (It's pretty simple, you just email it to your Kindle with 'convert' in the subject line).

The only issue I have with this is that sometimes when there's a large table (or a few small ones together) in an article it can get mixed up. The text can be garbled and not appear correctly- rendering the article pretty unreadable. I've been told there's a way round this if you manually covert a .pdf to .mobi but I don't know how just yet. Apparently the Kindle Fire is better at reading .pdfs, but I haven't tried it yet.

I read a lot of textbooks on Kindle too, I probably have about 30 on mine at this stage. It's brilliant for these as they come pre-formatted into .mobi and are all separated into easily searchable sections. You can also highlight and annotate readings too. For €100, I still think a Kindle is well worth getting. Just be wary that it doesn't handle some tables well once you convert.

psychward

thusspakeblixa wrote: »

I've been told there's a way round this if you manually covert a .pdf to .mobi but I don't know how just yet.

Thanks for the information. I heard a free program named Calibre was useful with Kindle for doing the above.

http://calibre-ebook.com/

Obviously as I do not have a Kindle yet I therefore cannot personally recommend it as I havent' tried it

bp1989

I bought a Kindle just last week. It's brilliant. I use it primarily for reading novels, but I also store comic books and pdfs on it for college. Highly recommended, if a little fiddly when it comes to using the keyboard.

I use Calibre (as mentioned by the above poster) to convert my files into Kindle-readable format (MOBI).

At €118 (inc. shipping from the US) its a steal. Just a note - you can't order it from the UK store. Also, we cannot puchase the colour Kindle here (Kindle Fire).

Slang_Tang

I find PDFs on the Kindle to be slow to read and clunky.

Do not buy it for the web browser. It's only an experimental feature and isn't worth it.

To be honest, I've been very disappointed with my Kindle. Most academic books are either unavailable on the Kindle, or just as expensive as the print copy.