Monday, January 31, 2011

Reading and Technology - II

As promised, here is my second update, after a day of light usage.

Firstly, some basics for people not familiar with eBook readers:
  1. Most eBook readers do not have colour screens and use eInk displays.
  2. Readers typically support PDF as the most common format followed by PUB, Kindle, etc.
  3. Readers support protected content (Adobe DRM protected PDFs) - DRM - Digital Rights Management
  4. There are thousands of free eBooks available for content whose copyright has expired
  5. Almost all providers have either dedicated electronic stores or support formats from other stores
Now for my experience:

The default font and portrait mode were a little uncomfortable for me. Increasing the font size resulted in lines wrapping quickly and to me it was inconvenient to read. I found my optimum by switching to landscape mode and a font size higher than the default (the device comes with font sizes of S, M, L, XL and XXL - with S being the default!). This gave me a line length approximately similar to a printed book.

One issue with landscape mode is that the Previous Page / Next Page buttons go to the left of the screen. I would have preferred to have them on the right, as the right thumb would have been the most convenient way to flip pages. Hitting the button is (currently) easier for me than doing the fingertip swoosh from right to left (so beloved of iPhone users!).

So far, I have been reading short stories on the Reader, have not really tested it will a full book yet. Also, I have not seen any illustrations or diagrams on pages yet, so that is next on my to do list.

Watch this space for more ...

3 comments:

kau kau goes the crow said...

Do touch upon content procurement in detail in your follow up piece ahead...
Both in terms of methodology of procurement, its ease & costs involved...am very interested in this device as it could very well be the future platform for authors & books

Mad Mongol said...

The touch screen should orient the navigation to either mode (landscape or portrait) ... you should still be able to swipe your finger across to turn pages.
There is an option in the settings menu to indicate which direction you want to swipe ... the default is left-to-right but that is not how we normally "turn" a physical page. You can change this to "right-to-left".

Nilesh Bakhle said...

@Mad Mongol, I have got a little more experienced with the eBook reader now and will post my latest experiences as soon as I get over this World Cup blog thingie..

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