Tablet Questions

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Google around for reviews. Here's one from a good site. Check out reviews on Amazon if it's there (or something similar).

My first rule (being a technophile) is to avoid no-name brands. And that price makes me all the more suspicious. No, I don't buy the expensive Apples either. But you'll appreciate quality if you can compare hands on with a name brand: sharper screen (better on your eyes), more responsive screen (lowers frustration), etc.
 
Honestly you can just get the cheap kindle. You can email yourself any pdf you want to the kindle and read it anywhere.
 
Kindles also have the advantage of free (or very cheap) books available. There are many old Puritan works available on the web in kindle (mobi) format.
 
I would go ahead and get it. With Android you can read both Kindle books along with Google Play books as well as PDF's.
 
I'm not sure about that particular tablet but I second the note on a Kindle. My father-in-law surprised our family with a Kindle Fire HD (7" screen) at Christmas and it has been wonderful to read PDF's of old dead theologians on it.

And Rev. Greco is right on with his comment about Puritan works in Kindle format. There are a lot.
 
I've got a Fire, but this one looks tempting, particularly for your intended use. My guess is that it has a plastic, rather than a glass screen.

You might want to consider the classic Kindle. $69 now, supports PDF, the E-ink screen will be much easier to read, and battery life is going to be about 50x longer.

I like my Fire, but for reading, nothing beats the e-ink format.
 
Thanks for the insight. The reason why I want a tablet and not a kindle is primarily because I have tried to read books in kindle format and for whatever reason it just doesn't "work" for me. I apologize for being picky and hard to please, but I would like the PDF to look like this (as it does on my mom's ipad).

247648_10201209020206778_63100707_n.jpg


When I read it off the screen, not in the format I've tried on my wife's kindle and kindle fire.
 
Backwoods Presbyterian said:
When I read it off the screen, not in the format I've tried on my wife's kindle and kindle fire.
Click to expand...

The device you mentioned is about the same size as the Fire or the Touch, and it should display pretty much the same as the Fire would display it (Touch would display slightly differently). So if you find the Fire unsatisfactory, you'll probably find this device unsatisfactory.

Because of my eyes, I use Landscape for PDFs on either device, which cuts down the amount of text on each page and requires scrolling.

But again, if you want a two page at a time landscape display, you won't like any of the smaller devices.
 
If you want to read scanned pdfs, I'd recommend the largest screen your budget and hands can handle.

Almost all tablet operating systems can competently handle pdf readers of some kind, so durability vs cost would be the second consideration.

I have collected around 500-600 pdf volumes of various things (maybe more) all saved on a tiny micro SD card. There are tons of free scanned editions of classic books, but small kindles don't read scanned documents all that well (too small a screen), and OCR of most of those is abysmal. I use a large format Kindle DX for reading scanned books, and it does a passable job at it, but does not have all the bells and whistles (like annotating) that a tablet pdf reader might have.

I've not owned any kind of tablet, but I do have a tablet PC running Windows 7 with Adobe Acrobat etc. It's basically the same as reading a pdf on any normal computer, except that its format is more like a legal pad. It works well, but probably is too expensive for your purposes.
 
Edward said:
Backwoods Presbyterian said:
When I read it off the screen, not in the format I've tried on my wife's kindle and kindle fire.
Click to expand...

The device you mentioned is about the same size as the Fire or the Touch, and it should display pretty much the same as the Fire would display it (Touch would display slightly differently). So if you find the Fire unsatisfactory, you'll probably find this device unsatisfactory.

Because of my eyes, I use Landscape for PDFs on either device, which cuts down the amount of text on each page and requires scrolling.

But again, if you want a two page at a time landscape display, you won't like any of the smaller devices.
Click to expand...
I agree. Landscape on a 7" screen will be very small type.
 
Ben:

Looks like there are some 10 and even 11 inch tablets due out soon. Not sure how they will be priced.

As important as the hardware decision is, make a wise software choice too. GoodReader has become my preferred app for reading PDFs. For one, it allows you to rename the downloaded files, which is important, because the file names are otherwise cryptic. I rename with authors last name, date, & title.

Goodreader also allows you to folder your PDFs. So you could have folders for topics, authors, etc.
 
I have a 7-inch Android tablet, Samsung actually, and can concur it is a good reading choice. My local library lends ebooks in a variety of formats including the Freeding App that also supports PDFs. The latter seems to load PDFs off the web and email faster than -- I'm not sure what -- does Android use Adobe as a native format?
 
Thanks for the help y'all. I am pretty clueless on this front, but we went ahead and bought the $70 one at Walmart before we commit serious money on a bigger one.

Here is how a PDF looks one the one we purchased (which is the one linked in the OP).

947081_10151579367319144_123434724_n.jpg
 
That doesn't look too bad. The specs look surprisingly good for that price. I'd be interested in hearing about what you think of it after you've used it for awhile.

It looks like something I'd be willing to try if I didn't already have a Nexus 7. Nexus 7 is kind of in an odd balance. In one sense, you may say that it's a great balance of price and specs, and for the most part I would agree. But sometimes it can get kind of sluggish, and it feels like it's expensive enough to put a dent in your wallet yet not powerful enough to be comfortable. Especially with web-browsing, which, and this kind of surprised me, is what I use it for the most. (Well, that and Minesweeper.) I waver among web browsers because none of them are really fast enough for the 7's modest specs. I've come to think that Firefox for Android actually has the smoothest experience, but not always. It definitely has the best interface, too.

That being said, I've been very happy with it. I also got it primarily for reading. So far the only complete book I've read on it was Flatland (in pdf format) because most of the books I've been reading lately have been hardcopy (I hate DRM so I avoid Kindle books), but I also typically do my daily Bible reading on it, too. I've gotten a whole lot of use out of it overall. Sometime in the near future I intend to read Raised, which I found on Monergism.com, and sometime in the slightly more distant future I intend to read Hodge's commentary on Romans, which I can only find digitally on archive.org. (The epub version of it is pretty badly OCRed, so I'll have to go with the pdf.)

I'm pretty picky about my software. I don't know of any Android pdf reader that's particularly fast with images, but I use ezPDF Reader Lite for pdf files. It's not free, but I really like it. It has a pretty good interface, and it saves your place when you exit (a surprising amount of pdf readers don't do that). My preferred format, though, is epub, or failing that, .txt or an html file, all of which I can read with Cool Reader. I also use "Fast Reboot," which doesn't literally reboot anything but clears up a lot of memory. It can be pretty handy sometimes.

Sorry for the overly-long post. :D I do that sometimes.
 
I would stay clear of the Kindle due to its limitations. With Android you simply have a greater selection of e-book readers and your freedoms are greater. Plus you are not guaranteed that the Amazon books will always be available. Amazon can revoke your access to the content for whatever reason. They own the digital rights to the medium they are in control and you are not.
 
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