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Three reasons why I personally think the Kindle is superior to the iPad as a reading device: 1) It's lighter and smaller and thus easier on your hands to hold

by pilif 16y ago

Three reasons why I personally think the Kindle is superior to the iPad as a reading device: 1) It's lighter and smaller and thus easier on your hands to hold it. My hands begin to hurt after holding the iPad for more than two hours. Reading is something I can do for hours without interruption. 2) I thought that an advantage of the ipad would be that I can read with the lights already out. I was wrong - staring at the illuminated screen quickly hurts my eyes in an otherwise dark room. Interesting: Watching videos is no problem, but reading apparently is something I use my eyes differently than watching a movie. 3) The distraction factor is huge if reading your mail, hacker news or google reader is just a small home button press away. I can't. get. any. serious. reading. done. For me, reading a book is an activity I'm doing for hours at a time if I finally find time. Then, being distracted, having to carry a heavy device or hurting my eyes all are not optimal solutions. Hence, if I'm reading, Kindle is my device.

sprout 16y ago
Are you reading black-on-white or white-on-black? Google recently updated the Android maps application so everything is white during the day, which really annoys me. black-on-white is kind of obnoxious and wastes battery unless you're in full sunlight. But of course it's shinier, and shiny always beats functional...
- Confusion 16y ago
  It's not just shinier: in general people find it somewhat easier to read, as these blog posts with references to research suggest[1][2]. I know the halation effect mentioned in the second post completely ruines white-on-black for me, in most incarnations. My Gnome terminal is white-on-black, but that only works with a sufficiently large monospace font and the fact that terminal data is, well, different from a novel or blogpost. [1] http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2006/08/on-the-readability-of-inverted-color-schemes/ http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2006/08/on-the-readability... [2] http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/07/code-colorizing-and-readability.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/07/code-colorizing-and...
  - sprout 16y ago
    I'm looking at those posts, and only two of the linked studies actually analyze font in conjunction with color. And the link is dead, but one of the comments to Atwood's blog suggests that he didn't read the second study as closely has he should have, and it actually says that there are specific font/color scheme combinations that are readable, not that some color schemes are simply unreadable. Furthermore, Both of those posts are from before the iPhone, so I'd bet they were done on a full-sized computer screen. If I turn my Motorola Droid up to full brightness at night and read Reddit, I might as well be staring at a flashlight. Even low brightness is too much, especially at that range. With the reddit-is-fun app I vastly prefer white-on-black. Right now I'm typing this on a 25" monitor, with my face 4 feet from the screen, and it's black-on-white in a browser box. But that's desktop. What we need is a broad-based study with various smartphones and smartphone fonts at multiple brightness levels. (both backlight and ambient) I doubt that black-on-white is a good idea on a 4" screen with low ambient light. (At least not when you're reliant on a backlight.) At best, I would bet different fonts work well with different color schemes, and black-on-white should be avoided on portable devices to save battery power.
    - Confusion 16y ago
      You are probably right that desktop vs. smartphone matters. And perhaps the amount of people and the amount they benefit doesn't weigh against the additional battery usage. The best solution would be if you could simply switch between color schemes at will (and set a personal default). This page [1] suggests that most studies are even from before 'the web' (but from when is the page?). It has the quote by Jakob Nielsen that formed my opinion back when, from his well known 'Designing web usability': Use colors with high contrast between the text and the background. Optimal legibility requires black text on white background (so-called positive text). White text on a black background (negative text) is almost as good. Although the contrast ratio is the same as for positive text, the inverted color scheme throws people off a little and slows their reading slightly. Legibility suffers much more for color schemes that make the text any lighter than pure black, especially if the background is made any darker than pure white (Nielsen 2000, p 125) I don't own the book and can't check on his sources, but Nielsen generally bases such advise on research. Anyway, all I'm saying is that they may have simply thought to be improving their app, not necessarily to increase the shinyness. [1] http://web.mst.edu/~rhall/web_design/color_readability.html http://web.mst.edu/~rhall/web_design/color_readability.html
- borisk 16y ago
  Actually non-AMOLED screens take more power to display black than white. And anyway the difference is very very small, far from waste.
barmstrong 16y ago
I would add one more: battery life. If you keep the 3G off except while downloading books, you can easily get TWO OR THREE WEEKS of battery life out of the Kindle - even if you use it every night. The iPad does a lot more, no doubt, but as a straight up reading device the Kindle still wins.
- ghshephard 16y ago
  Ironically, and I recognize this is more a behavior than product issue - the battery on my kindle is dead almost 100% of the time when I want to use it, but on my iPad, the battery typically has 8-10 hours of reading life on it. As a result, I do most of my reading on my iPad, even though I prefer, all things equal, to do so on my kindle in the sun. The battery is just never charged _when I want it_. The difference - I use my kindle for solid, long stretch reading, and may set the kindle down for a few weeks or more, and that stupid wireless always gets turned on sometimes in that interval. (It's better on the K2, but the K1 was horrible) - And I've used the wireless function a grand total of 15 minutes in the two plus years of ownership and 200+ hours of reading. Worst design flaw I've ever seen in a product, where a feature that should be off almost 100% of the time is frequently turned on, wiping out one of the key differentiators of the product - long battery life. Now that I think of it, I didn't have really that great an experience on battery life on my K1, even without the wireless, and would typically go on a trip with multiple battery packs, and a solar charger. Better than the iPad (obviously), but a week of reading would typically require 3 or so recharges. K2 has been better - most of a week of casual reading, and I am looking forward to seeing what the graphite will do for me.
  - lushootseed 16y ago
    >>>the battery on my kindle is dead almost 100% of the time when I want to use it I am quite perplexed that you seem to have a defective device that doesn't hold charge and still compare it to iPad?
  - rdl 16y ago
    Many of the Kindle Ones had bad batteries which would self-discharge; Amazon would replace them for free. I had this problem (charge would only last a day or so), but I broke my K1 before getting it back to Amazon for repair (while durable, putting it in a bag with an inmarsat bgan terminal, then having 1000 pounds of other bags on top of the bag, leads to screen cracking...) I actually preferred the shape of the K1, and the buttons being on the left as well.
jk8 16y ago
My only issue with reading on kindle like devices is the way it changes the page. I don't think I can stand that. I feel like that would bother my eyes. EDIT: That is the only thing stopping me from buying one.
- hugh3 16y ago
  How often do you turn the page? Can't you shut your eyes for that half-second if it bothers you?
  - city41 16y ago
    How often do you turn pages while reading books? I'm going to guess pretty often.
    - hugh3 16y ago
      Maybe once a minute. How often do you blink?
- datasink 16y ago
  Seconded. It's especially pronounced when you need to flip back a few pages or skip ahead to the next chapter. The command-keys/controller setup is also really user-unfriendly.
- tedunangst 16y ago
  You quickly learn not to stare at the screen, much like you learned long long ago not to stare at the page as you're turning it. Physical books have an even slower response time, but nobody complains about that.
  - jk8 16y ago
    True, I agree that it will take a while. Turning physical pages is fun :-)
- ghshephard 16y ago
  As one who has read about 30 novels on my K1/K2 - I can attest that your brain / eyes actually seem to go into a wait state when you change the page, such that you don't ever seem to recall changing pages while reading long fiction. On the other hand, flipping through technical references is painful to the point of despair, and was one of the key reasons I fell in love with my iPad.
jacquesm 16y ago
If you're getting eye-strain when reading high-contrast text in an otherwise dark room you might be at the border of needing glasses. Plenty of eye trouble manifests itself as head-aches or eye-strain.
- jonah 16y ago
  If you must read on your pc at night: http://stereopsis.com/flux/ http://stereopsis.com/flux/

by pilif 16y ago

sprout 16y ago

Are you reading black-on-white or white-on-black? Google recently updated the Android maps application so everything is white during the day, which really annoys me. black-on-white is kind of obnoxious and wastes battery unless you're in full sunlight. But of course it's shinier, and shiny always beats functional...

Confusion 16y ago
It's not just shinier: in general people find it somewhat easier to read, as these blog posts with references to research suggest[1][2]. I know the halation effect mentioned in the second post completely ruines white-on-black for me, in most incarnations. My Gnome terminal is white-on-black, but that only works with a sufficiently large monospace font and the fact that terminal data is, well, different from a novel or blogpost. [1] http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2006/08/on-the-readability-of-inverted-color-schemes/ http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2006/08/on-the-readability... [2] http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/07/code-colorizing-and-readability.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/07/code-colorizing-and...
- sprout 16y ago
  I'm looking at those posts, and only two of the linked studies actually analyze font in conjunction with color. And the link is dead, but one of the comments to Atwood's blog suggests that he didn't read the second study as closely has he should have, and it actually says that there are specific font/color scheme combinations that are readable, not that some color schemes are simply unreadable. Furthermore, Both of those posts are from before the iPhone, so I'd bet they were done on a full-sized computer screen. If I turn my Motorola Droid up to full brightness at night and read Reddit, I might as well be staring at a flashlight. Even low brightness is too much, especially at that range. With the reddit-is-fun app I vastly prefer white-on-black. Right now I'm typing this on a 25" monitor, with my face 4 feet from the screen, and it's black-on-white in a browser box. But that's desktop. What we need is a broad-based study with various smartphones and smartphone fonts at multiple brightness levels. (both backlight and ambient) I doubt that black-on-white is a good idea on a 4" screen with low ambient light. (At least not when you're reliant on a backlight.) At best, I would bet different fonts work well with different color schemes, and black-on-white should be avoided on portable devices to save battery power.
  - Confusion 16y ago
    You are probably right that desktop vs. smartphone matters. And perhaps the amount of people and the amount they benefit doesn't weigh against the additional battery usage. The best solution would be if you could simply switch between color schemes at will (and set a personal default). This page [1] suggests that most studies are even from before 'the web' (but from when is the page?). It has the quote by Jakob Nielsen that formed my opinion back when, from his well known 'Designing web usability': Use colors with high contrast between the text and the background. Optimal legibility requires black text on white background (so-called positive text). White text on a black background (negative text) is almost as good. Although the contrast ratio is the same as for positive text, the inverted color scheme throws people off a little and slows their reading slightly. Legibility suffers much more for color schemes that make the text any lighter than pure black, especially if the background is made any darker than pure white (Nielsen 2000, p 125) I don't own the book and can't check on his sources, but Nielsen generally bases such advise on research. Anyway, all I'm saying is that they may have simply thought to be improving their app, not necessarily to increase the shinyness. [1] http://web.mst.edu/~rhall/web_design/color_readability.html http://web.mst.edu/~rhall/web_design/color_readability.html
borisk 16y ago
Actually non-AMOLED screens take more power to display black than white. And anyway the difference is very very small, far from waste.

barmstrong 16y ago

I would add one more: battery life. If you keep the 3G off except while downloading books, you can easily get TWO OR THREE WEEKS of battery life out of the Kindle - even if you use it every night. The iPad does a lot more, no doubt, but as a straight up reading device the Kindle still wins.

ghshephard 16y ago
Ironically, and I recognize this is more a behavior than product issue - the battery on my kindle is dead almost 100% of the time when I want to use it, but on my iPad, the battery typically has 8-10 hours of reading life on it. As a result, I do most of my reading on my iPad, even though I prefer, all things equal, to do so on my kindle in the sun. The battery is just never charged _when I want it_. The difference - I use my kindle for solid, long stretch reading, and may set the kindle down for a few weeks or more, and that stupid wireless always gets turned on sometimes in that interval. (It's better on the K2, but the K1 was horrible) - And I've used the wireless function a grand total of 15 minutes in the two plus years of ownership and 200+ hours of reading. Worst design flaw I've ever seen in a product, where a feature that should be off almost 100% of the time is frequently turned on, wiping out one of the key differentiators of the product - long battery life. Now that I think of it, I didn't have really that great an experience on battery life on my K1, even without the wireless, and would typically go on a trip with multiple battery packs, and a solar charger. Better than the iPad (obviously), but a week of reading would typically require 3 or so recharges. K2 has been better - most of a week of casual reading, and I am looking forward to seeing what the graphite will do for me.
- lushootseed 16y ago
  >>>the battery on my kindle is dead almost 100% of the time when I want to use it I am quite perplexed that you seem to have a defective device that doesn't hold charge and still compare it to iPad?
- rdl 16y ago
  Many of the Kindle Ones had bad batteries which would self-discharge; Amazon would replace them for free. I had this problem (charge would only last a day or so), but I broke my K1 before getting it back to Amazon for repair (while durable, putting it in a bag with an inmarsat bgan terminal, then having 1000 pounds of other bags on top of the bag, leads to screen cracking...) I actually preferred the shape of the K1, and the buttons being on the left as well.

jk8 16y ago

My only issue with reading on kindle like devices is the way it changes the page. I don't think I can stand that. I feel like that would bother my eyes. EDIT: That is the only thing stopping me from buying one.

hugh3 16y ago
How often do you turn the page? Can't you shut your eyes for that half-second if it bothers you?
- city41 16y ago
  How often do you turn pages while reading books? I'm going to guess pretty often.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    Maybe once a minute. How often do you blink?
datasink 16y ago
Seconded. It's especially pronounced when you need to flip back a few pages or skip ahead to the next chapter. The command-keys/controller setup is also really user-unfriendly.
tedunangst 16y ago
You quickly learn not to stare at the screen, much like you learned long long ago not to stare at the page as you're turning it. Physical books have an even slower response time, but nobody complains about that.
- jk8 16y ago
  True, I agree that it will take a while. Turning physical pages is fun :-)
ghshephard 16y ago
As one who has read about 30 novels on my K1/K2 - I can attest that your brain / eyes actually seem to go into a wait state when you change the page, such that you don't ever seem to recall changing pages while reading long fiction. On the other hand, flipping through technical references is painful to the point of despair, and was one of the key reasons I fell in love with my iPad.

jacquesm 16y ago

If you're getting eye-strain when reading high-contrast text in an otherwise dark room you might be at the border of needing glasses. Plenty of eye trouble manifests itself as head-aches or eye-strain.

jonah 16y ago
If you must read on your pc at night: http://stereopsis.com/flux/ http://stereopsis.com/flux/