4 ms·

Wow, thanks a lot. I was strongly considering purchasing a DX for exactly this, after trying a Nook and finding the screen to be too small for most PDFs.

MichaelSalib 16y ago
I'd actually suggest that you try out a DX and see for yourself. I think they're free to return within the first N days. Or at least see if you can find other opinions by people who read sci/tech papers. For all I know, my friend's particular field has really heavy journal PDFs that other fields might not have. If I was reading a lot of papers, the appeal of a DX would be so great that I'd want a second opinion before ditching it.
- pmjordan 16y ago
  Returning the Kindle is probably fine if you're in the US, but for us in Europe it would be an expensive experiment. I doubt I'd get a customs & VAT refund, plus the postage is probably steep, too. I still don't get why they only sell it from amazon.com, not amazon.*. I might be able to eBay it off, assuming it's possible to sever the tie to my amazon account.
  - Luc 16y ago
    Thankfully there's no customs fee when you buy a Kindle from Europe, just VAT. Don't know about other territories.
anateus 16y ago
I have a DX that I use for just that purpose (reading journals and textbooks). Yes, the two column text runs a bit small, but I haven't had any problems. Check to see how well it works for you. The DX crops out borders on good copies of journal articles (if it's a scanned image sometimes scanning artifacts cause it to miss correct margins). PDF speed has recently improved, though since the person above returned it just a bit ago, that was probably too slow for him. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the PDF speed. I find the speed to be consistent even with very large scanned-image PDF files (e.g. 300 page book with each page being an image, rather than vector text). Journal articles tend to flip pages only a tad slower than native ebooks. The most recent firmware version for the DX (2.5) has finally introduced PDF zooming and panning, which has worked for me pretty decently though I haven't had to use it much (once zoomed in to read fine print on a graph) Aaand that's been my experience.

MichaelSalib 16y ago

I'd actually suggest that you try out a DX and see for yourself. I think they're free to return within the first N days. Or at least see if you can find other opinions by people who read sci/tech papers. For all I know, my friend's particular field has really heavy journal PDFs that other fields might not have. If I was reading a lot of papers, the appeal of a DX would be so great that I'd want a second opinion before ditching it.

pmjordan 16y ago
Returning the Kindle is probably fine if you're in the US, but for us in Europe it would be an expensive experiment. I doubt I'd get a customs & VAT refund, plus the postage is probably steep, too. I still don't get why they only sell it from amazon.com, not amazon.*. I might be able to eBay it off, assuming it's possible to sever the tie to my amazon account.
- Luc 16y ago
  Thankfully there's no customs fee when you buy a Kindle from Europe, just VAT. Don't know about other territories.

anateus 16y ago

I have a DX that I use for just that purpose (reading journals and textbooks). Yes, the two column text runs a bit small, but I haven't had any problems. Check to see how well it works for you. The DX crops out borders on good copies of journal articles (if it's a scanned image sometimes scanning artifacts cause it to miss correct margins). PDF speed has recently improved, though since the person above returned it just a bit ago, that was probably too slow for him. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the PDF speed. I find the speed to be consistent even with very large scanned-image PDF files (e.g. 300 page book with each page being an image, rather than vector text). Journal articles tend to flip pages only a tad slower than native ebooks. The most recent firmware version for the DX (2.5) has finally introduced PDF zooming and panning, which has worked for me pretty decently though I haven't had to use it much (once zoomed in to read fine print on a graph) Aaand that's been my experience.