talkmagic.co.uk

I've a terrible habit for buying pdfs, despite an inability to sit down at a computer screen and read them, deck (or whatever) in hand. This has resulted in me printing off a copy at work, and then filing it away at home. Not ideal.

Recently I bought Amazon's Kindle in an attempt to curtail the growth of my non-magic library, but owning one has also sorted out the pdf problem, as Kindle will display those too. Font size is a little bit of an issue (you can zoom in, but then reading becomes a bit fiddlier) but with decent lighting and youthful eyes one can cope. Currently reading an early 20th century book on fraudulent medium technique.

Just a thought, chucking out into the maelstrom...

I'm at the lust stage on the kindle, heading to Amazon twice a day to look at it and try to talk myself into/out of buying it. Very little mention is made of the pdf reading aspect which for me would be the most important thing. you think its managable enough? oh why bother i know im gonna get it eventually :/

Same question really, is it worth it? Does it function properly as a pdf reader? Keep in mind that a 'yes' means I am but few clicks away from spending £109 I probably shouldn't but it will make me happy...

It'll vary, but basically the Kindle renders the pdf without messing with its layout in any way, fitting one page to the screen; it chops off a little of the gutters and margins, but that's about it. This means that a Paul Brook pdf will be fine on it, but Jinx looks abysmal. My next task is to go through the dead tree collection and chuck out anything that will be easily readable.

With using zoom, you can change the orientation of the kindle, which at first breaks each page into two; beyond that you can zoom in further, but by then there's so much clicking about involved that it's not worth the candle.

Oh, and you can annotate pdfs too, and export the annotations afterwards.

I went for the cheaper non-3G version, which may have been a mistake.

I got the latest Sony Reader and it seems to read PDFs a bit better than earlier versions. But it is a brilliant product in any case; ideal for catching up on the classics again. I am thinking of buying the Kindle for my son for his birthday. Is the latest small version good as a reader?

I wish they sold them in places other than the intarnets. Tis annoying. I want to touch and prod one to see if it's worth buying (IB). What's it like in regards to speed and such? And does it do internet and email?

Although I'll probably end up getting an iPad instead. Damn you Apple *shakes fist*

i was tempted to buy one a while ago - but thought, nah...they'll just bring out a new and improved one in a few months...and they did...

so, I'm waiting now for all the ipad business to calm down, and buy this:

http://www.slashgear.com/notion-ink-ada ... n-0969281/

supposed to go for around £260...

TonyB wrote:I am thinking of buying the Kindle for my son for his birthday. Is the latest small version good as a reader?

That's the one I have; happy with it so far. I'm still getting used to a screen that doesn't glow though. Great to read, it's just a bit.... eerie...

I use a small Palm Handheld to read electronic books. It has a PDF Reader in it but the documents don't look very good using the PDF Reader, it is much better to save the pages of the PDFs as Tiff Files or JPEGS and then it is much easier to read and display the pictures in the Picture Viewer like that. However I reckon there is probably a better PDF reader that I can download for it.

My advice is to check to see whether this Kindle thingy can install open source software from different places. Then you won't be stuck with a clunky bit of software that isn't ideal for the type of documents you want to read, you can have a choice of what to view them on.

That Adam tablet looks interesting, but too expensive for me! Worth waiting for the price to drop, though.

I'm still curious but unconvinced about dedicated e-book readers. That grey page background looks dreary, and they don't seem to display many words per page. (Based mainly on the ads for the new Kindle.)

I'll start considering them seriously when they can display PDFs perfectly and in colour.

My Kindle is set up to about 8 words a line and 28 lines per screen. You can adjust font size, typeface and line spacing. And the grey's not all that dreary in real life.

Hmm. Don't say any more, I can't afford to buy one right now!

I've got a Kindle, and I'm lovin' it. Software is available to convert PDFs to proper Kindle ebook files - the program is called Calibre. If you're having trouble reading a PDF, try converting it. Calibre does a pretty good job, but you can also use a program called Sigil if you need to fine tune the outputted file before putting it on your Kindle.

I haven't tried putting any magic PDFs on my Kindle yet - but I'm happy to report that I managed to get Derren Brown's latest book, Confessions of a Conjourer, delivered to my Kindle on the day of release without having to lift a finger.

I'm not sure what's on the site (I only heard about it this morning), but there's supposed to be a wealth of magic ebooks available on The Learned Pig website. I'll be applying to join when I get home to see if there's anything worthwhile.

If you like reading, get a Kindle. They really are brilliant.

magikmax wrote:I'm not sure what's on the site (I only heard about it this morning), but there's supposed to be a wealth of magic ebooks available on The Learned Pig website. .

I first discovered TLP about 10 years ago and I've recently rediscovered it when my kindle arrived. I now read some wonderful old magic books during my daily commute, without having to remember to print out the next chapter when I leave work.


Giznorm's step by step recipe for a more enjoyable commute
1. Buy a kindle
2. Join The Learned Pig
3. Download the complete Tarbell for free
4. Email the pdfs of Tarbell to your kindle address (username@free.kindle.com) with the word "Convert" in the subject line
5. Turn on your Kindle wifi
6. The entire Tarbell course will automatically be converted into Kindle format (with images intact) and downloaded onto your Kindle


I am very happy with my Kindle.

I have a sony touch.. which is good... PDF support is so-so... the main issue is price of the books...

DRM'ed ePub (for sony etc) can be as much as 3 times the cost of the same book on the Kindle..

the latest Kindle 3g/Wifi has the same sized screen as the sony touch.. books at a fraction of the cost, and added advantage of the free 3G and wifi support.

Magic books... probably always going to be paper based for me.. novels etc, which i tend to read once... I like the idea of eBooks..

Once I've finished the DRM'ed ePub books I have on my sony... I'll probably switch to the Kindle.. if only for the cheaper book price