Any recommendations for an e-reader?

[gnomechomsky22]

I have been printing out my PDFs and taking notes but it is just far too costly. I use my school's laser printer for as much of it as I can, but still I have many more pages to read than the page allowance I am allotted and its 10 cents a page after that which adds up week after week. Between the print lab cost and my ink jet, I have invested a small fortune. Any recommendations for a particular e reader? Or are they all kind of the same?

[Sparky]

If a lot of your PDFs are scanned from books, so turning facing book pages into one PDF sheet, it might be nice to have a fuller-size iPad or Android tablet. That way you can see the whole sheet without scrolling, which might be difficult on a smaller screen. I find that more pleasant than excessive scrolling.

[gnomechomsky22]

I can see what you mean, I just don't have the money for an ipad right now and I'm leary of buying a used one because I've had several bad experiences purchasing used electronics.

[Usmivka]

If you are just planning to read pdfs and text, then why not a kindle, not one of the fancy ones with color and touch screens and such, just a basic black and white reader? This is the primary way I use my kindle. You can still annotate and take notes on them if desired, they have crazy good battery life (month plus), and they are dirt cheap. I think you can buy last year's model for less than $100.

[JISNEGRO]

Definitely get a kindle, the reading experience is very similar to reading a printed paper. 

[gnomechomsky22]

Thanks for the recs. What kindle would you recommend? I was under the impression that not all of them support PDFs? I had no idea you can annotate on a kindle-cool!

[gnomechomsky22]

I also heard something about getting a nook and converting PDFs to epubs on calibre? Is that something feasible or more of a pain then its worth?

[CageFree]

I have a Kindle Paperwhite and I use it primarily for PDFs. It also reads Word documents. The only downside is that if the PDFs are book scans (like two book pages per PDF page), the screen size may be a bit small for reading them. Other than that, I absolutely love it.

[jmu]

I have the nook and converting files in calibre really depends on the files. Sometimes it works and sometimes it is awful. If the PDF is textflow there is also not much advantage to doing it as the nook will be able to zoom anyway.

 

That being said, I use it to read any regular PDFs and print pagescans and others that don't show up well. You can't annotate PDFs with the nook but I just take notes on another sheet. Isn't an issue.

[rising_star]

For the price of a Kindle/Nook, you could just buy a Brother laser printer...

[jmu]

Owning both a laser printer and a nook, it's worth it to have the nook. The simple touch regularly goes for like $80.

[Metaellipses]

I love my Kindle Keyboard for reading PDFs and taking notes on them. It's an older model but I like having the physical keyboard since I annotate a lot. It's still thin and fast and has an insane battery life. While it's true that PDFs are usually too large to be displayed in full size on the screen (without making the text too small), the trick that I use is just to switch my Kindle to landscape mode and that basically turns each 3rd of a PDF page into its own "page" in the kindle, making the font nice and large. Yay for digitizing humanities! We waste too much paper as it is.

[juilletmercredi]

What is your price range?  The Kindle Paperwhite is $119 with the special offers, and the Kindle Keyboard 3G is $139.  The 7" Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 (a full Android tablet) is $199, the Google Nexus 7 is $239.  Give the relatively small difference in price - $100 at best - I would go with a smaller Android tablet rather than a Kindle.  I have an iPad and it's SO useful for academic usage, not just because I can read PDFs but because the interface makes it easier to annotate than a Kindle (especially a Kindle keyboard, which will necessitate one-letter-at-a-time tapping) and because the iPad offers other apps to keep my academic life together, such as Papers, Mendeley (a reference manager that allows you to sync your libraries across your computer and mobile devices; there are a few third-party apps that allow you to sync to Android devices like Droideley) and a new app released by the major professional organization in my field that allows you to search and read journals published by them.

 

Plus my full-featured tablets do other things for me, like help me keep my life together via a calendar or allow me to browse the web, read the newspaper or magazines in full color, etc.  I take my iPad everywhere with me.  I had concerns about eye strain with the LCD screen, but I haven't found that to be a problem.

[Dal PhDer]

I have a kindle and I love it. Calibre is an essential part of that...with all that said, I hate reading pdfs and annotating on it...for me, its a hassle. I would put that money towards a tablet that has way more additional features and allows for reference aps to manage your entire library. I think its all personal preference, so for me, if I bought a kindle to do what you re planning on doing, I would be very disappointed woth the outcome. Spend a bit more and get something with much more functionality.

[ANDS!]

The 32GIG Nexus 7 is 249, the 16GIG is 199.  If all you are going to do with it is e-read or annotate, you really only need the 16GIG (or better, find someone selling the 8GIG).  Apple may be the most supported in the tablet market (if its on Google Play then it's on iTunes - not so the other way around), but I have yet to have a need for the N7 that hasn't been addressed on the Play Store.  Plus it's not Apple so. . .plus.

[CarlieE]

So I've had a color nook, a kindle ( still do; the b/w kindle keyboard) and an iPad. FWIW, the iPad is the one I use the most and which I find to be the most productive and conducive to reading and annotating. 

 

I convert almost all my readings into PDFs and load them into dropbox, then use iAnnotate on my iPad to annotate them - it saves as a PDF so I can read the annotated ones almost anywhere. 

 

My problem with nook was that it was too small, they have fewer apps and it was awkward to annotate with. Granted, I had the original nook color a few years back. 

 

My problem with kindle keyboard 3G is that the annotated highlighting for PDFs SUCKS. I mean it really sucks. It highlights the wrong lines and its hellish to get it to re-highlight the right ones. I give up most of the time because by then my concentration in reading has been broken and distracted by the highlighting mess up. Also, if you get PDFs which are scanned books then you can have a really problem with rotation and moving around the screen. Kindle's great for reading kindle books and PDFs that come off jstor but not scanned stuff. 

 

The reason I use my iPad: I highlight with a stylus so it feels like a pen, it can highlight in various colors (my kindle was in b/w) and I can write notes in the margins or type in comments. I can move freely around the page with zooming in with pinches in seconds, rather than using arrow keys that move too much to the left or too much to the right. There are also apps for blackboard and dropbox and a host of other things which makes my utility of it much more than just reading. There are days when I just take my iPad to school and that's all I need. 

 

The downside of an iPad (for me): the back light takes getting used to. I got gamer/computer glasses for my birthday which tint yellow and make it easier on my eyes (Gunnar glasses) and they really do help. You have to make sure you're charged or bring a charger if you plan to use it all day, though my battery lasts a good 6-7 hours even in full use. (Yes, I read from about 9am - 4pm with a half hour break or so for lunch 2 or 3 days a week.) The cost of course, but I bought my iPad 2 refurbished so it wasn't too bad and it hasn't failed me yet. I also asked for a griffin rubber case with stand for Christmas (which I got) so that lets me just throw it into a bag and go. 

 

Some people say that the internet connection is distracting - and yes, it can be (I play words with friends on it too) - but that's just a matter of discipline. 

 

Just my two cents having been (and still am) a nook, kindle and iPad owner... 

[ak48]

For iPad users, can you acutally take notes on it?

I write with my hand resting on the desk/iPad, and the touchscreen doesn't like my hand on it. I can't take notes productively with my hand floating in the air, or awkwardly reaching the stylus.

 

I heard the Samsung Note is better for this.

 

For leisure reading, I think the Kindle's pretty nice. I love the look of the paper, even though it's very slow computing wise and probably terrible for annotation.

[gnomechomsky22]

Thank you all for the input! It has been extremely helpful. I did not realize the Galaxy and Nexus tablets were that inexpensive, everything I looked at has been $350-400+. I will definitely look into those. From the input here it looks like I'm just going to tough it out a bit longer with the printer and my laptop. I'm really not look for anything fancy, I'm just not making a great income right now and can't justify purchasing an ipad. 

[Dal PhDer]

have you tried mendely or other programs that let you annotate on pdfs via your laptop? If you don't want to print them off, and don't mind reading on your laptop-that's a really great way to cut down on cost!

 

I use to print print print...then moved to annotating on my laptop- I actually like it better now!

[ray323]

have you tried mendely or other programs that let you annotate on pdfs via your laptop? If you don't want to print them off, and don't mind reading on your laptop-that's a really great way to cut down on cost!

 

I use to print print print...then moved to annotating on my laptop- I actually like it better now!

 

Oh! Thanks for the recommendations! I've checked the mendeley and it looks awesome!

I'm starting my phd program this fall and I think this will definitely be useful!

[CarlieE]

For iPad users who want to annotate PDFs, add text or highlight in different colors: Notability is a good one, as is iAnnotate 

Both sync to Dropbox and you can email out as PDFs. 

 

If I have a physical paper reading I have to do (i.e. chapter in a book on reserve at the library) I usually take 10 minutes to scan it in as a PDF and then annotate it on my iPad. This ensures that I'll have a copy of all the readings along with all my other notes on my hard drive for the future. 

 

I also use Genius Scan to take photos of papers and turn them into PDFs that way. The quality isn't so great so I generally just use this for handouts or pictures, or stuff that's just a couple of pages of not-so-fine print. 

[Grev]

I know this is a bit of a long shot- but does anyone have a rec for folks doing a lot of reading in foreign languages?  I've been out of the PDF annotating loop for a couple years, but I've had special characters (ñ, á, ç, etc.) give me trouble with word highlighting and annotating programs before (since they're expecting English).

[misskira]

You can regularly get simple laser brother printers for $60ish, and wireless ones for under $100 that come with a good size toner cartridge. Brother printers are very good at taking off brand replacement toner for cheap, so you can literally print thousands of pages for $20 plus the cost of paper.

Edited March 18, 2013 by misskira

[Panama Slim]

Adobe Acrobat professional can cut two page PDFs into one page each, orient them and even level them out.  I did it once and was not too difficult.  I have a borrowed copy of Acrobat, so don't know how much it costs.  And there are some free solutions out there too.