As someone who's reading a lot of technical material, I'm on the fence about e-readers.
On the one hand, many technical books are thick and heavy, and can benefit from having a search function. But on the other, e-reader screens tend to be small and require a lot of scrolling back and forth (like between a code sample and an accompanying explanation).
Does anyone have experience with reading technical books on an e-reader? Any suggestions?
I think e-readers are awesome for linear, text-based material. I don't think they're great for reference or things that need specific formatting or have a lot of visual data; like textbooks, something with code snippets, cookbooks, or newspapers. But tablets or desktop computers work fairly well. Since those aren't single-use machines and don't have great vertical integration they can be cumbersome (and a bit of an eye strain for long sessions).
The smallish size and slow screen loading make it really hard to skim (and requires decent search and UX). Because of the small screen info can get reflowed, making code snippets or charts very awkward--if it even renders.
Basically, I'm just reiterating what you're saying. I haven't found a solution to what you're describing. In an effort to minimize physical books, I try to utilize the library as much as possible and buy digital versions to reference on the computer months or years later. I've seen solutions like putting pdfs into Dropbox. Sadly, a lot of the reading software that allows highlighting or writing in margins don't sync between a tablet and desktop (at least last time I investigated). Academics seem to have the most motivation for finding a solution to something like this, but that may be tailored to their own needs.
>Academics seem to have the most motivation for finding a solution to something like this, but that may be tailored to their own needs.
The solution is screen real estate. Everyone I know in academia has at least one monitor in an office somewhere on campus. The standard monitor you get from the IT department pretty much anywhere is a 27" 1080p dell. Big enough to fit two PDF pages side by side with no scaling. I have also seen people with two monitors turn one vertical. A lot of people just opt to use the free printing from the department and print something out if they really need to read something on the go.
I have a Kobo e-ink reader. The small 6-inch screen has a 300 PPI (Pixels Per Inch) resolution and does not fatigue the eyes for extended reading sessions. The e-ink screen easily beats a LCD high-resolution or retina display for reading books.
However, e-ink readers are only suitable for paperback-sized fiction or non-fiction titles. Everything else simply isn't suitable for the small 6-inch e-ink screen. PDFs at A4 (or US Letter size) are not suitable, as is any title with a lots of graphics or a complex page layout. Most academic or research papers are still in PDF and are rarely converted to ePub format suitable for reading on a e-Reader.
Note: When I say paperback-sized, I'm referring books in the approx. 6-inch (15cm) size ballpark. Anything above A5 size is likely unsuitable for small e-Reader screens unless the book is text-only (or predominately text).
Finally, if you are think of buying an Amazon Kindle 6-inch e-Reader, be aware that a lot of print books with graphics, charts, tables etc. have been poorly-converted to e-books and are unsuitable for small e-ink screens. Despite this, Amazon continues to misleadingly promote these titles as suitable for Kindle e-Readers when they are not.
I use my Kindle Paperwhite everynight, because I just love the reading experience on it.
But I have to agree that technical materials are still best consumed physically. Novels and even non-fiction stories are great on the kindle. But if you need to frequently stop and take notes, analyze diagrams or figures, reference illustrations or sidebars, which are all common in technical books, then the physical book is the way to go.
An acceptable alternative is a PDF copy on the iPad paired with an app like GoodNotes or ReadWise. These allow highlighting, notes, and other tools to improve the experience. I still prefer digital books, but this is an acceptable alternative. I recently bought a book set from CiscoPress (Cisco technical manual) and got the eBook + Physical combo. Well after I spent $100+ then Cisco sends me an email that the book is backordered for several months. So I only have the digital versions for a month or more until the physical one arrives. So these apps make for a reasonable alternative, but I am waiting to really dive into the content in detail until I get the real thing because it is just the best way to consume technical information, even though I am a heavy Kindle user for normal books.
The screen size is important, as you say. I use a 9" reader and it is large enough, but it is a 7-year-old device. I got the impression that those larger screen sizes later disappeared from the market.
As for the back and forth scrolling, again correct that it is much slower than with a physical book.
You can pack a lot of technical books in your device but, in my opinion, the best ones it is a good idea to have them printed as well.
The Kindle Oasis is probably large enough at 7" to make it work. If you're reading PDFs, you probably want something that's 10" or so -- I believe Kobo's Ellipsa fits the bill. Or you could end up in-between with a Forma or a Libra, which I believe are both 7.8".
As someone who used a 6" e-reader for years and switched a few months ago to a 7.8" e-reader... it makes a massive difference. Technical material is actually readable on the larger screen, the CPU is faster so I can actually search larger texts in reasonable time, and PDFs display pretty well (though still a bit small).
My advice: go with 7.8" if you want to read fiction and carry it around a lot, but also want to read some technical material. If you just plan on writing notes and reading technical stuff, 10.3" is the way to go.
Definitely true on color! I think the long battery life of an e-ink device at 10.3 or 13.3 inches would give the iPad a run for its money in terms of usefulness, but totally agreed -- if you need color, e-ink is probably not the best choice.
Even if the e-reader supports pdf, I think it's a much worse experince than even reading on a big computer screen(which doesn't work for me either). Physical copy of techincal books are way superior than e-book version. It's way easier to study in a physical book from my personal experience.
This is the one thing that's been a deal-breaker for me with ereaders. I still love physical books and the interactivity with a laptop or desktop, but always saw ereaders as filling a gap neither really address, where you want to read material on a eink-style screen without worrying about the sun or batteries, but don't want to lug around a large number of texts.
However, for me reading material goes back and forth between relatively simple text and things that require pdfs, and I always had trouble with pdfs. They've never displayed correctly and have been ridiculously slow on top of it.
My dream ereader would have an eink display (preferably color but it's not a necessity for me to be happy with it) that is optimized around displaying technical pdfs, like math-heavy scientific articles with lots of images. If it could do that and display simple text well, I'd probably use it a lot, probably next to my laptop sometimes even.
I read a lot of maths and have ended up for the most part using a 10 inch Fire tablet. I then tend to prefer them in their original typeset PDF format that way and am able navigate them with the sort of speed you need. It'll depend on the particular technical content but I tend to need to jump back and forth and zoom in and out and it never seems pleasant on e-ink.
I've been seriously tempted by splashing out on a BOOX 10.3 (https://shop.boox.com/collections/eink-tablet) - but don't think I can really justify it to myself and from what I gather the refresh rate is still not going to be anything like a tablet.
Get the 7.8" screen. It was the savior for technical books, especially in PDF, even though the Kobo I used had a terrible PDF reader. I tried a 6" version, and it was just not the same.
The Remarkable is the device that convinced me of the value of e-readers, but it's not so much the screen size as it is the ability to just scribble notes in the margins, and underline, circle etc. easily. You can install Koreader on the Remarkable, but then it's just another ereader without a frontlight, rather than something more tangible like a book.
I convert everything to PDF before moving it to the device though, for a lot of reasons, some aesthetic and some related to lack of functionality in the built-in epub converter. It's a shame there is no software that does a perfect job at converting epub to PDF though. I use one of three different workflows depending on the source material.
One tip for those using the device: the built-in margin trimming feature for PDFs also lets you add margins on whatever side of the document you want, which is a bit counterintuitive but really useful if you like scribbling in the margins.
It's excellent, with one important caveat: provided the text size is not too small. The way small font sizes (<=8pt on an 8.5x11 PDF page) get rendered/antialiased on the device reduces their contrast a little -- they end up a little more grey than pure black, which isn't ideal.
I’ve tried to read tech books on kindle, but 6 inches is too small. I’ve had better luck reading them on an ipad. The screen is just big enough, but navigating between the book and my notes proved cumbersome. Mostly I read tech books on my laptop and desktop because it’s easy to flip between book and notes. In the grand scheme of things it is the best trade-off for me.
On the one hand, many technical books are thick and heavy, and can benefit from having a search function. But on the other, e-reader screens tend to be small and require a lot of scrolling back and forth (like between a code sample and an accompanying explanation).
Does anyone have experience with reading technical books on an e-reader? Any suggestions?