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Ask Slashdot: Tablets For Papers; Are We There Yet?
An anonymous reader writes "When I was younger, engineering and science offices didn't have computers yet. It was the tradition: Piled Higher and Deeper desks, and overloaded bookcases. I ended up doing other things, and haven't been in a regular office for a couple of decades. Now I'm older, spending a lot more time with the screen, and finding my aging butt and back aren't as pliable for the long hours of reading papers. And while looking at rather expensive chairs, etc for a solution, what I'm remembering is we used to be able to lean back, feet up, while reading the stapled print-outs — makes a change from hunched-over writing and typing. So I'm what wondering is this: Are We There Yet with tablets? You guys would know — What makes a good tablet for reading, sorting, annotating, and searching PDFs, etc? Hardware and software — what tablets have gotten this really right?"
Works well for me. I just stuff PDFs into my dropbox folder on my desktop, and read em on the iPad. Makes for a happy combination. There is also an Android tablet in the house, works about as well. Seems like a solved problem from my perspective. I never print anything for reading any more...
iPad 8 will be perfect for you.
But you won't be able to decide what to read: Apple will decide for you.
I can't say what is right, but, having finished a masters in law via distance learning, with all my reading done on my iPad, I could recommend this as a solution. iAnnotate worked incredibly well for me, as a tool for reading and annotating PDF documents, which I then synchronised back to the server so they were available for access, including the notes, on my computers for actually writing things up. I'm now testing an iPad Mini, to see whether that offers a better experience — the lower quality screen is bugging me at the moment, but I do like the lighter weight.
I found the backlit screen irritating at first, but considered it a necessary evil for the benefit of having the annotation functionality, which my previous eReaders did not have. I bought a Kindle a couple of months ago for reading fiction, and found I really struggled with it — I'd rather read on the iPad (via iBooks, usually via DeDRM and Calibre). Perhaps oddly, I find I read much faster on the iPad than on the Kindle, without a noticeable impact on understanding — I wonder if this is due to me being able to scan large blocks of text quite quickly on the iPad but not on the Kindle for some reason. Suffice to say, having been really looking forward to a Kindle — going back to an eReader, having previously have a COOL-ER and a Sony PRS-505 — I was disappointed. My wife, on the other hand, hates reading from a tablet, and carries her Kindle pretty much everywhere.
My wife is finishing up her PhD in a biological science field. A couple years ago she was carrying like 70+ printed out papers around with her so she could reference them when writing at home or at a coffee shop. She got an original iPad and started using GoodReader and said it changed the game completely for her. She's on an iPad 3 now but the effect is the same.
I got her old iPad when she upgraded and I loaded literally a couple thousand papers and other documents I've saved over the years (mostly IEEE and ACM papers and a ton of standards documents I reference for work), luckily all already organized. GoodReader will let you load things and keep whatever directory/folder organization you have. It's great!
Things have gotten better; but I'd say that we aren't there yet.
E-ink has gotten good enough for light reading of anything that reflows adequately(and cheap enough that there is little risk in giving it a shot); but the refresh rate and available panel sizes and resolutions still make serious PDF crunching rather ugly.
The newer iPads have the resolution and speed to do PDFs justice; but capacitive touchscreens aren't exactly god's gift to stylus-based annotation. Yeah, they sell capacitive styluses; but it isn't exactly a Wacom...
"Traditional" tablet PCs had the Wacom pen input for annotation; but some mixture of technical limitations and PC OEM tastelessness always made them slower, clunkier, and more tethered to their AC adapter than was ever entirely comfortable.
If I had the cash, and really wanted to get away from the 'just-a-decent-laser-printer' solution, I'd strongly consider a portrait-oriented Cintiq display mounted on an ergotron-style floating arm. A Cintiq 22 or 24 is far too heavy to treat like a tablet; but the arm should give it effectively zero weight, and you'll get reasonably high resolution and excellent pen input.
Much as I love my Kindle, it's not quite there for PDFs. While great for text (e.g. novels), it can't reflow a PDF well (or at all?), and the screen size makes it too small to reasonably view most PDFs at full size. A Kindle DX might be better, but still not ideal. Obviously color will be a no-go.
I would recommend an iPad or something similar for technical documents and most other PDFs. Goodreader + Dropbox is a great combination.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
LCD screen tablets == eyestrain after a long reading period.
Turn the brightness down. It makes a big difference. When I discovered that, all those problems went away.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
My company makes software for allied health professionals, and a large number of our customers are chiropractors. They are starting to use tablets quite extensively for recording their medical notes, so I am perfectly positioned to offer a slightly tangential response. Full disclosure: I am not a chiropractor - I've just worked with thousands of them, so I know a bit about spines and posture.
Subby, you mentioned that your back isn't what it used to be. This is an important factor.
During our lab trials of tablets, we received a lot of feedback about the ergonomics of tablets - and one tester actually had to be excused from testing after a measly 15 minutes due to neck pain developing. Here's the problem:
- A tablet has a very small screen. Don't let anybody trick you into thinking that a 10.1" screen is big. Its not. You have to hold the tablet quite close to your face to be able to read it comfortably.
- Even the lightest tablets still have significant weight. You can safely anticipate that your tablet will weigh about a kilogram.
- When you hold a kilogram weight up in front of your face, it distorts your body's centre of balance. In order to compensate, your body transfers weight either resulting in you leaning backwards, or sticking your backside out. Either of these are posturally abnormal positions. For the first 5 minutes, no problems - but for extended periods, this can (and likely will) result in back pain, neck pain and headaches. Over weeks and months, it will damage your spine.
- The alternative is to sit in a relaxed position and hold the device in your lap. Sounds good until you realise that your entire body is falling into a C shape (when seen from the side). This is also an abnormal position for the spine - and creates the same problems. We see a lot of x-rays of children who spent excessive time with the iPod/PST/handheld device in their lap - their spine is worse than that of a 40 year old.
In the end, we published an official white paper advising our customers that A) tablets work fine; the technology is sound and reasonably mature; B) we DO NOT recommend that they use them.
Much as I love my Kindle, it's not quite there for PDFs. While great for text (e.g. novels), it can't reflow a PDF well (or at all?), and the screen size makes it too small to reasonably view most PDFs at full size. A Kindle DX might be better, but still not ideal. Obviously color will be a no-go.
I would recommend an iPad or something similar for technical documents and most other PDFs. Goodreader + Dropbox is a great combination.
I agree for the PDFs and even eBooks that have diagrams or pictures, Kindle is not convenient. However a few months ago I lost my Kindle and decided to read stuff on my tablet, and what happened is that I basically stopped reading. Instead of sitting for a few hours and reading books I ended up picking up the tablet, firing up the eReader app but quickly switching to email, web browsing and games. I stayed less longer in coffee shops, doodling around on the tablets and getting restless quickly.
Then I bought a new Kindle and immediately I went back to reading a lot (usually two books a week). My tablet is now a living room fixture for when I watch a movie; when I go to a coffee shop I bring my Kindle and use my phone if I want to check my emails, which happens a lot less often when I read.
With my first Kindle I used to turn the wifi off to save battery but with the new one I find that I actually like the always-connected approach. I like to take notes and it's convenient that they follow my Amazon account, it makes it easier for me to go and buy a few books to dig a little more in a topic I found interesting. The Kindle is as convenient for buying books than the iPod Touch for buying music.
Tablets are great to read articles, emails and view diagrams. For books there is nothing like the Kindle (it's even better than actual books!).
lucm, indeed.
It's astounding how many use Goodreader or iAnnotate on iPad when there is an absolutely fantastic paper management app available in the form of "Papers", made by Mekentosj. It has a Desktop (Mac + PC) counterpart so you can sync, it has all the major search engines built in, supports your university's proxy, has annotation features and what not. I love the thing! (I am not affiliated with that company in any way)
this sig is useless