E-ink PDF reader for developer?

Question

Have anyone tried the E-ink PDF reader with technical documents?

Since these devices, such as Kindle DX or SONY Reader, begin to support native PDF files, I am thinking of getting one just for reading technical documents. By technical document, I mean there are lots of source code listing and diagrams. They are usually programming books / user manuals.

I have many internal documents which are not available in hard-copy. And reading them on the LCD monitor in long hours give me pain in the eyes. Therefore, I think E-ink reader may be a good choice.

What are the concerns of choosing these devices? Are you using one? If so what model are you using, and are you happy so far?

Answer 1

I purchased Sony Reader PRS-700BC for the same purpose.

It does reflow when a PDF document is zoomed in, and it works pretty well in most cases. However, the original layout of the document is lost and it does not work for every page at every time. Once reflow works, reading experience is excellent. Otherwise, you have to crop the margin of the PDF document. Even if it's cropped, the characters are still rendered too small in portrait mode, so you need to switch to landscape mode.

To crop a PDF file, I use PDFedit. Some PDF files are needed to be delinearized before cropped, but it's not a big deal as PDFedit can delinearize a linearized PDF file.

There are also some conversion tools that generate pre-rendered, cropped, and rotated e-book file from a PDF file such as pdflrf, but I don't think that is very useful in PRS-700BC because it already supports landscape view and processes PDF very quickly.

Also, some PDF files have wrong or no metadata. You will often have to edit the metadata manually. I use BeCyPDFMetaEdit under Wine.

To be honest, 6" display is not perfect for reading PDF documents optimized for PC monitors. I'd go for 10" if budget allows, although I would still recommend cropping.