Question

Most of my programming books are from O'Reilly. Several of them need to be updated, and I'm thinking of going for an e-reader this time. O'Reilly sell their e-books as a multi-format bundle (PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket (Kindle)).

Has anyone done a comparison of the formats as for suitability on a small e-reader screen? In Europe, the Kindle DX is not (yet?) available, so I'm not sure whether a Kindle or a Sony (or some other reader) is best suited for these books. Disregarding other advantages/disadvantages of the different readers for now, which one in your opinion gives the best experience with O'Reilly books in particular (or programming books in general)?

Answer 1

I am in a similar position as you. I have many programming books (including ones from O'Reily) and I am ready to replace them with an ereader of some kind. After looking at the choices out there I was not completely happy with any of the current readers. Instead, I decided to explore using my iPhone as an ebook reader for technical books. I know you may think the iPhone could never match a true ereader. I felt the same way until I experimented with some of the ebook reader apps out there. I found a few that did exactly what I want. My favorite is called GoodReader. If you have an iPhone, you should really purchase it for a few dollars before committing to an ereader. You can load any pdf into it very easily via wireless without having to deal with complex file transfers, etc. Unlike the built in iPHone pdf reader most pdf apps are based on this one has its own rendering engine that makes each page load correctly. It is also very fast and has many built in features to offset the smaller screen size. Two of my favorites are: automatically sliding back to next "area" of a page when you get to the right edge and two "locks" - one that does not let you skip to the next or previous page without an extra drag and another that only allows vertical scrolling so you cannot accidentally move the page out of the text area. If you have an iPhone (or another smartphone) I would give this a try before buying a dedicated ereader. If nothing else it could be an effective stopgap until a clear winner emerges in the ereader market.

Answer 2

This was one of the big questions I had before getting my Kindle, and I didn't go ahead with getting the Kindle until I was able to check out how the books are handled.

• Anything where O'Reilly offer a Mobi version will of course be fine
• The PDF versions are (even on the smaller screen of the Kindle 2) okay for me - the text is small in Portrait, but not unreadably small (although it couldn't get much smaller and still be comfortably readable) (but please note that my idea of "not unreadably small" seems to be smaller than most people's, so YMMV). In landscape, the text size is close to what it would be on paper, so it's perfectly readable (if you don't mind pressing 'next page' a lot).
• The mobi versions are definitely preferred though: you can highlight and add your own notes, which you can't do to PDFs.

I'd been using my iPhone to read their books prior to getting the kindle, and overall I'm much happier with reading them on the kindle. Better searching, better annotating, bigger screen...

(On the other hand, the ability to read O'Reilly's books is secondary for me; I went with the kindle for purely subjective reasons - it seems slicker, the page turning feels nicer, and I feel like Amazon have a bigger range of fiction. For me, the technical books are just a nice-to-have, albeit a nice-to-have that would be a dealbreaker if absent. If technical books are what you primarily intend to read, something that supports EPUB as well as PDF and has a bigger screen might be a better choice)