

Google Books PDF Smackdown: NookColor Vs. Samsung Galaxy Tab Vs. iPad - mikecane
http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/google-books-pdf-smackdown-nookcolor-vs-samsung-galaxy-tab-vs-ipad/

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nodata
This article isn't really a comparison between the Nook, Galaxy Tab and the
iPad, it's more a comparison of a specific ebook application on each of those
platforms. It's not comprehensive (Aldiko for Android isn't mentioned for
example).

If this were a hardware review like the title says, it would discuss which
devices are more suited to reading ebooks: is the Galaxy Tab's smaller size
better? Is the Nook's screen more comfortable to read on? Is the iPad too
heavy? etc.

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devindotcom
Looks like none of these things seem to support JPEG2000, which is how Google
Books encodes images larger than some threshold x. There are a couple apps
that add it in, but most PDF readers rely on built-in stuff in iOS or Android.

I read PDFs off Google Books all the time in GoodReader, it’s quick and works
well. If you need the images, as I do, you can resave the PDF using Preview if
you’re on a Mac, it’ll get like 8 times bigger but the images will show.

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YooLi
Mike, you might try using GoodReader on the iPad to view the PDF. It uses a
different PDF rendering engine than iBooks. I believe it is a bit better with
larger PDFs, but really with PDFs like the Google PDFs which are basically a
collection of image files in a PDF container, it's going to bog down a lot of
computers, handheld or not.

~~~
burgerbrain
Why would you use google's RSS feeder to read a pdf?

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tshtf
tl;dr: "But for now, anyone who wants a tablet device to read Google Books
PDFs, there is clearly only one choice: the iPad."

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andrewcooke
even that doesn't seem usable, if you read the details.

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sireat
Slightly offtopic, but I was unable to download PDF of the book in question,
which the article uses to compare e-readers. It only showed up 38 pages out of
533 available.

The book is Success: A Novel by Samuel Hopkins Adams
<http://books.google.com/books?id=Slc1AAAAMAAJ>

EDIT: Using Advanced Search I was able to find a copy that I can read fully
online at Google Books, but I still do not see any option to download the
book.

Perhaps, this is because I am not really familiar with Google Books. Perhaps
it is because I am in Europe?

Copyright is 1921, so the restriction must come from the library not the
author, one presumes.

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ankurdave
Could these PDFs be using external images? That would explain the long delays
to load images (because they're being downloaded) and the variable PDF reader
support.

Here's a StackOverflow post about external images in PDFs:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1833222/adding-
external-i...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1833222/adding-external-
images-to-pdf-using-itext)

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wyclif
I smell a business opportunity, but it seems pretty hopeless since nothing can
be done outside of Google about the quality of the OCR scans. I don't want to
download the PDF, I want to read a nicely formatted book on the Web.

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dejb
It's stuff like this that makes me lean towards getting a windows 7 or
possibly linux tablet instead of one of the newer 'mobile' OSs.

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bigwally
Was this review about the different devices, adobes pdf or googles OCR?

Reading pdf books on any device is something that could do with improvement.
Most of the time I just give up and download the text version.

For the next review download android adobe reader app or goodreader for iPad
and let us know how it goes.

~~~
Semiapies
I'd be more interested in reviews of reasonable-quality epubs and PDFs. A
review based on badly-scanned material is silly.

