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Post by shadrack on Jun 14, 2013 10:01:47 GMT -8
I find that I am buying more and more gaming material via pdf. Rarely will I buy a physical book, unless I'm really excited about a game. The reason that I'm doing this is primarily because I now have a 10" android tablet. I really kind of like reading pdfs on this thing. I used to print pdfs out (at work, duh)in about 24 page booklet style signatures, sew them together, use packing tape on the front and back cover, and then use duct tape for a spine. Now I just read it on my tablet.
anyway... i had been primarily storing them in my Google drive, then reading them with acrobat. Today, I saved a pdf in the 'my books' section of my Google play account and now I can read this pdf through Google books! Just fyi, Google books still has some bugs, but I like it. It has the page flipping graphics and sounds, you can look at two pages side by side, it's pretty nice. So I'm probably going to move my game books into google books (the ones I'm actively using/reading)
What readers do you all use? Any great ones I'm missing out on trying?
Thanks!
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Post by ironnikki on Jun 14, 2013 10:15:57 GMT -8
I've got a Kindle Fire (7" tablet, first edition) and save my books to my Dropbox. I use Acrobat Reader to read them. The Fire is nice for its portability, and if I'm just reading through a book it works fine, but it takes long enough to load pages that it's not practical for table use.
Slightly off topic, but I've also started using OneNote to prep for games, as suggested by JiB, and its been working out quite nicely. The reason I bring this up is because there's an Android app for it, and I was surprised to find that a 7" screen actually works out pretty well with it. I would assume that it would only be better on a 10" screen, so that might come in handy for your tablet, shadrack. I particularly like that I can set up the notebook on my computer, and take screen clippings to paste directly into the notebook, so I can pull entire stat blocks and stick them all into one place for easy reference during the game.
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Post by shadrack on Jun 14, 2013 11:15:41 GMT -8
thanks! I'll look into that. Turns out Google Books is good for reading, not so much for searching/referencing...
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Post by mook on Jun 14, 2013 13:03:02 GMT -8
I have EZ PDF Reader on a phone and two tablets, works great for GURPS books. I'm not exactly a 'heavy user' (pretty much just open from Dropbox and read), but it suits me fine.
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Post by Stu Venable on Jun 14, 2013 13:50:27 GMT -8
I use the same. Page turns are a little slow, but on my Kindle Fire, all the important sections of the GURPS books are bookmarked.
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Post by rickno7 on Jun 14, 2013 18:36:05 GMT -8
I love EZ PD Reader, it is miles beyond Acrobat, and worth the low price to have it installed.
On my PC's, I use Foxit because it has tabs built in(i dont know if Acrobat has gotten this in the last few years or not), but it allows me to have multiple books open for cross references. Both have dual page views that I love for older D&D books. No more seeing half a picture cut off, and since both of these are faster than Acrobat, it doesn't slow things down to have two pages up at once. Acrobat is good, but it is guilty of being everything for everyone, and therefore loaded with tons of stuff loaded, its bloated. Foxit and EZPDFReader are all faster performance.
One last thing. If you need larger space online that's similar to dropbox, I have a post a few posts down that'll get you a free 20 gig. I have all the space I need, so please don't think of this as me begging in another person's thread, its just that legitimately you get 20 instead of 15 when you click that link.
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Post by daeglan on Jun 15, 2013 0:14:21 GMT -8
i just wish there was a tabbed PDF viewer for my tablet. So I could have multiple books open on my tablet and flip from one to the other.
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Post by rickno7 on Jun 15, 2013 6:05:37 GMT -8
The closest thing to a tab that I've found on android is the EZ PDF bookshelf. The program saves what page you were on previously, so you click back, click the next book and it opens. Need to go back to the last book where you were? click back and click that book again. Not 100% time saving like tabs, but its close.
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Post by daeglan on Jun 15, 2013 9:53:21 GMT -8
i did not realize it would do that.
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Post by ironnikki on Jun 18, 2013 7:16:07 GMT -8
I'll check out EZ PDF Reader for my tablet; thanks for the suggestion!
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Post by rickno7 on Jun 18, 2013 12:51:31 GMT -8
PDF's use that vector text and graphic system, and has always been slow and cpu taxing. I take a screenshot of a page and zoom in close to show people why PDF's eat so much resources. The JPEG gets all distorted, the PDF re-writes the page so you can see it.
There is an option in EZ PDF to load pages past the one you're looking at. It won't solve the slowness of PDF's fully, but it will help. Changing some habits has helped me also. Get used to swiping through the tiny thumbnail views of PDF's pages to get to the page you want, rather than swiping through full pages. I used to turn page by page, and would get angry that my computer/tablet/phone would lag.
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Post by muntjack on Jun 19, 2013 8:14:50 GMT -8
EZ PDF reader is nice. I was able to buy it for really cheap. It lets you highlight text and such in the document, which is useful. It also loads a tiny bit faster, though there are still some lag times. It was definitely well worth it, though. It's how I read more of my gaming books.
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riff
Initiate Douchebag
Let me check my notes....
Posts: 36
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Post by riff on Aug 28, 2013 4:05:43 GMT -8
I'm a GoodReader user on my iPad 1, mostly using adobe native on my Kindle Fire. I keep GoodReader on my phone and my core go to games in my dropbox and that way I have everything with me at all times.
Forgot to mention GoodReader does have tabs and saves your last page as well. It's speedy enough... if you can find a stripped down version of the PDF. Honestly half the problem is that wonderful formatting we love in the book version slowing down the mobile version. Backgrounds, nifty scroll work on the page borders, hell even the art, can all hit the road in my mobile version and make me very happy.
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Post by Kainguru on Aug 29, 2013 6:00:53 GMT -8
Unlock the PDF (plenty of free websites do it) then resample/format the PDF the reduce the work load on the CPU. I've had to reduce the size of some because once a PDF starts approaching 80mb the iPad 1 starts to shit itself badly - I've reduced one DrivethruRPG PDF from 80mb to under 10mb and seen no significant loss in display quality Aaron
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maxinstuff
Supporter
Posts: 1,939
Preferred Game Systems: DCC RPG, Shadowrun 5e, Savage Worlds, GURPS 4e, HERO 6e, Mongoose Traveller
Favorite Species of Monkey: Proboscis
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Post by maxinstuff on Aug 30, 2013 6:02:29 GMT -8
I don't know why but I seem to be stuck in the stone age. I can't seem to adjust to using a reader (had an ipad and stopped using it after a few months).
I usually only buy the print book - and only miss having a pdf when I want to print a certain page for the image or an in game hand-out. Even then most important pages (character sheets mostly) are freely available as separate docs.
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