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Post by mook on May 18, 2012 14:21:48 GMT -8
Howdy Folks!
In a nutshell - someday I will have the "extra" cash for a full iPad or other 10" tablet, but for the forseeable future I think a 7" tablet for $200 will be a more-than-adequate stopgap.
Primary use (90% really) is for portable gaming PDFs (GURPS), period - most of the other stuff (web surfing, movies, music, apps) is just gravy.
I've already spent a good chunk of time researching, and have gone back and forth a dozen times. I think the ultimate winner atm is the Kindle Fire, just cuz, all other things being equal, I have much more faith in Amazon's future than B&N's.
ANYway - just curious if any folks out there have any strong feelings for one or the other before I pull the trigger. One last minute chance for someone to chime in with, "OMG, don't buy an X, because of Y!"
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SirGuido
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Post by SirGuido on May 18, 2012 19:17:21 GMT -8
I have a Kindle Fire, and I very much enjoy it. Now a couple of things should be noted about a Fire though. Out of the box it will not read .mobi or .epub files. They also make it a bit of a pain to get to the app that will let you read those files. It is not impossible, but it is a pain. Once you get the app though, you can skim through damn near anything pretty easily. Now, as of yet I have not gotten a single gaming product on my Fire that is bookmarked properly, so looking stuff up is a pain also. Outside of that... I love my Fire very much. I doubt I'd switch to an iPad even if someone gave me one. I'd take the iPad... but that's mostly for the iOS apps that I want that aren't available on Android.
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Post by ayslyn on May 18, 2012 23:12:37 GMT -8
I went with an Asus Transformer Prime, which even with an extended warranty, was "only" $600.
As for the future of either of the two you mentioned, I suspect that both are completely secure.
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Post by rickno7 on May 19, 2012 5:20:26 GMT -8
My cousin has a Kindle Fire, and let me use it to read some PDF's. It does this really well and there is hardly any lag. He jailbreaks his so that he can use regular Android on it instead of the Amazon tweaked one.
I would be happy with a Kindle, but there is one thing the Nook has that makes me consider it very strongly: a storage card slot. The Nook's internal lack of memory is offset by the fact that you can use 32 gig storage cards to upload data. I don't know about you, but my entire catalogue of PDF's, from RPG's to Comics, can fit on that and still have enough room for 20 movies.
I don't know the specifics, but my cousin basically uploads his files to Amazon, then has Kindle access his Amazon account so that he can get to his files that way. I'd rather just throw in a card and be done with that.
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Post by Deleted on May 19, 2012 6:13:33 GMT -8
I have one of the low end Nooks and it is pretty good with straight text files that have been converted to PDF, but with book formatted PDFs it has a tendancy to break up sidebar paragraphs onto multiple screens and can be almost impossible to read at times...
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Post by rickno7 on May 19, 2012 11:25:55 GMT -8
I have one of the low end Nooks and it is pretty good with straight text files that have been converted to PDF, but with book formatted PDFs it has a tendancy to break up sidebar paragraphs onto multiple screens and can be almost impossible to read at times... is that E-ink or Color screen?
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Post by Deleted on May 19, 2012 13:18:22 GMT -8
I have a Kindle Fire and love it for books and game apps.
I have less love for pdfs, but that's because it has a 7" screen. I read most of my pdfs on my computer's 23" screen. It's hard for any tablet to compare to that.
Storage is not a problem for the Kindle because you store items on its internal drive and store it in your cloud drive. Everything is backed up and you can access non hard-drived items from the cloud without downloading.
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Post by Deleted on May 19, 2012 17:13:01 GMT -8
I have the $100 B&W model...
Tiny screen can't compare to a laptop or monitor.
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Post by rickno7 on May 20, 2012 5:29:12 GMT -8
I have the $100 B&W model... Tiny screen can't compare to a laptop or monitor. Yea, I just wanted you to clarify, cause the E-ink black and white ones are a totally different animal than the color ones, which are basically smart phones without the phone. So the rendering flaws in the E-ink wouldn't really transfer over to the color ones
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Post by fray on May 20, 2012 14:02:15 GMT -8
Montano reader is great for all your gaming book needs and ebooks in general. I love my Fire. I have a ton of rpg books on it. Reading books that are 6x9" format are better than letter sized books Perfect viewer is best for comics.
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Post by mook on May 20, 2012 18:14:16 GMT -8
Thanks all for weighing in - certainly sounds like the Fire is "good enough" for my needs (basically, quick look ups at the table, which I do pretty rarely, or reading easily in bed, which I do all the time).
Lack of .mobi and .epub is a non-issue for me, since I almost never read anything that isn't .pdf. Having an SD card port would be nice, but I imagine I can do without.
Maybe by the time I'm ready for a 10" tablet, there'll be something even newer and cooler, like a direct neural input.
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Post by ironnikki on May 21, 2012 6:49:53 GMT -8
Sounds like I'm a bit late to the party, but I also have a Fire. As far as PDFs go, I've found that the native PDF reader doesn't display bookmarks sometimes, so I grabbed Adobe's reader (which is basically inferior in every other way, I've found,) and that works fine.
All in all, I don't use it for PDFs, really, because the text can be hard to read without zooming, and loading times can make things difficult. However, in our Pathfinder game, having portable access to the online SRD is invaluable, as it displays almost perfectly there. Additionally, I like to write up notes into a raw text file and upload it to my Dropbox, where I can access them with the Fire. The Android Dropbox app allows raw text file creation and editing within the application itself, so you can write up game notes on your computer, pull them up on the Fire during game time, and make other little notes to refer back to later. I'm not confident that this is actually any better than just using a pen and paper, but it could be helpful.
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Post by joegun on May 21, 2012 10:50:24 GMT -8
Yeah I have an 8inch tablet (not a nook or a fire) but it only had 4gigs of space to start ( hey it was a free gift from work so I'm not complaining ). Anyway it reads the PDFs great, and to get around the space issue: I just have all my PDFs on Dropbox and sync over the files I need/want at the time. Only the "favorites" are actually physically storied on the device, the others and downloaded on demand. So depending on the game, you could "favorite" the books you need and you are good to go!
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Post by mook on Jun 1, 2012 8:42:41 GMT -8
Fray, thanks for the hands-on pimping of the Kindle Fire at Gamex - I ordered mine the day I got home, and it should arrive today. Looking forward to cramming it with GURPS PDFs until it's overflowing!
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Post by fray on Jun 1, 2012 20:19:53 GMT -8
No problem. Tell me how you like it. :]
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