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0 pointsanthomtb2y ago0 comments

I agree with all your bulleted points. Especially the "at most an hour". Maybe its age or outside responsibilities, but mental fatigue is a real thing for me, and spending more time than that on technically-challenging materially brings rapidly diminishing returns.

> Very few of these work as ebook (Kobo) for me. The formatting of code is poor and diagrams unreadable. Prefer paper or PDF (but read on a computer or tablet without network).

My ancient (2011) Kindle is borderline useless for technical material but the iPhone app renders diagrams and equations acceptably well (my experience, of course). The small form factor of the phone is helpful too - more desk or table space for notebooks. Mind you, I make heavy use of app limits and downtime so its not the distracting experience of typical smartphone use.

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chrisweekly2y ago

I find my ReMarkable 2 e-ink tablet provides fantastic UX for technical PDFs. Zero distractions, handwritten (or typed!) annotations, etc.

auggierose2y ago

It's not large enough, in my opinion. For PDFs, personally I think that an iPad 12.9 inch is the best choice.

Adding this just in case someone is tempted to get a Remarkable for reading PDFs.

walteweiss2y ago

Thanks, I thought whether I want ReMarkable or iPad 12.9 for reading PDFs.

I had this the biggest iPad back in the days it was introduced, but gave it to a friend as it felt too big for me, and way too expensive for what I wanted from an iPad. (Basically just a YouTube streamer, and my long obsolete iPad 3 from 2012 still does the job, surprisingly.) I checked iPad Pro 12.9 and there are justifiable prices for used ones, so I think I’ll replace my iPad 3 with this big one, which will allow me to read PDFs more comfortably as well.

Btw, I tried printing some PDFs and I don’t like it that way. I know to each their own, someone likes the books printed, but I’m the opposite of that. So much that I had donated all the physical library of my dad’s books I had in the house after his passing out, as I realized I would never read them in paper.

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