Cheap tablet for reading technical PDF books?

[Freamon]

This one is only 7" but hard to beat the spec for £110:

NATPC M009S Capacitive , 7" , 1.6 GHz Super Slim: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics

Alternatively Comet have got the Arnova 10 for £169 (was £135 until a few days ago):

http://www.comet.co.uk/p/Tablets/buy-ARNOVA-ARNOVA10-G2-Tablet/757373?_$ja=tsid:8361|prd:47868&awc=157_1326488812 _b93db77055125c81a705eb57ac2e48f4

[AtW]

If you want to read a lot then do a favour for your poor eyes and get eink based reader like normal Kindle - black and white in very natural paper like screen with longer battery life than you can spend reading without falling asleep.

[Vanilla]

If you want to read a lot then do a favour for your poor eyes and get eink based reader like normal Kindle - black and white in very natural paper like screen with longer battery life than you can spend reading without falling asleep.

And absolutely no good at all for technical PDF's. The closest you could get to a system that handled that perfectly was the entourage edge, now sadly out of business.

[TheFaQQer]

If you want to read a lot then do a favour for your poor eyes and get eink based reader like normal Kindle - black and white in very natural paper like screen with longer battery life than you can spend reading without falling asleep.

Not quite understanding the requirements, are you?

While I like my Kindle for reading books and stuff that can free flow, the lack of proper fixed paging is a pain when navigating around a technical manual, where I may want to use the contents/index to jump straight to a page/section. It also doesn't fit a full PDF page that remains easily readable, could do with a bit more screen.

Kindle is great for documents which are "real" ebooks, but not so good for a PDF.

[seyre1972]

Maplin may have what you need

While I like my Kindle for reading books and stuff that can free flow, the lack of proper fixed paging is a pain when navigating around a technical manual, where I may want to use the contents/index to jump straight to a page/section. It also doesn't fit a full PDF page that remains easily readable, could do with a bit more screen.

I've given up waiting for a colour e-ink device that has a screen large enough to read A4/book size PDFs, at a reasonable price, and readily available in the UK.

As there seem to be loads of touch tablets flooding the market I'm thinking maybe a cheapo one of those would be a good interim solution.

I expect it would need a minimum of a 10" screen with 1024 x 768 resolution, and not have too narrow a viewing angle for portrait mode, to allow a typical PDF book to be readible with one page filling most of the screen?

Anyone got or know of a cheap tablet (£100-200) that works well for this scenario?

I don't fancy paying £300-400 for an iPad or similar alternative when the only real uses will be reading eBooks and surfing. I've got a laptop for heavier duty stuff, but it's uncomfortable holding it on its side to read in portrait mode.

Hi walking past Maplin they had a 10" Viewsonic for £199 in the window.

10 inch Viewpad 10S Tablet : Tablet PC's : Maplin Electronics

Might be worth checking out. Online seems to be out of stock - but definitely in the shop they had some.


Cheers


Seyre

[PAH]

Thanks for the possible contenders. Looks like the cheaper ones tend to have 10" 1024 x 600 screens.

Will have to do some tests to see if that resolution will suffice.

Anyone seen a site similar to Pricerunner that also allows filtering on screen resolution?

[doodab]

Maplin also have this viewsonic one:

Viewpad 10e 9.7in IPS Touch Tablet : Tablet PC's : Maplin Electronics

£20 over budget but it has the higher res screen.

One problem with a lot of the cheaper ones (including that one) is the lack of access to android market.

I'm thinking either the Lenovo Thinkpad or the Asus Transformer Prime will get my money. The iPad is also an option but I'm not so keen on the lack of memory expansion.

[PAH]

It's not over budget when you take off the VAT, which I can reclaim.

Does the hardware restrict them from being upgraded to newer Android versions to get access to the full Android apps market?

If so, it looks like they have obsolescence built in.

Can't believe the iPad (or iTouch/iPhone) doesn't provide a memory card expansion slot. I guess Apple know they can fleece the iFans into upgrading to newer versions with more built in storage, so why would they sacrifice that by giving customers more freedom. Bunch of s.

[doodab]

Does the hardware restrict them from being upgraded to newer Android versions to get access to the full Android apps market?

I'm not sure TBH, I think unless the market app is installed on the device to start with there is no way to install it, and to install it the manufacturers need to be part of some sort of android association or something. I think the market also filters apps depending on the device you have as well so it might not work even if you could get it on there.

There are other places to get apps though.

Edit: I found this, not terribly enlightening but... http://source.android.com/compatibility/index.html

[PAH]

Just looking at a few reviews for the 10e and this one includes some relevant info:

ViewSonic ViewPad 10e review - Pocket-lint

Sounds like the device isn't approved by Google and therefore doesn't have certification (), so is officially stuck on a version of Android intended for mobile phones, and can't be upgraded to the latest versions that offer better functionality for tablets.

Sounds like a bit of a mess.