I am considering purchasing a n800, and I am curious about how well the tablet can handle PDF files. I have a collection of RPG books in PDF form (yes, they're legal), but the file sizes vary from 10MB to 150MB. Since the n800 has so little memory (from a desktop perspective), I'm curious as to how well it can handle rendering large PDF files. Does enabling swap on the SD card help any, for example? What I would like to be able to do is carry my collection on the tablet and use it as a reference at the gaming table. Is this feasible?

I read PDFs on my n800 fairly often using Evince. For frequent consultation, I would suggest something with a bigger screen, as text will be quite small in rotated, full screen mode on the n800. I know a number of people like the irex iliad for hauling around large amounts of PDF documentation. It uses the same eink screen technology as found on the Sony Reader, but has a bigger screen and features a touchscreen, so you can make annotations to your documents. Highly recommended, but highly pricey as well.

It's VERY capable but also VERY tiny.

I tend to zoom into most documents then scroll through the page with my thumb which works well. Loading times are great.

Favourite has to be reading through 2 column scientific journal papers - I zoom in so each column is the width of the screen and scroll along. If it's a single page doc with large fonts (say 30 lines) you can possibly get away with rotating the page and viewing the entire thing vertically. Any more than that and I tend to zoom so the page takes the whole horizontal width of the screen - that includes margins.

Zooming is quick, scrolling through the page is quick, navigating to the next page is quick.

One problem though - I've crashed the reader with a VERY large book (350MB scanned pages) - though I've handled around 150MB ok. That may be an exception though since the same book also slows down Foxit/Adobe readers - it may have been scanned at a high resolution and has roughly 1000 pages.


Swap helps the whole OS in general - but wait till OS2008 comes out (SOON) - performance will be better then


Any other questions just ask; one of the reasons I bought the N800 is as a reference machine I have loads of technical books on there - makes for good reading on the train whilst listening to mp3s in the background.

Hey guys I have a question. I am looking into getting a reference device, and I have been looking into a sony reader, but today I saw a nokia 800. I have a hard time spending money for the sony when all it does is read docs. Anyway I was wondering I was playing with the device and reading pdfs. Is there a way to zoom and get rid of the margins? That is the way the sony does it. I noticed that when I zoom the margins get in the way and I really hate scrolling sideways. If it could do that I would be sold.

Thanks

I use my n800 for reading books and a lot of articles. It is very good (for me) but most of my files are bellow 40mb. I have tried one that is bigger but because of the images it works too slow. I can't complain as it does the job were a laptop would be too big, plus i can carry it in my pocket. I still need a big screen if i want to take a closer look to an image or table so i usually carry the same files in my n800 and my USB drive.

About the margins, i believe those depend on the reader and how the files were created. The PDF reader in the n800 shows me margins in some files but Evince doesn't.

Something that i think is a good idea is to divide your PDFs if they are two big, if it is a book you can have it in chapters and that may increase your speed.

I have made good experiences with my N800 as an Ebook/PDF reader. I usually read horizontally and scroll down, rather than toggling the display to fullscreen (too small then).
Contrary to what some others say, reading even large documents on the N800 remains comfortable as you can zoom to a size that is both clearly readable (nearly as in a written book) and easily scrollable (within the page).
I prefer the built-in PDF reader to Evince as it is more stable and easier in handling (I find). Good though that you have a choice. I once thought about a WM6 PDA and was surprised to see that no PDF reader at all (!) is running on that OS.
Scrolling and turning pages could be enhanced in both readers; it would be good if both operations were supported by buttons; now I have to go through the menus instead.

If your ebooks are available in HTML format, use that instead, because the browser breaks lines itself and you can comfortably read at any text size without scrolling sideways!

Anyone know of a pdf reader with extra ability like making comments on drawings? I get plan-drawings when I am going to know where to put new locks on doors on big projects. So when each door is finished I mark on the drawing that I got (paper drawing) and go to the next door. If I got the ability to make some comments or mark a door with color I could rather use my N800 instead of a big drawing (map) over the location.
I checked with N800 beta os2008 and it read the drawing just fine ( a bit little zoom. only 400%) and don`t look like I could rotate the page or make any special stuff.
Also missing been able to make max zoom right away instead of pressing 5 times

Inkscape might do the trick.

It seems odd that it doesn't support setting default zoom or rotation, as it's based on xpdf which supports both.

I tried creating an .xpdfrc with "initialZoom 400" (which works with normal xpdf), but had no luck with the internal viewer

Maybe make an enhancement request on bugs.maemo.org?

Xournal allows importing annotating and exporting pdf. Unfortunately it's not available for os2008 yet, as far as I know, and I haven't been able to port it yet. Hope that those who worked on it for previous os versions will adapt the sw.