Just curious about anyone out there that is currently (or has in the past) used the Alpha Omega PDFs on any E-Readers or Tablets. I’ve read that some of the e-readers sometimes have an issue with “layering” in the PDFs, so I’m interested to hear if it applies to the AO books. Also have heard issues surrounding DCM - if the PDF has it, it may open a different application for viewing the document than those without DCM. I currently use a netbook for my PDFs, but anything I can do to decrease my encumbrance will of course improve my movement rate and drain endurance less!
I’m especially interested in the Nook Color, especially for the price (at least half of the average tablet price) so anyone that has used that please share your experiences.
If anyone has even taken the PDF on a SD card into the stores and been able to view it on various devices, let us know.
I’m guessing that many of you would be excited about this technology and so please share your experiences!
For instance, my Dell Mini10 was approx $300 - not much more than a Nook Color ($250), and of course runs Windows 7 and therefore a full computer, so I can work on my personal projects during down times. However, it is still a laptop (clamshell case) and hard to open on a plane. The battery life is great and I used it at Gencon last year every day only recharging each night. I had access to the AO PDF using the regular Adobe Reader app and so everything is fully searchable (very handy) and in full color, and I can zoom in to see charts clearly or show a picture. The screen is already landscape, so no issues there. Downsides? Weight. The battery pack sticks out from the laptop and makes it harder to just carry with my binder - it would be no issue in a carrying bag of some sort though. Windows - the fact that it is a full computer allows me to be distracted! Also, if I lose it, it gets stolen, or I break it, I lose more than a bunch of PDFs - all my email and personal project work are on it…
One of the wardens used an iPad at GenCon last year, and seemed to do just fine.
I plan on getting an iPad or iPad 2 this year to use at GenCon as well.
I haven’t tested any of the ebook readers, just because I want something that will also do some of the dice rolling apps and let me work with some of my office documents that we use for Warden work.
1) price
2) mandatory subscription fee
3) i want something now - i don’t want to wait for the ipad 2
really, these are the same issues for most of the (Android/WebOS) tablets coming out - I also want to evaluate the lower priced offerings out there. I’m sure that everything will work fine and look great on a 10” tablet. The Nook Color is only 7”, so I’m interested in people’s experiences with it, if any.
I’m also generally interested in what people out there are using technology-wise for gaming. Just as we have proponents for the virtual tabletop options out there (hi Myridean!), I’m sure that many use laptops/computers for gaming aids. Just how much is it used for? Just PDFs for quick reference? Or do you use other tools like dice rollers, combat trackers, or other GM assist tools? In my group, most of the players use laptops for their character sheets, but use regular dice - only one player uses his ipad for dice rolling. Who knows, maybe someone out there is lucky enough to have a Microsoft Surface to game on???
Right, I can’t imagine anyone trying to run a game off a 7” screen, that’s why I’ve waited to get the iPad.
And honestly, I’m waiting for iPad 2 to come out so I can snake an iPad 1 for dirt cheap.
It is only going to be used for gaming, so I don’t need the bells/whistles.
Also, don’t go for the 3G service with subscription. Most phones allow tethering, where you can use your cell phone data package to run your mobile device.
As it stands, I will be running Verizon iphone with unlimited data @ $30, which I will use for the phone, but I will tether my wifi ipad to it for internet if needed.
Otherwise, the iPad is simply going to be my surfing while travelling, and game running tablet so I don’t have to tote around a backpack full of books
Additionally, I think you can go through airport security without having to take your iPad our of your luggage. Not 100% on that, but it’s what I’ve heard.
(all this from a windows guy who couldn’t stand the thought of having an apple product just 3 months ago)
I’ve been waiting and researching tablets for a while now, especially with the prospect being able to use a VTT software based on it and what it uses to create its interface.
A lot of little components from the web and whatnot like dicerollers are going to made with Flash. It’s been out there a lot longer and Steve Jobs won’t put the hatchet away when it comes to Adobe. He keeps talking about HTML5, which to me as a web designer sounds great but it’s HTML for programmers more or less and sites are still very much flash-based. So, you’re not going to see a lot of HTML5 based websites out there because the browsers don’t fully support its capabilities yet.
What irks me is that a lot of the competition out there doesn’t support Microsoft Silverlight. It’s very difficult even now for a system like Linux to come out with its equivalent and still be able to run Microsoft Silverlight application on their desktop version browsers. I don’t know what is driving behind Infrno but iTabletop is based on Flash and Silverlight to run its software. So far, I’ve been hearing that there isn’t a huge demand to have a Silverlight equivalent developed for a tablet platform because not that many sites and even less so, sites designed for mobile devices, to use Silverlight. Right now, tablets and phones don’t have the memory or the power to run effectively a Silverlight based program on it but I dream of a day where I’m at a con and I’m hosting a game for the players there and while it’s bluetooth connected to a digital projector showing the game on a wall and having the sounds and music come from speakers. Or better yet, the entire group have their own tablets running the software and being able to play the game together in person and with those connected elsewhere at the same time at a con or anytime :D *sighs wistfully for a moment*
I think when I finally buy my Android-based tablet this year, I’ll be looking at the applications that I can run in regard to game-playing. Some of those who already love their Android phones are nerds and some nerds are gamers so I’m hoping there has been at least something made by now and can be adapted later on for Honeycomb. *crosses fingers*
My only issue with the Android market is compatibility.
Already, I’m seeing fragmentation of what Apps will work where, and as more companies jump on the tablet bandwagon, it’s just going to get worse.
It like the PC all over again, so many hardware vendors building for a specific mobile OS, that there is no way to be sure your app will work on everything.
I hate to say it (and it really pains me to do so), the reason that Apple works is because it controls the environment.
All the hardware is the same or similar, and they vet any app before it goes to the app store.
If Android could be sure that all hardware out there supports all their apps, it might go a long way to closing the gap… but until it does, expect someone at your table to not be able to load your VTT.
And yes, I share Myri’s vision, of being able to have a VTT and run a game with your friends, wherever you may have to move (cough.. Memphis… cough)
Well, I’m hoping for the next year or so that there is more stability in this area. I agree with you as while I’m researching about compatibility and OSs, I’m surprised with so many updates coming out for their Android phone OS’s that no wonder there’s a problem, just as it was the problem too with Windows in its infancy. It’s only started for Microsoft to slow down for its OS that they can have Service Packs between major releases (although yes, we can argue about ME and Vista :D). I’m hoping however that many Android tablets will now embrace Honeycomb as the starter OS as Google has stated that this is the OS that was designed for tablets. The risk will be the issue of Honeycomb’s backwards compatibility for those older apps to run that were originally designed to run on a phone.
As for the hardware issue, two of the more popular tablets (Motorola Xoom and Samsung Tab 10.1) coming out very soon are using the same dual-core processor, NVidia Tegra 2 for its graphics acceleration and power so hopefully like other dual core processors with the same power output (1 GB) that hardware will be designed with the OS in mind.
Speaking of Memphis, are you planning to attend MidSouth Con this month? :D
LOL You should have seen me when I was researching our first, brand new car. I was able to get it for less than what the dealer had paid for. The manager’s look in the office was priceless after the sales rep went back with the finalized price. :D
I was able to go to my neighborhood Barnes & Noble to discuss my needs of the Nook Color. I had looked at it online and saw that it takes a microSD card for extra storage, so I loaded up the core rules PDF on a card and went into the store…
First roadblock…While the Nook Color does accept a microSD card, it cannot do so for “uploading” documents. In fact, they informed me that if I were to stick my card in the unit and power it up, it may wipe the card’s data. I’m kind of skeptical about this as I’ve read numerous times online that people are actually booting to the microSD cards with full Android OS systems. Maybe if it doesn’t find a boot loader on the card it wipes the data?
But anyways, what you can do is “side load” the document by connecting the unit to a computer and transferring the document to the card/memory. So the next day I brought in my laptop to do so. The transfer was quite simple - it displayed the unit on my laptop as a USB external hard drive, and there was already a “Books” folder that I copied the PDF into. It was a little slow - took about two minutes, but otherwise no issue.
With the PDF now loaded, I went ahead and disconnected the unit from the laptop and opened up the PDF. It used a slightly modified version of QuickOffice, which is basically a tuned version of the free version of this application—it has limited functionality of working with PDFs. You can’t search or do much of anything. You can jump to a specific page, and you can pinch/open multitouch maneuvers to do the zoom thing. The book looked great, and a single page display was even readable without zooming (although I wouldn’t want to do it for long term reading, but reading a quick passage is fine if you just want to look something up) on the 7” screen. Zooming in on a section made it read that much easier. Some limitations exist for this built in reader that are very annoying - it doesn’t remember the page you are on - if you leave the book and come back, you start over at page 1. There is no way to search, and no way to bookmark or follow internal bookmarks/links. But the kicker is page turning. The document is so large that the application is having a hard time supporting it (evidently has this issue with any large PDF) - turning the page took over thirty seconds! Pages are not cached in any way either, so turning to page 50, then going to page 51, then back to 50 would take you over two minutes. Not acceptable when trying to look something up, even if you *did* know exactly what page number it was on.
There is hope, however…the device is supposed to (hopefully this fall) go to Android 2.2 / Frodo and allow other apps to be loaded from their app store. Other readers such as ezPDF provide all the features a gamer would want - support for large PDFs (I saw a demo on YouTube for one of 250MB - they had rooted their Nook Color of course), searching, text selection and copy/web search, text flow reading (basically reading just the text, no pics), saving your place, bookmarking, and more. The Nook Color also has a format for reading magazines right now, and if we could get the books republished in this format, it would be great - a sample of National Geographic looked amazing, and pages turn instantly - full color, searchable, and more…so that might be another option.
In short, at least for the short term (unless you are willing to root the unit), the Nook Color is not ready for keeping the Alpha Omega books on for reference. Six months from now may see changes, especially if they make the move to Frodo and/or offer up better PDF readers such as ezPDF through their upcoming app store.
If anyone has any questions - let me know!
(This is the kind of review I’m hoping to see - directly addressing the issues of viewing the AO books on a device)
Yeah, understandably so for an average E-reader not to be able to novels the size of textbooks. I’m not sure what the default format for an e-book is although mostly everything I’ve seen is in PDF format and yes, it does ask if you want to try when making it to optimize when making one but you do lose out on the functionality as well as the superior graphics quality. Remind me of the time to tell you how much of a mistake it was to try ten years ago to load onto my Palm IIIe the Revenue Canada tax return guide.
I remember when I was working years ago with communications for a government agency. We were trying to find a solution to make our pdf documents more accessible to the visually challenged since the the final version of the published materials were with the printer. Our Communication Director never asked for a copy of the finished version in word format, not to mention the formatting of the material didn’t take into consideration the text-to-speech readers’ limitations of reading the file. Basically, in a nutshell, the inhouse team would have had to copy and paste the text line by line practically into the text file so we found another solution. As it was explained to me by the IT rep, PDFs are, in essence, gargantuan image files (“You know I’ve always liked that word gargantuan, and I so rarely have an opportunity to use it in a sentence”, Elle, Kill Bill, Vol. II). They take a lot of RAM memory, and you do need some sort of graphics acceleration to view them properly. As my husband says, who has new computer within the last two years, even his computer chokes on loading up a large-sized PDF file.
I don’t think it would really matter if Nook upgraded to Froyo as even the first Samsung Tab ran on that system and Google was clucking its tongue at them that the Tab wouldn’t work as well as it would on Honeycomb. (However, it still paid off as Tab was able to sell really well last year although 15% of them were returned shortly after for various reasons, one of which is that they got wind of newer, better tablets coming out only a few months later.) It makes sense that e-readers are probably using a proprietary format to distribute books in an e-format that wouldn’t tax the readers’ power and memory resources. If you could do me a favor, and take that PDF back to the store and try it on a Samsung Galaxy Tab with its PDF reading software (hopefully, it’s like Adobe Acrobat for Android) and see how the AO materials look and function on there, it might turn out to be a viable alternative. With the Tab 10.1 coming out in a couple of months, you could do what Jeff is doing similarly and be able to buy a first generation Tab much more cheaply and with more features than just an e-reader.
Edit: To read about the Adobe Acobat Reader for Android tech specs, click HERE and features, click THERE.
I think going for a second generation tablet makes more sense as they are more powerful with the graphics processor and a powerful chip to be able to use the full range of options to use PDFs as they were designed to be though and that’s just one of the many reasons I’m holding out to buy a tablet later.
E-readers have a format called ePUB and that is what the Nook uses. The magazines evidently use a slightly modified ePUB format though. I have a free converter called Calibre that I’m currently playing with to try to get the AO book more workable, but it is very difficult…it would be easier to just create the ePUB doc from the start rather than trying to convert.
Oh and btw you can get ePUB readers, or even a Nook Reader software for free for the Android platforms…..
Cewl, nice to know if I want to buy from Barnes & Noble. I’ll have to check but I’m sure Chapters has something of the same thing here in Canada or Amazon using Kindle.
Meanwhile, we’re not the only ones dreaming of using VTT software on tablets. A thread started up on iTabletop forums, here. You have to register to the site to read it but it’s free to sign up.
BTW, an update - I went ahead and took the plunge to purchase the Nook Color. WINNING!
I was able to put the adventures and graphics and other documents on the unit to use during the convention I attended this past weekend. I ran the adventure direct from the unit without issue. If I needed something printed, I could use the USB cable to attach the unit to a computer as an external USB drive to retrieve the document. I was able to use the new Field Recognition Guide as well - I just looked up the page numbers of the creatures I was using in the adventure before hand and when I needed it, I could jump directly to that page. Sure, it took about 15 sec to load, but I could do that just before the encounter and have it prepped ahead of time, so it was ready when it was actually time to show it. Full color, used no ink!
Saved about a hundred trees this past weekend! (ok, maybe not that many…)
