{"id":700,"date":"2010-04-20T21:43:51","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T04:43:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thepulp.net\/PulpBlogs\/YellowedPerils_test\/?p=700"},"modified":"2010-04-20T21:43:51","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T04:43:51","slug":"digital-pulps-on-the-ipad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/2010\/04\/20\/digital-pulps-on-the-ipad\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital pulps on the iPad"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"An
An Apple iPad displays a vintage pulp magazine in digital form<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019ve been in the market for an e-reader for a while. My wife bought one of the original Amazon Kindles<\/a> several years ago and loves it. I had my eye on the Plastic Logic Que reader<\/a> (also an E-Ink type of device) after news of it was released over a year ago.<\/p>\n

The Que debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show back in January and looked great. It will have a black-and-white E-Ink screen (like the Kindle), measuring 10.7-inches (diagonal), and weigh just over a pound. It is expected to support .pdf, .epub, .txt and a variety of graphics files. Unfortunately, the Que\u2019s release was delayed until late summer.<\/p>\n

It will come in two versions: a 4-gigabyte, Wi-Fi edition for $650; and a 8-gigabyte, Wi-Fi\/3G edition for $800.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Apple announced the iPad<\/a> shortly after CES.<\/p>\n

The iPad features a slightly smaller 9.7-inch (diagonal) screen, but it\u2019s a higher-resolution LED color screen. And the unit weighs about a pound-and-a-half.<\/p>\n

The iPad has the Que beat on price and capacity. The iPads run $500-$600-$700 for 16-gigabyte, 32-GB and 64-GB Wi-Fi versions; $630-$730-$830 for the Wi-Fi\/3G versions.<\/p>\n

The real selling point for the iPad is that it is more than just an e-reader: it\u2019s a computer, complete with e-mail, Web browsing and apps.<\/p>\n

I was curious about the iPad, so I ventured down to the store on release day, April 3. After watching others testing out iPads and spending a bit of time using one myself, I took the plunge.<\/p>\n

Okay, enough with the tech rundown. The real question is: How well does it work as an e-reader?<\/p>\n

After almost two weeks of using it most every day, I have to say it works great. The screen is sharp, bright and easy on the eyes. Iqrsquo;ve spent time reading .epub, .pdf and .cbr files. The .epub and .pdf files are crisp and easy to ready. The .cbr\/.cbz files are made up of scanned pulp pages (usually .jpg files), so their readability depends on the quality of the scan and the quality of the pulp magazine or microfiche\/microfilm scanned.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve tried out three apps for reading digital pulp stories:<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0iBooks<\/a><\/strong> (the free e-reader software from Apple) displays .epub files. The beta .epub files from Project Gutenberg<\/a> transfer fine, but the formatting is not always right (and the proofreading isn\u2019t always great). I\u2019ve tinkered around with creating a few .epub files on my own, and they work great. You get all of the benefits of the e-reader (bookmarks, resizable type, etc.) with the .epub files.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0ComicZeal4<\/a><\/strong> is really geared for comic books formatted as .cbr or .cbz, but works well with the similarly formatted pulps. You drag a .cbr file over to the ComicZeal Sync application (I\u2019m using it on my Mac laptop), which re-compresses the file to a .cbi file. Then you can wirelessly sync it to the iPad. It looks as sharp as the .cbr files do on the laptop, but I find it much easier to read them on the iPad. You can zoom in as needed.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0GoodReader<\/a><\/strong> handles .pdf files. I\u2019ve uploaded a couple of large (18-megabyte) .pdfs using it \u2013 it also lets you transfer the files wirelessly from a computer to the iPad. Other than being a bit slow the initial time you open one of the files, it does a fantastic job of displaying the PDFs.<\/p>\n

The battery life has been amazing. I\u2019ve recharged it three times in the past week-and-a-half, despite using it daily, mostly for checking e-mail, surfing the Web and reading. (The iPad\u2019s a much better alternative to my laptop for using in the living room.)<\/p>\n

My only complaint is the weight. A pound-and-a-half doesn\u2019t sound like much, but after reading for a bit, it feels better to rest it on something.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve put together a brief video showing the three e-reader apps in action on the iPad. (Plus there\u2019s a funky moire pattern in the video, but it\u2019s not there on the actual iPad screen. Also, the caption should be iBooks, rather than iBook.)<\/p>\n

Anyone else reading pulps on an e-reader?<\/p>\n

\u2013 William<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been in the market for an e-reader for a while. My wife bought one of the original Amazon Kindles several years ago and loves it. I had my eye on the Plastic Logic Que reader (also an E-Ink type of device) after news of it was released over a year ago. The Que debuted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_has_post_settings":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[8,19,11,13],"tags":[],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","category-pulppreservation","category-pulps","category-review"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2qgXO-bi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}