Asus Eee Note EA-800 - PDF Reading Capabilities


Gear: Asus Eee Note EA-800, eReader Tablets.

PDFs has been a great format, but they are not the optimal for the Asus Eee Note.  ePubs are the optimal format.


The Eee Note can read PDF documents.  If the PDFs have the proper size then they work very well.  But... most PDFs have different sizes.  When PDFs are "similar" to the size of paper they might be too big for the Eee Note.  You will have to use zoom and panning tools to read them.

Example files:

Advantages of ePubs vs PDF:
  • ePubs resize their content to fit any screen size
  • ePubs can have an interactive Tablet of Contents with the Eee Note,  PDFs don't.

One Note - Password protected PDFs will NOT work with the Eee Note.  You must remove the password before syncing to Eee Note.   You will have to find a program to do that.

Converting .PDF to .ePub through programs sometimes messes them up.  Not even programs like Calibre ebook management do it perfectly.  Calibre cannot convert password protected PDFs either.

You can highlight, underline, and annotate on your Asus Eee Note.  I haven't figured out how to export the PDFs with the edits (highlight, underline, and annotations).

I hope this helps answer some of the questions that you might have.  If you have questions please add them to the comments.

Related:
LifeHacker - Briss Trims PDFs so They Fit Better, Are Easier to Read on Your Ereader

Published: Feb 4, 2011

12 comments:

  1. Thanks so much for going into detail on pdfs and ebooks. What a pity about pdf reading though since most of my stuff probably wont work well on it... Is it possible to rotate it sideways and read it that way? And if you zoom in and turn the page does it stay zoomed in?

    We can always hope that better a pdf reader is developed for it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. As of right now you you cannot rotate the screen and read the PDFs in "landscape" mode. It only rotates when using the browser.

    The Eee Note is open source, so anyone can make apps for it. Or maybe Asus decides to add some features later on with a firmware update.

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  3. I hope soon PDF problems for the ereader would be solved with several ways not just abandon like today, BTW good reviews you make me more going to buy. Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for the video. I'd been holding off buying one myself until I'd seen how it handled PDF and ePub documents, and your video combined with the post that the English ROM should soon be available made up my mind and mine's now on the way.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I posted a guide on how to switch to English on the Eee Note. You can view this guide at http://www.jessebandersen.com/2011/02/asus-eee-note-ea-800-english-version.html

    ReplyDelete
  6. This is great. I laughed at this device when it was announced but had no idea it could do Google Books PDFs. Those are a special interest of mine.

    Would it be possible for you to try an issue of Processed World magazine from Internet Archive? The graphics are JPEG2000 and will not work on the iPad in iBooks. I wonder if the Eee Note will do them?

    http://www.archive.org/details/processedworld08proc

    See my own posts here:

    http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/tablets-demand-magazines-rethink-themselves/

    and here:

    http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/google-books-pdf-smackdown-nookcolor-vs-samsung-galaxy-tab-vs-ipad/

    ReplyDelete
  7. HI, Jesse!

    Great post! Thanks for sharing it! I would like to know if is it possible to rotate the page, so I can read on "landscape mode". I'm worndering if this would help with some pdf larger than an A4 paper. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Sorry, I didn't read the first comment. What about rotate when viewing images ?

    ReplyDelete
  9. I don't think I saw an image rotation feature (except when embedding images in notes). As you might find out... I sold the Eee Note. I have been borrowing a system from Lenovo but it's time to send that back. I had to sell the Eee Note to get some funds to afford a new system.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Can more than one window be open st the same time or one window downsize and one window open?

    ReplyDelete
  11. what is the optimal calibre settings when converting pdf to epub for the ea800
    thanks for the post

    ReplyDelete

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