PDF rules and ereaders

[matakishi]

I bought the Dredd case files when the Kindle volumes were £1.98 each. There's always something on sale in the Kindle store.

[Momotaro]

I bought the Dredd case files when the Kindle volumes were £1.98 each. There's always something on sale in the Kindle store.

That's a good point - I've picked up a LOT of good books in Kindle sales or as freebies.  They have a daily £0.99 deal, and there's usually a sale on something else on the site.  Not just fiction - fairly recent history and war-related books turn up at reduced prices regularly.

Project Gutenberg is also good for a look through a huge number of free texts - a number of the older classics on the Kindle site are just polished-up versions of Gutenberg texts (and sometimes not even polished).  Translations tend to be older, out-of-copyright versions though.

[sundayhero]

I'm also a Kindle owner, and found that it's a fantastic machine to read books. Real e-ink is 100000 times better than ANY LCD device on the market concerning reading comfort. It really feels like a real book.  

But perhaps not the best for most of the wargame rulesets you can find out there, since they are designed for A4 (or us letter) format, dual or triple column, diagrams, textured backgrounds, etc...Not very confortable on the usual 6" or 7" screen of a e-ink e-reader.

The other problem with rulesets is also that you often need to go from a page to another one, go to tables, index, summary, etc...Not very easy on any digital device (tablet or e-reader).

[matakishi]

I use my iPad for pdfs, I don't like reading paperbacks on it- I have a Kindle for that. ibooks on the iPad makes jumping from page to page in pdfs fairly easy as it displays a set of thumbnails at the bottom of the page if you want it to. It's certainly as easy to use as a real book and digital editions makes assembling your own playsheet, sharing maps with players, circulating briefing etc, extremely easy. There are also plenty of pdf annotating apps that let you add your own stuff and write all over the pages or highlight certain text if you need to.

I also use my iPad for writing rules, I can do anything on it. It's always available for making notes, I can produce maps, cards, text, tables on it wherever I am and have that content instantly available on any computer or phone I'm using too. Frankly it's indispensable these days, I've grown so used to utilising it all the time over the two years I've had it that I'd be lost without it.