Low-cost tablet for reading & annotating PDFs

[sebastian20]

I am a student reading a lot of academic papers from journals in PDF format. Instead of printing them all out I would like to buy a Tablet PC which allows me to read and annotate mainly PDF files. The Tablet would be used for reading only, no other applications are required. Quick CPU / huge RAM / large HDD are not required as long as smooth reading is possible. Would be great if you could make some suggestions which model to buy.

Budget:

As cheap as possible, wouldn't be a problem for me to buy a used device in the secondary market. Was hoping for to get something for ~$200 in the secondary market, hope this isn't illusionary. Would be ready to pay a bit more for high resolution screen (1280x720 or better).

Requirements:

- Large, crisp, bright screen with good resolution (at least 12" and 1024x768)

- Comes with a pen which can be used to highlight text in PDF files and to add hand-written comments

- Comes with a good solution to scroll through long documents (scrolling wheel, hardware scrolling buttons, or similar)

- 1 or more USB ports

- OS doesn't really matter, Win XP Tablet Edition would also be OK


Nice to have but not absolutely necessary:

- Wireless LAN

- Good battery life (3 hours or more)

- Slate preferred over convertible since no keyboard is required. I'm ready to consider convertible if cheaper, though.

- Screen readable outside in sunlight

Thanks a lot for your suggestions!

[WillAdams]

Easy if you're willing to accept a 10.4" screen, get a ST-4110 or TC-1100 from eBay or a re-seller like JK Sales.

[digitaldoctors]

If outdoor viewing isn't a premium, and cost is an issue, I'd get a Toshiba M200. The larger screen SXGA+ 1400 x 1050 would allow great PDF reading in Portrait. You'd be able to see the whole page at a time. Anything less than SXGA, full page PDF viewing would be hard.

If you wanted lighter weight, I'd get a Motion LE1700 with an SXGA+ screen. Approx on ebay $750.

[Wallace487]

I use OneNote 2007 for PDF annotations on my M200. You'll probably want to use OneNote or Journal for the PDF annotations. The standard Acrobat Reader does not let you add any sort of markup to the PDF dcoument. You can "print" the PDF into OneNote or Journal, but you'll lose the capability to do a full-text search of the PDF's contents.

[digitaldoctors]

I would not embed .pdfs in OneNote, it adds bloat and you have the drawback that the .pdfs are now not standalone documents.

I would annotate .pdfs with PDF annotator or BlueBeam PDF.

[Wallace487]

PDF annotator and BlueBeam PDF are good suggestions; I'll have to try them out sometime.

I don't think they fit his budget, though. He wants to spend $200 on a Tablet PC that annotates PDFs... PDF Annotator listed for $70, and BlueBeam PDF listed for $150. I'm assuming that as a student he can get the Microsoft Office Ultimate Steal, which is $60 with a free upgrade to MS Office 2010 when it launches.

[sebastian20]

Thanks all for your suggestions, very much appreciated!

[PaulB]

The Motion Computing M1400 could be a good choice: plenty of them on ebay, easy to upgrade, outstanding 12.1" screen (make sure it's a "View Anywhere") 1024x768, has a pen, USB ports, programmable buttons.

[digitaldoctors]

PDF annotator and BlueBeam PDF are good suggestions; I'll have to try them out sometime .. I don't think they fit his budget, though.

Well, what's the cost of buying a Tablet and not getting the right software and it's (1) too slow (2) not convenient ? Now, that's expensive !



The Motion Computing M1400 could be a good choice: plenty of them on ebay, easy to upgrade, outstanding 12.1" screen (make sure it's a "View Anywhere") 1024x768, has a pen, USB ports, programmable buttons.

+1 agreed.

M1400 has the XGA screen, so "entire page" PDF viewing would be quite small. But if "Page Width" viewing is OK, then this would be a good suggestion.

[loyukfai]

PDF Annotator is on sale at $27.95 (http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/pdf-annotator-3/saf=500770/).

Haven't tried Bluebeam's PDF Revu, but they seem to be of different leagues, in terms of pricing at least ($70 vs $180).

PDF Annotator has just seen an update, hopefully it will solve some of the issues I've encountered. Overall, it's less stable and polished as I would have hoped.

Besides, it doesn't support Unicode in handling filenames, and for some reasons, it puts itself on the DEP exclusion list.

Cheers.