Foul Writer’s World

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. I have been busy. I have had a short trip away and lots of work to do.

I just thought I would mention an article I read about PDFs from Charles’ website entitled, Another PhD States: Why I Hate PDFs. Included are some links to a few interesting reads about PDFs.

I have to admit I see little point in producing PDFs because:

• Research from our corporate website shows that less than 10% of readers view the PDFs
• It takes a lot of extra work to ensure that the formatting is correct for PDFs
• We don’t automatically provide hard copies of our manuals anymore
• The time it takes to generate 200-300 page PDFs with images etc., really destroys my timing. Then when you spot a minor mistake you have to correct it and start generating it all over again.

However, the saving grace of PDFs is that they are portable and I think Adobe should start investing time and money in helping organisations make portable PDF e-book readers. They need to provide some sort of incentive. Because there has been plenty of times where I have been on holiday or traveling and pulling out my laptop to read something just isn’t feasible. Now if there was an abundance of cheap, easy to use e-book readers that gave a similar feel to a book i think the popularity of PDFs would shoot through the roof. But until that day happens I am still going to hate them. Unfortunately you would be hard pressed to find one for under $300. Here are some examples:

• E-Book Readers At A Glance

Anyone know of a cheap and cheerful e-book reader that costs around about $200 and is available in the UK?