Seems that GoodReader for iPad is more what I was aiming at. (Plus it's only 3,99 €!)
PDFs can be uploaded via iTunes or loaded directly from the iPad, annotating, marking, commenting works just perfectly - only need to figure out how to link it to a reference manager, though. (Still looking for the perfect reference management solution for Mac - really liked Citavi on my Windows machine, haven't found anything convincing for OS X yet.)
Sunday 3 July 2011
Friday 1 July 2011
New iPad
Got myself an iPad as a form of "retail therapy" because there were just too many things going wrong lately. I had fancied buying one for a long time, but I wanted to wait until I found some funding for my new project.
But - as ever so often - things went differently than planned... So it turned out to be a refurbished 16 GB WiFi iPad 1 instead of a 32 GB brand new iPad 2 and under totally different circumstances.
I must say, this thing really IS fun! I love reading with it, it displays PDFs just beautifully - even those that are a pain to read on larger, but landscape oriented screens. (Multiple columns, for instance.) And there's a lot of other nice things that you can do with it, the arte (VOD) app for instance is just wonderful.
The only thing is I haven't yet found the perfect tool that I was looking for to make it a useful device for my research, which is why I wanted to have an iPad in first place. I thought Sente for iPad might do the trick. Sounds really nice when you read the advertising on their website, right?
Problem is, things are not so bright in reality. At least if you do not own the Mac version of the programme. You can only do database research if you already have an ISBN, a DOI or a PubMed ID. Everything else you need to enter by hand.
Importing PDFs into your database via iTunes simply doesn't work. Adding and syncing is fine, but once you try and add them to the programme on your iPad, you get a pop-up saying it's a wrong format.
Haven't been able to do anything useful with the programme at all so far.
I wish Apple had the Android policy of offering reimbursements if you do not like an app that you bought. But of course they don't. At least I did not find any possibility to return a purchase.
But - as ever so often - things went differently than planned... So it turned out to be a refurbished 16 GB WiFi iPad 1 instead of a 32 GB brand new iPad 2 and under totally different circumstances.
I must say, this thing really IS fun! I love reading with it, it displays PDFs just beautifully - even those that are a pain to read on larger, but landscape oriented screens. (Multiple columns, for instance.) And there's a lot of other nice things that you can do with it, the arte (VOD) app for instance is just wonderful.
The only thing is I haven't yet found the perfect tool that I was looking for to make it a useful device for my research, which is why I wanted to have an iPad in first place. I thought Sente for iPad might do the trick. Sounds really nice when you read the advertising on their website, right?
Problem is, things are not so bright in reality. At least if you do not own the Mac version of the programme. You can only do database research if you already have an ISBN, a DOI or a PubMed ID. Everything else you need to enter by hand.
Importing PDFs into your database via iTunes simply doesn't work. Adding and syncing is fine, but once you try and add them to the programme on your iPad, you get a pop-up saying it's a wrong format.
Haven't been able to do anything useful with the programme at all so far.
I wish Apple had the Android policy of offering reimbursements if you do not like an app that you bought. But of course they don't. At least I did not find any possibility to return a purchase.
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