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Comment by drakonka | Hacker News Reader

I absolutely love Kindle for fiction, but it is just not even a candidate for any sort of technical book. I'm actually considering getting an iPad for that purpose.

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The Kindle app on iPad is no better for technical books. Images are low resolution and mathematical formulas are frequently displayed incorrectly. I only buy tech books now if I can get them in unlocked PDF format. I import those into iBooks and the results are very good.

Ah sorry, I omitted some details in my tentative "plan" - I was not going to use the Kindle app to read technical books on iPad, but use the iPad along with something like a Safari Books Online subscription. At least on my laptop I have been fairly happy with the SBO formatting so I am hoping it might work well on iPad as well for a portable reading and note-taking setup.

Make sure you take a look at something like a Chromebook Flip too. Bit cheaper and touch heavier, but bit larger and you get a physical keyboard etc.

I haven't actually bought one yet but if been using another laptop with Dane dude 1080p screen and it works well. Plus chromebook is pretty caoable as a secondary device so its relatively good value proposition.

Thanks for the tip, I'll definitely check it out. Do you know if the Chromebook touchscreen works decently well for writing/note taking with a stylus? Is it precise enough? I was considering the iPad Pro with Apple Pencil largely because it seems great for precise handwritten note taking.

Definitely not good for handwriting from brief time I had with the device, the iPad Pro would be a good bet, or a surface if you can use Windows.

Apparently Samsung's Chromebook Pro replacement will have a stylus though, so that should be out in 2018 if you can wait.

Current Chromebook Plus/Pro already have a stylus.

SBO is OK for books that don't have many formulae. For those that do, I've found they usually have at least a few formulae that are illegible due to overlapping text, missing unicode or other related issues.

I don't understand why they can't fix this, at least for O'Reilly content. Even if they choose to use HTML/epub for SBO, why not generate the graphical version of the equations using the same technique used for the PDF versions?

If it’s mainly for that purpose, wouldn’t you prefer something like reMarkable or Sony’s Digital Paper?

They look neat, but more expensive than an ipad for lower specs and less flexibility sounds less than impressive (you can get a 9.7" 128GB WiFi + Cellular ipad with about the same resolution for around the same price, or a 64GB WiFi-only 10.5" ipad pro for a bit more).

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