Dell X50v features query

[scoobie]

Hello,

I would like to know if Dell X50v, presumably 3.7 / 3.8" screen, comes with Adobe Reader that has the feature to provide bookmarks for navigation and text search? Is the VGA sharp enough to read pdf? Should I get the HP / Toshiba 4" PPC for better view? Does it make any difference viewing pdf with a 4" compared to viewing with a 3.5/3.8" screen? I need a handheld with largest possible screen for ease of reading Adobe pdf files (average 30 mb) which comes with bookmarks by chapters. And since there are so many pages, it would be useful to have text search features. So, I have not used Adobe Reader
for PPC before and don't know if it is able to do that. Furthermore, how much memory would it take to install? Hopefully just a few tens of kilobytes?

Cheers!
Scoobie

[whydidnt]

The X50v does not come with Adobe Reader, however, Adobe offers the Pocket PC Version as a free download at their website. The DL is over 8 MB's and after install it will still take up about 5 MB on your device.

I don't use this sofware extensively, but it does have support for Bookmarks and includes a Find feature for text searches. I personally find the Adobe rendered pages to be blurry on the X50v, however, that may just be me -- I think "Clear Type" also makes PocketPC screens blurry, while others love it.

I use the Westek Clearvue PDF Viewer that was included with the iPAQ 4705 and in my opinion it does a much better job at rendering readable PDF files. However, it doesn't provide support for Bookmarks or Text Searches. I haven't installed Adobe on the 4705 yet, just because of the space it takes up and the fact I don't use it much.

[Kati Compton]

You can zoom on the PDF. As for whether or not the non-zoomed PDF is viewable - that's a matter both of opinion and the original font size.

There's also Repligo, a PDF-like format (PDFs can be converted). It makes viewing documents much quicker and nicer. But it's a commercial program.

[Sven Johannsen]

While the install for Adobe Reader 2 for the PPC does take up a bit of room, it installs to, and runs fine from the Dell X50v Built-In-Storage, and you have plenty of that. Files can be stored on SD or CF cards.

If you are not familiar with the ReFlow feature of Adobe, it adds special formating to the file text to allow minimal horizontal scrolling if so desired. I don't think you can expect to read the text if you are displaying an entire page on the screen. You can however zoom, or reflow to allow reading.

[scoobie]

Thanks a zillion to the useful advise from you guys :)

I just tried the iPaq hx4700 which is 4" and VGA and has fast CPU intel PXA. But the demo device I saw had only ClearVue pdf which is a small but fast program but had no other features like bookmark and search(?). I found Adobe Reader for PPC which was free but didn't have the PPC to test the usage.

Sounds great! Adobe Reader have the features I need and the memory can be accomodated.

Now, I just hope someone can let me know if a normal font12 text (A4 portrait) is legible reading from the Dell X50v in landscape orientation, using the zoom feature. My pdf pages are formated center-texted with wide left and right margins. So, I can zoom the text and only view the center part of the page (without margins) by scrolling the horizontal bar and then page up and down to read the book. I don't think 4" or 3.5" screen will make a difference to viewing so long as the screen is VGA and the entire text of the whole page can be shown on the screen. Even with the 4" screen, I can view the whole page inclusive of the wide side margins. By adjusting the page for viewing as described above, I should be able to view all the text as clear as a 4" screen. Can someone confirm for me on this?

I would really appreciate this.

Scoobie

[Darius Wey]

While the install for Adobe Reader 2 for the PPC does take up a bit of room, it installs to, and runs fine from the Dell X50v Built-In-Storage, and you have plenty of that. Files can be stored on SD or CF cards.

I've also installed it to an SD card and it works fine. I have Adobe Reader and PDF files running off the card. Speed does not appear to be a problem from what I've tested thus far.

Sven's mentioning of the Reflow feature is very useful. I think you'll find it to be a useful feature. If you copy your PDF files over ActiveSync, the Adobe filter will attempt to add tags to enable the reflow feature. Not all PDF files can be tagged, but most can. Also, the full version of Acrobat can do this as well.

Otherwise, if you decide to test RepliGo, as Kati suggested, it too can adjust the files so that it fits the screen. Generally, I find the .RGO format to be more optimised in both size and performance than the .PDF format - on the Pocket PC, anyway.

[scoobie]

The X50v does not come with Adobe Reader, however, Adobe offers the Pocket PC Version as a free download at their website. The DL is over 8 MB's and after install it will still take up about 5 MB on your device.

I don't use this sofware extensively, but it does have support for Bookmarks and includes a Find feature for text searches. I personally find the Adobe rendered pages to be blurry on the X50v, however, that may just be me -- I think "Clear Type" also makes PocketPC screens blurry, while others love it.

I use the Westek Clearvue PDF Viewer that was included with the iPAQ 4705 and in my opinion it does a much better job at rendering readable PDF files. However, it doesn't provide support for Bookmarks or Text Searches. I haven't installed Adobe on the 4705 yet, just because of the space it takes up and the fact I don't use it much.


I tried the 13.5MB version at Dell Kiosk. Some bugs encountered.
Is PPC 2002 different than WM 2003 update2?

Repost from another thread:
Have you tried Adobe Reader for PPC 2002 ver 2.0 for WM 2003 w/ update 2 on Dell X50v?

I just tried it at Dell Kiosk and the Reader was a lil buggy in that the Bookmark showed a previous file's bookmark and not the current file bookmark and I restarted the Dell and still the same! The sales rep also thought it was buggy. Also, when doing a text 'Find', the 'find' pop-up sort of overlapped text with the background pdf text. Its kind of messy thing when doing a search.

Why would Adobe release such a product without getting rid of these bugs? I suspect its incompatible Reader with the Dell O/S but then, Dell X50v is using the latest WM 2nd edition right? And the Reader is meant for PPC 2002 ver 2.0 meant for the this platform.

The last problem I encountered was that using the 'landscaped' screen and zooming the pdf, I could not fit the entire pdf text into the screen. That is, about 2 characters on the right will be out of view. If I zooming smaller , the text would be illegible. I remembered trying on the iPaq 4700 (4") and was able to view the whole page. So, seems that the screen size does matter even if by 0.3". I was using ClearVue freeware that came with iPaq. So, may not be exact comparison.

In addition, like to know, why is it that the demo pdf file from Dell X50v is able to auto truncate the sentences making all text flow down to the next line if the screen cannot contain the entire sentence but my test pdf file which got tagged could not?

Appreciate your comments.

[Sven Johannsen]

Lot of questions there. Lets try bottom up. How did your test pdf get tagged? If you have installed the PPC PDF reader from a PC and use that PC to transfer a pdf to the PPC, ActiveSync will have a tagging wizard that does it's best to effectively tag a non-tagged pdf. If the pdf is already tagged, it will not attempt to redo it. Pdfs can be tagged during creation using Acrobat 6 or better. Tagging identifies places where the text can be re-flowed, and where it shouldn't be. It is not a simple process and can be screwed up. So a tagged file does not ensure that the text will not ever extend past the margin, requiring scrolling, or resizing to the point of illegibility.

ClearVue is very different form the Adobe Reader. It hasn't a clue about tagging. It purely renders the screen as Adobe originally intended, a picture of the printed page. You scroll or zoom, that's your choice. With a fixed number of pixels there are going to be times when you just can't render text.

Adobe does not understand the dynamic landscape capabilities of WM2003SE. If you turn to landscape, and then run the reader, it runs fine. It just doesn't like the orientation being switched while it is running. Keep in mind that the X at the top does not close Adobe it just minimizes it. So opening Adobe, clicking the X, rotating the screen and clicking Adobe again just restores your previously minimized copy. Another option is to just use the built in landscape capabiility that Adobe reader has always had. Open in portrait and use the built in rotate to go landscape, not the OS capability. The trick here is that the rotate option is only available from the toolbar, and you have to select that as one of the displayed options to use it.

I haven't had any particular issues like what you have described with the bookmarks and find feature. Remember that bookmarks are like a table of contents in a word doc. They are dependent on the author getting them right. The pdfs I generally use are commercially produced, with ActiveSync's tagging feature used to produce a re-flowable document.

Personnaly I only use pdfs because that is how some things are supplied. It is not well suited to the small screen, though the tagging and reflow do help a lot. If at all possible I use Repligo to render things I have control over for viewing on a PPC. I even trancode pdfs using repligo if possible. The application is faster, and the files are smaller, it has all the features of Adobe that I need, and was designed for the small screen. You might take a look at it at http://www.cerience.com/

[Menneisyys]

The X50v does not come with Adobe Reader, however, Adobe offers the Pocket PC Version as a free download at their website. The DL is over 8 MB's and after install it will still take up about 5 MB on your device.

Even more, but you can freely delete the contents (2.7 Mbytes!) of the plugin subdirectory. These plugins aren't used with most available e-books. And, it doesn't install any shared DLL in the main memory.

At first, I disliked it and only used RepliGo on my Palm Zire 71/QVGA PPC's, but then, switching to the VGA PL720, I didn't want to use RepliGo any more - Acrobat 2.0, in forced VGA mode, is great.