iPad – Review 1

Objektif utama saya beli iPad adalah untuk menyimpan semua eletronik dokumen yang saya ada seperti e-novel, e-books, e-magazine dan artikel-artikel yang berkaitan dengan PhD bagi memudahkan saya membawanya bersama-sama saya dan membacanya bila perlu.

Objektif kedua adalah bagi memudahkan saya melayari Internet. Normally I’ll spend at least a few hours surfing the Internet everyday.

Membeli ipad tanpa mempelajari kaedah menggunakannya is a waste (It is an expensive tools). So seharian saya mencari kaedah terbaik menggunakan alat ini yang pastinya tidak akan dapat dipelajari dari penjual kedai :). So this is a note about my experience of finding my way around this product.

First of all, I’ll need to upgrade the iTunes software to the latest version. Stanza will be affected though so I have to find another way to download novels to my iPhone now :(. Untuk transfer novel, we try  few software started with Stanza, but since the new version of itunes has effected Stanza, that is  installed in my PC, it cannot be used to share novels with iPad or iphone using the normal sharing methods. Following one of the forum, saya download Stanza dalam iPad dan cuba add files through App section of iTunes but it still does not work. Okay our next option is using DiskAid. Unfortunately it is not free anymore, the trial copy works for 14 days only. The FileAid software which is used to read the files does not works with iPad. (so much about the advertisement saying that all application that work with iPhone, will work in iPad)

Amran suggest the used of Dropbox. Ehmm it seems to work but bila balik rumah and connection to Internet via WIFI tiada, , I cannot open the files (later we realized that we have to tag the files as favorites so that I can assessed it offline). Dropbox has a limitation of space about 2G and I have more than 4G of ebooks?. I just cannot imagine reading the novels which is stored in Dropbox. Other than that, It hang when large files involved.

We then test the e-mail function since there are few suggestions to use email to transfer files to iPhone and iPad. Yes it works, but I just cannot imagine  how can I email the mass lot of my ebooks and articles to gmail !!!!. Furthermore, if the file is larger than 1MB, prepare to wait for some time and the system might hang. Each of the magazine require at least 50MB of spaces. Ok no way I will use this technique.

Apple introduces iBook application with it’s iPad which accept files of type epub. Most of my files are in .lit (use with Stanza), html, .doc or .pdf format. So I need a software to translate the novels into epub format. At 3:00 am, after reading few blogs and forums, I came across a suggestion to use a software named Calibre. Then, I add the epub files in the ibook application via itunes. Sync the iPad with my PC and Whoa…like magic all of my novels are listed inside the iBook application in iPad (I sleep at 4:30 am ). Disadvantages – changing the format, adding the files one by one into iBook application and sync them with my PC require some times (about 2 hours for 30 books) so only selected  novels that I want to read will undergo these process :). Pdf files and articles, forget it. iBook application is good to read novels or other books with minimum pictures or graphics on it.

 

Here is how the page of the novel look like in iBook application which is 100 times better than when reading it with iPhone. Other than that, I can also change the font size or read in landscape (with 2 pages perscreen). This is interesting.