ipad as a PDF/document reader
- Thread starter mumudoggy
- Start date
This is my only real work use of the iPad 2--aside from notes in meetings and synching with my Google calendar.
I read a ton of scholarly journal article PDFs, and have been doing a lot of that on my iPad 2.
Goodreader is fantastic for reading PDFs. Easy to load them in and organize into folders (make folders on PC/MAC, zip them, drag them to goodreader in itunes and unzip and it will keep your folder structure). Can also use dropbox and I think Goodreader has their own wifi transfer system.
It displays PDFs quickly, is easy to crop useless white space margins and has decent features for highlighting and adding notes (iAnnotate is better if you need to do more heavy duty markup work).
I read a ton of scholarly journal article PDFs, and have been doing a lot of that on my iPad 2.
Goodreader is fantastic for reading PDFs. Easy to load them in and organize into folders (make folders on PC/MAC, zip them, drag them to goodreader in itunes and unzip and it will keep your folder structure). Can also use dropbox and I think Goodreader has their own wifi transfer system.
It displays PDFs quickly, is easy to crop useless white space margins and has decent features for highlighting and adding notes (iAnnotate is better if you need to do more heavy duty markup work).
Rlarson_mn
iPF Noob
Yup, it's what I use as well as DropBox. Perfect combination for a windows, android phone or my ipad2.
Dorje
iPF Noob
I'll also echo Documents to Go as a good cost effective all I. One office option. What's also nice is you can drag and drop with iTunes into its local storage and then move the documents to the correct desktop sync folders if your getting a file off a computer without.
Or you can have GoodReader send the document to DocsToGo... just not the other way yet. Good stuff.
Mail -> GoodReader -> DoctoGo -> Mail attachment
Although DocsToGo needs to link up with the iOS4 spell check across the board. It shows up in the spreadsheets but not the document writer.
*Edit*
Oops, yes infect you can send your document back to GoodReader as a saves option. GoodReader+Documents to Go, powerful combo.
Or you can have GoodReader send the document to DocsToGo... just not the other way yet. Good stuff.
Mail -> GoodReader -> DoctoGo -> Mail attachment
Although DocsToGo needs to link up with the iOS4 spell check across the board. It shows up in the spreadsheets but not the document writer.
*Edit*
Oops, yes infect you can send your document back to GoodReader as a saves option. GoodReader+Documents to Go, powerful combo.
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am fairly new to goodreader so i'm still holding judgement on that one but iBooks tends to be perfectly fine UNTIL i try to read a pdf file that's got lots of pages, like say 500 pages. then it's a bear! very slow.
am glad i read this thread; there are other programs you guys have mentioned that i'm unfamiliar with; will check out docs to go, etc.
heard good things about drop box; haven't used it yet; just been syncing between my macbook air and pc.
thanks for all of the good tips.
* late edit: for those interested in file management, check this app out:
ReaddleDocs for iPad (PDF viewer/attachments saver/file manager)
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/readdledocs-for-ipad-pdf-viewer/id364901807?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo=4
am glad i read this thread; there are other programs you guys have mentioned that i'm unfamiliar with; will check out docs to go, etc.
heard good things about drop box; haven't used it yet; just been syncing between my macbook air and pc.
thanks for all of the good tips.
* late edit: for those interested in file management, check this app out:
ReaddleDocs for iPad (PDF viewer/attachments saver/file manager)
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/readdledocs-for-ipad-pdf-viewer/id364901807?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo=4
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Slowwwwwwwww
we too got the ipad for reading construction pdf drawings on the jobsite. the job we have right now has 300 pdf's. it takes forever to pull up a page and zoom in and mark it up or anything. in our research for a solution, we found the following:
"iPhone/iPad is a relatively slow device, compared to a desktop computer. And PDF format is very complex, it allows to format its internal data in a variety of ways. Some of those ways are what we call "iPhone-unfriendly", meaning that they overload iPhone's processor with a lot of unnecessary calculations.
However, there's a very simple workaround for this. If you have a Mac computer, open this PDF file in Mac's standard Preview application, go to File menu and select Save As command. Then resave this file as a new PDF (just make sure to change a file name, to preserve the original file unchanged). The new PDF file will be formatted in iPhone-friendly way. Unfortunately, we're unaware of a Windows-based solution for this issue."
Does anybody have any more info that could help us? We have all Window-based computers without even access to an Apple computer. We bought PDF Expert for our markups and what-not and that's the program we're using. But we've gotten 3 others and the slowness is still a major issue. Thanks in advance for you help!
we too got the ipad for reading construction pdf drawings on the jobsite. the job we have right now has 300 pdf's. it takes forever to pull up a page and zoom in and mark it up or anything. in our research for a solution, we found the following:
"iPhone/iPad is a relatively slow device, compared to a desktop computer. And PDF format is very complex, it allows to format its internal data in a variety of ways. Some of those ways are what we call "iPhone-unfriendly", meaning that they overload iPhone's processor with a lot of unnecessary calculations.
However, there's a very simple workaround for this. If you have a Mac computer, open this PDF file in Mac's standard Preview application, go to File menu and select Save As command. Then resave this file as a new PDF (just make sure to change a file name, to preserve the original file unchanged). The new PDF file will be formatted in iPhone-friendly way. Unfortunately, we're unaware of a Windows-based solution for this issue."
Does anybody have any more info that could help us? We have all Window-based computers without even access to an Apple computer. We bought PDF Expert for our markups and what-not and that's the program we're using. But we've gotten 3 others and the slowness is still a major issue. Thanks in advance for you help!
you're using PCs? have you tried this app? it's free so it won't cost you anything to try it. you can read and create/edit pdf files...
Nitro PDF Reader
good luck finding an answer to your situation.
Nitro PDF Reader
good luck finding an answer to your situation.
found a solution!
thanks so much for your replies. turns out that what i needed was the pdf's "rendered". an app called "pdf" did the trick and it works like a charm! you pull the pdf into the app and it takes a few minutes to render them and then they pull up a TON faster! this app in itself doesn't have annotations or anything, but once it's rendered here, we can pull the now-rendered pdf into pdf expert or goodreader and use it however we want to. so basically, this app makes our pdf's ipad-friendly.... if you want to find this app, just do a search for "pdf" or "pdf_" in itunes. the icon is an old fashioned can opener. as i said, we're using this for reading construction plans, not reading a book or anything. so the files are pretty large. thanks again for the help!
thanks so much for your replies. turns out that what i needed was the pdf's "rendered". an app called "pdf" did the trick and it works like a charm! you pull the pdf into the app and it takes a few minutes to render them and then they pull up a TON faster! this app in itself doesn't have annotations or anything, but once it's rendered here, we can pull the now-rendered pdf into pdf expert or goodreader and use it however we want to. so basically, this app makes our pdf's ipad-friendly.... if you want to find this app, just do a search for "pdf" or "pdf_" in itunes. the icon is an old fashioned can opener. as i said, we're using this for reading construction plans, not reading a book or anything. so the files are pretty large. thanks again for the help!
