And, about the iPhone4S battery issues, you may want to google that ’cause there are plenty of fixes that actually works. Please keep in touch and help me survive the coming days while waiting for my iPhone! Hahaha.

On my BB, I used my Calendar as a combination of a calendar and a to-do list. I had a standard 15-minute-before reminder set up, and that reminder would ring (Normal profile) or vibrate (Silent profile). I could clear or snooze any reminder.

On my iPhone, I don’t find it nearly as friendly. I can’t snooze ANY notification/ reminder/ alert for anything from my calendar, and if I don’t happen to catch a reminder when it pops up, I often miss it altogether.

I’ve been trying to figure out a better way to set things up, but so far I’m not having any luck.

I was wondering regarding your monitor of choice, have you not been disturbed by the heavy anti glare coating of the Dell monitor? I have just purchased Dell U2212HM yesterday and I feel a little uneasy as to wether or not I can get used to the anti glare coating that brings this graininess/sparkling effect especially on white backgrounds. Like you, I also will be using the monitor for reading, thus spending most time reading pdf’s or word documents with black text on white background.

Have you overcome the anti glare coating?

Cheers
Martin, Denmark

But a broader point with cell phones in general is that what works for one person won’t work for another. I tried hard to lay out what worked and what didn’t on the iPhone in the areas where Blackberry is traditionally strong – and continues to be strong. Armed with that information, some considering the 9900 vs. the 4s will choose one model, some the other. As I mentioned in my conclusion, I would have gone with the 9900 if I were in a profession that required frequent voice calls and messaging throughout the day, such as a real estate agent.

There are, from my perspective, three important downsides for the nook. First, arranging books into shelves, or collections in Kindle’s parlance, is much more painful than on a Kindle. When I create a shelf, I load book on it by entering an edit mode, then scrolling through all of my books until I find one(s) I want to add to the shelf. That’s OK until I have 35 pages of books to scroll through, and want one that starts with a letter that is later in the alphabet.

Second, Nook does not offer a way to get samples and side-loaded books off the Kindle without connecting to my PC.

Finally, B&N’s bookstore occasionally does some weird things on pricing. Normally, I can count on B&N books being a bit more expensive than on Amazon, and about the same as from the Sony and Google bookstores. Every once in awhile their pricing is way out of line. One book I wanted to buy was priced at $7.99 on Amazon, $8.99 on Sony and Google, and $16.08 on B&N. I am willing to pay a modest premium to get a book on my Nook, but not $7 – $8 relative to non-Amazon vendors. So with that case, B&N made me a price shopper, especially after their support told me that B&N has no control over pricing.

In any case, the only browser that no longer annoys me is Opera. Everything else seems to either be unstable, bloated, lacking in user control, or just plain gimmicky. (Sadly, these are not mutually exclusive categories.) I really do hope the people at Mozilla can get their house in order again, because Firefox was my favourite for years. In my opinion they destroyed it with this new rapid development cycle that makes browser updates outpace addon updates.

The problem is, as you pointed out, the browsers change so frequently that any comparison is likely to be out of date before you can publish it.

I have tried altogether 6 different reading devices and 4 of them are Kindles. Of all the Kindles, my favorite is the least expensive one without touch or keyboard. I found the Kindle Touch so difficult to use that I returned it.

I haven’t tried any of the color readers from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

More annoying is Barnes and Noble content which you have purchased, or, worse, has been pushed to your device as a book excerpt (an ad, really). You can easily archive it. But the only way I know of to delete is to log into your Barnes and Noble account on a computer and navigate your way to the delete option, which requires a separate click for each book you want to delete.

Here’s a whole thread on Barnes and Noble’s site with more details about the cumbersome deleting procedures:

http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/t5/NOOK-First-Edition-Technical/Nook-Delete-Books/td-p/427142/page/4

Yael – iPhone 5 rumors have been circulating all year about a possible redesign of the phone with a slightly larger display, near field communication (NFC), 4G (LTE), and other features which come and go depending on the latest rumor. My feeling is that if the iPhone 4s meets your needs, get it. If it doesn’t, don’t. In the U.S., you can always get a new phone at the fully subsidized rate once every 22 months, so it’s not as if you’re stuck with a phone forever.

One thing I prefer about iPhones compared with Android is that Apple has consistently supported their devices with bug fixes and additional features through operating systems updates for at least 3 years. So if you purchase the iPhone 4s in early 2012 you can expect that it will be able to run the latest version of iOS through the end of 2014 at least. Here’s an infographic that illustrates this disparity between iOS and Android:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/27/charted-android-fragmentation/

I don’t personally have the skill set to analyze the code of either of these myself but I’m satisfied both of the organizations behind these services are great organizations that have nothing to gain by being unclear with their users about how they’re using the data gathered. They certainly need to have knowledge of which posts you are reformatting – so that’s something to be aware of.

Note also that you can use Safari (both desktop and mobile versions), which now has a version of readability built into the browser.

Are you concerned about security?

Thanks

Regarding pdfs, I am somewhat displeased with what I’ve seen so far. I’ve sideloaded a few articles with reflowable text, and while the font resizing was successful, for some reason the reader does not allow me to *press down* on the text in order to highlight, look up definitions, or take notes. This will be a serious drawback if I am unable to take notes, as all of my pdfs are articles requiring my occasional mark-ups. Anyone else find this issue, and a way to resolve it?

I may eventually decide to root, in order to utilize a better pdf-reading program.

Opera is your best bet. I have a Windows 98 Machine that runs Opera 9.64 at a reasonable speed, though I haven’t turned it on in nearly 2 years. It has 384MB. I am certain that Opera 9.64 would run easily on your machine, and I think there’s a good chance the latest version of Opera 10 would run fine as well. Starting with Opera 11, Opera seems to use more memory with multiple tabs open. The minimum listed requirements for XP are 256MB but I’m guessing that means it will start fine but then require frequent open and closing of the browser if you use more than 1 tab.

I love that you’re using a decade old Windows PC! However, you should buy a replacement no later than 2014, when updates for Windows XP officially end, meaning no more security patches.

These days memory for today’s systems is incredibly cheap. I bought a Lenovo ThinkPad Edge e520 with an Intel i5 inside earlier this year that came bundled with 4GB of RAM. To future proof myself, I spent less than $20 to get an additional 4GB of RAM. I think it will be a very long time before 8GB is considered low!

I am running a XP on a Dell laptop which is even older than the oldest machine you’re using that was mentioned in the article. Unfortunately, memory on this PC is constrained to a max. of 384MB(!). Yes, XP was designed to be happy running on a PC with 256MB or even 128MB of memory!!! Now with 8 – 9 years past many Windows ‘improvements’ (XP3, etc.) performance has lagged, though I did a ‘fresh’ install of XP this year.

I am a fan of Chrome & use it on other machines. My question, then, is ‘what is the most efficient browser – or browser configuration – for use on this machine’? I am talking ‘lean & mean’; a minimalist sort of approach …? Any thoughts? (Thanks!)

Give it a go

I haven’t personally tested Avant, Maxthon, or any other browser with market share below 0.5%. The 5 browsers I profiled in the post collectively have over 99% market share in web traffic, so it’s not worth the effort to examine others.

A problem for all browsers with small market share (unless they’re a closely related fork of one of the top 4 browsers) is that web app services like Google and Yahoo don’t put in much (if any) effort to ensure their apps are compatible. Even Opera, a browser I love in many ways, receives poor support from some web app makers (i.e. Google) because it has less than 2% market share.

Wow ! Talk about a lightning fast response ! Thanks !

Yes, I read your links on Iron with interest. That’s what made me curious about any opinion you had on Comodo’s privacy-conscious version of Chrome, since that one is from a company with a more long-standing and good reputation behind it, no ?

Btw, how do you feel about the more “front end” type of browser ? E.g. Avant, Maxthon, etc. ?

Nearly 2 years ago I bought my wife a Lexmark Prestige Pro 805 (since replaced by the Pinnacle Pro 905). It is pretty easy to produce reflowable PDF scans with this $200 model.

As for managing ebooks on the nook, I simply use calibre. Most of the time I’m just grabbing books from project gutenberg. I’m not sure about syncing highlights, bookmarks, etc, because I only use one ebook reader.

For my personal usage, the single biggest advantages of Kindle E Ink devices is the ease of getting content onto the device. Can’t get content onto Nook Simple Touch with the simple click of a button on my computer. But getting content onto a Kindle is super easy with Instapaper, Readability, or e-mailing a personal document to your Kindle e-mail address.

I’ve never used a display higher than 1920 x 1200 so I can only speculate. But let me state the obvious first: how about wearing corrective lenses, either glasses or contacts? I’ve been near sighted since the age of 10 so I’ve worn glasses at nearly all times except when sleeping or in water. I’m currently on the edge of needing bifocals (or better yet progressive lenses) but just haven’t got around to doing it yet – so keeping the monitor far away is actually easier for me as I don’t have to switch from my regular glasses to my one-foot-away glasses (I don’t need glasses at less than 9 inches away, so I take my regular glasses off sometimes when using my new iPhone 4s).

Back to your original question – my experience with monitors of the 1920 x 1200 or smaller size on Windows XP and Windows 7 is that you get far better text and graphics clarity running the monitor at the native resolution. I’m assuming you’ll get the same results on a larger monitor. If you’re going to keep the monitor close to your eyes, then go for the smallest monitor you can find with 2560 x 1440 resolution.

Also, you could run a 2 monitor setup. One with the large monitor for testing and design connected with your work. The other monitor could be like I’m suggesting in this post—to be used for your on-line reading. I would imagine that even if you design all day for a living, you still have to do quite a bit of reading. The solution I suggest in this article is aimed at reading content. For other types of work such as design or finance (big spreadsheets), the faraway vertical monitor setup will not be appropriate.

That really saddens me.

I’m shortsighted, so I can’t keep the monitor far away – I don’t see much then. At the same time I don’t want to keep the monitor too close to the eyes, as I think it may make the shortsightedness even worse (not immediately, but when we speak about 60-80hrs a week for years, it does accumulate…)