[scw]

Here's hoping that the roughly quadrupling of resolution (167dpi to 300dpi) will make reading journal PDFs tolerable over the current generation of Kindles, where it's obnoxiously cumbersome (it requires rotating the screen and viewing 1/4 a page at a time). The DX had a 1200x824 screen, but only at 150 ppi. This is better, and has a less expensive launch price.

[jonathansizz]

PDFs are really meant for printing (on standard size paper); a better solution would surely be for more journals to publish in ebook format.

[SiVal]

PDFs look gorgeous on a hi-rez color screen; ebooks look dumbed-down. Compare a full-color calculus textbook or news magazine in PDF format vs. ebook format, and which would you rather have?

The problem is that US letter paper or A4 are both roughly 14" diagonal, and textbooks and magazines are often a bit larger, so you need something like a borderless 15" diagonal display with at least 300px/in resolution. I'm hoping that within a few years we'll see reasonably-priced tablets with displays like this and with serious battery life (say, 24 hours or so, because thinner isn't everyone's first priority).

[Turing_Machine]

"Compare a full-color calculus textbook or news magazine in PDF format vs. ebook format, and which would you rather have?"

The ebook format, because it doesn't make archaic assumptions about "paper size", and I can therefore read it on anything from a phone to a wall-sized projector screen.

[asb]

Have you tried k2pdfopt? I've found it does a fantastic job.

[MasterScrat]

Ooh that is interesting.

Someone should make an online converter: you email your paper to the converter address, it optimizes it and sends it to your Kindle.

[kanakiyajay]

Have you tried emailing your pdf as attachment to your free kindle address with subject "convert". This works for me everytime.

[Sami_Lehtinen]

I usually simply copy paste the text from PDF and read is as pure text. Of course you'll lose graphics in this case. But that's life. If I need graphics, I might use ebook converter. Anyway, graphics isn't optimal on Kindle usually, so I don't bother too often to do that.

[mschaef]

I have both a DX and a Paperwhite. The resolution on the DX isn't perfect, but I find that it works quite well for PDF's of academic papers. (Mostly formatted with LaTeX, with some occasional scans of older typewritten papers.)

The paperwhite, however, is terrible for papers, and I don't think the higher resolution screen would be helpful. At least for my eyes, cramming a full letter sized page into the small screen wouldn't work... so I'd still be left with a view of a subset of the page.

[clarry]

A little increase in size would be nice too. I want to be able to read real books and papers with schematics, illustrations, tables, graphs, equations etc.

[higherpurpose]

I think that has to do more with screen size than resolution. I was also hoping they would increase the size to 7" or so.

[delecti]

Both Paperwhite models are 212dpi.