I have been lurking on these forums for a couple of weeks and this is my first post so I hope its ok.
I am the proud but frustrated owner of a 16GB wifi Ipad which I got on Saturday to help me manage the PDFs I use for my study course.
The course is broken into modules and each module has a PDF of the course notes accompanied by a second PDF workbook containing various exercises. I am studying trading and need the PDFs in colour to be able to read the charts. When Officeworks quoted me $120 to print my latest workbook, I went iPad shopping.
Up to now I have been working my PDFs in Microsoft OneNote on Windows XP on my 5 year old Toshiba tablet. I am so excited to think I can do the same on my iPad EXCEPT I cannot get an app that will let me do what I want to do and am so frustrated with paying out good money for apps only to find they won't work.
I have been studying the forums, the reviews and googling to help with my purchasing decisions but so far they suck:
GoodReader: started here as it seemed to have alot of positive feedback and was cheap. But I don't want my notes inside little pinpricks that I can't even get my finger to activate - I want to see them on the page. Highlighting is so hard...
SmartNote: - gets credit for having a free trial version of the app BUT I cannot actually get a pdf into the program to test it out. My ancient computer won't add files inside iTunes. The download from Web option freezes and the smartsync tells me the passcode is invalid. Thoroughly frustrated before I've even opened the PDF
PDFExpert - I paid for this, imported my PDFs from google docs nice and smoothly. Hit note to test it out and whammo - tells me I cannot annotate because the PDFs are encrypted. This hasn't stopped me scribbling all over them in OneNOTE I've emailed my course co-ordinator to see if they'll give me an unencrypted version but wouldn't be surprised if they refuse.
All I want to do is open my PDF and scribble (have ordered myself a stylus - another frustrating story.....) and handwrite and highlight and type on them.
I'm SURE the iPad can do this but right now it seems harder than ever and was hoping someone could help me out before I have to buy every app in the store to find the one that works - seems very expensive.
So this is so long....
I really have tried to make all this work before issuing a cry for help. Have trashed a whole study day on this to no avail....
I am the proud but frustrated owner of a 16GB wifi Ipad which I got on Saturday to help me manage the PDFs I use for my study course.
The course is broken into modules and each module has a PDF of the course notes accompanied by a second PDF workbook containing various exercises. I am studying trading and need the PDFs in colour to be able to read the charts. When Officeworks quoted me $120 to print my latest workbook, I went iPad shopping.
Up to now I have been working my PDFs in Microsoft OneNote on Windows XP on my 5 year old Toshiba tablet. I am so excited to think I can do the same on my iPad EXCEPT I cannot get an app that will let me do what I want to do and am so frustrated with paying out good money for apps only to find they won't work.
I have been studying the forums, the reviews and googling to help with my purchasing decisions but so far they suck:
GoodReader: started here as it seemed to have alot of positive feedback and was cheap. But I don't want my notes inside little pinpricks that I can't even get my finger to activate - I want to see them on the page. Highlighting is so hard...
SmartNote: - gets credit for having a free trial version of the app BUT I cannot actually get a pdf into the program to test it out. My ancient computer won't add files inside iTunes. The download from Web option freezes and the smartsync tells me the passcode is invalid. Thoroughly frustrated before I've even opened the PDF
PDFExpert - I paid for this, imported my PDFs from google docs nice and smoothly. Hit note to test it out and whammo - tells me I cannot annotate because the PDFs are encrypted. This hasn't stopped me scribbling all over them in OneNOTE
I've emailed my course co-ordinator to see if they'll give me an unencrypted version but wouldn't be surprised if they refuse.All I want to do is open my PDF and scribble (have ordered myself a stylus - another frustrating story.....) and handwrite and highlight and type on them.
I'm SURE the iPad can do this but right now it seems harder than ever and was hoping someone could help me out before I have to buy every app in the store to find the one that works - seems very expensive.
So this is so long....
I really have tried to make all this work before issuing a cry for help. Have trashed a whole study day on this to no avail....