Hello. I am a grad student at UC Berkeley. I use a tablet PC (Lenovo X61). Because the tablet weighs only 2.5 lbs, I have been happy to be liberated from carrying around very heavy textbooks.
One of my recent courses offered a textbook in DRM protected Digital Editions format. This is the first time I have used digital editions. I am thankful that Digital Editions offers me the ability to purchase and read textbooks on my tablet but many useful features present in Reader are not present in Digital Editions and I find myself irritated by their absence.
1) the default "tool" is a select tool. I keep my PC in tablet mode and use a pen for navigation. In reader, the hand tool is the default and makes it easy to control the document with a natural, tactile feel. Digital Editions doesn't even *have* a hand tool. The arrows on the tablet are a poor substitute because it is easier to read a page at the top of the tablet than the bottom and I strongly desire move the page quickly and easily to the physical top of the tablet.
2) I want the ability to hide the navigation pane. This pane is great when I am navigating but a space consuming waste when I am reading.
3) The "full screen" view available in reader is not available. It is really nice to be able to quickly consume the maximum amount of space on a small screen with large text.
4) Pen integration would be really nice. Specifically, I use a wacom pen that has three buttons. The third button is set in the OS to "scroll" which is really convenient in apps like IE, OneNote, etc. Digital Editions ignores this input.
5) Screen shots. I realize that authors want to protect their content but a frequent use that I have for Reader is to use the screenshot feature to copy tables or figures and make notes on them. OneNote can take a picture anywhere on the screen but it creates a new note. I prefer to copy from Reader and paste into OneNote and then write or draw my notes on them.
Really, want I long for (yearn for, pine away for) is the inclusion of Digital Edition DRM into Reader so I can use the rich features already present in Reader.
Cheerio,
Jeff Hohenstein
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