The iPad was launched in part as a competitor to Amazon's Kindle, a well received and popular E-book reader. I am not much of an e-book fan since I prefer the smell of printed pages in my hand or listening to an audio-book while riding the Metro.
However, I am finding myself needing a quick and accessible way to read PDF articles that does not force me to stare at the giant computer screen all the while maintaining horrible posture. Printing the PDFs is out of the question since I am running out of room for storing all that paper (and trees). The iPad provides a great alternative to reading PDFs on your computer. Not only that, but for those of you who are highlighter-happy like me, several iPad apps provide a rather close and very reliable digital alternative to the print-read-highlight learning environment.
Of course, there is no single app for that. You have to find what works for you. I have been playing with two apps: Good Reader ($1.99 on iTunes) and iAnnotate ($9.99 on iTunes). They are both excellent applications and I recommend that you get at least one if not both. Let me review some of their strengths and weaknesses and you can decide for yourself.
Good Reader
Pro: Price. Can't beat $1.99 for this rich, feature-packed app. It feels like a steal.
Pro: Excellent integration with Dropbox (see earlier post why Dropbox is important). You log into your cloud (e.g. Dropbox) and you select the files you want downloaded to your ipad. You can also upload annotated copies of files. This is one of the few applications that allows you to store files like you would in a "desktop environment." It is very intuitive and easy to move the files around.
Con: While integration with Dropbox is impressive, you cannot download entire folders from Dropbox and there is no way to keep libraries (e.g. folder of papers that you need to read) in sync.
iAnnotate
Pro:
Con:
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